Friday, March 17, 2006

Trailer Park-O-Rama

Today I noticed that the company I used to work for has finally put up trailers for some of the movies we developed there:

Scarecrow

(There's another version of the trailer I like better, but I was overrruled. It was a strictly rock n' roll trailer without too much voice-over. It can be found on the DVD)

Scarecrow Gone Wild

(I worked on the marketing campaign for this one and developed the concept. That means I suggested more nudity and gore and an actual story. There are some good moments in the movie though and Brian Katkin is a good director. He also did Slaughter Studios for Roger Corman)

Corpses

(This was part of the first group of projects I and the marketing team put together. It changed a lot from our initial concept, but that was after I had already left. Rolfe Kanefsky directed and Tiffany Shepis starred in it. I understand it all ended badly)

Dr. Chopper

(At one point I was supposed to write this one, but that never materialized. I can take credit for the title and some of the story elements though. I have not watched the movie except for the trailer)

El Chupacabra (developed and directed by Paul Wynne)

(Our attempt to give the Latino audience their own monster. It didn't work. I later worked with Elena Madison in a short film I wrote for Scavengerfest, and she was one of the hostesses for the 2005 DVDX Awards)

Alien 51 (Featuring Heidi Fleiss!)

(True story: DVDX was going to give Heidi a free ticket to the show and a town car if she wanted to come for the 2004 awards. She wanted to be paid. I told her publicist through a second party that she would get to walk the red carpet and be interviewed by CNN, Etertainment Tonight, etc... and promote anything she was doing. No go. I told the publicist that this would be one of the only times she would get publicity that wasn't related to her going to court, to jail, or getting her then boyfriend Tom Sizemore out of jail. Gary Sinise wasn't being paid, and she wanted to be paid. Bitch.)

13 Dead Men (Developed by Scott Pfeiffer. Directed by Art Camacho)

(After we did this movie, Mystikal was arrested for assaulting his hairdresser. I think the charge was sexual battery and coercion)
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All of the trailers are Windows media files and can be found under their artwork. I'll post some more later on. I'm disappointed by the fact that the trailer for Scarecrow Slayer isn't up. It features some great bits with Tony Todd - actor, gentleman and horror icon.

Oh, and lets all not forget that these movies were made for $100-125,000 each, and that the trailers are far better than the movies themselves.

But - they were fun and I learned alot.

Enjoy!

13 comments:

Aric Blue said...

Wow, $100-125,000 ain't bad! (the budget on FOC was about a quarter of that)

But the whole Scarecrow subgenre always one that appealed to me. (Ever see Dark Night of The Scarecrow? Good made4TV movie)

Kidsis said...

Um...she's a whore. Literally. What did you expect?

Cunningham said...

Aric -- what was your shooting schedule?

Have you ever seen SCARECROWS? 1970's movie where bank robbers run afoul of killer scarecrows in the middle of nowhere? great flick.

Kid Sis - I expected her to recognize the opportunity I was presenting her to whore herself out. Oh well...

Aric Blue said...

We shot 19 days over a 22 day schedule.

Yeah, saw a crappy copy of Scarecrows(it's a bootleg .avi) and couldn't see much--I've heard it was good. They didn't actually release on dvd yet, have they?

And did they use SAG(modified or low budget) on any of those shoots? That right there could be the difference...we didn't use SAG at all. (even their low budget shoots ask a lot)

Cunningham said...

We shot for 10 days straight on 35 mm.

No SAG. Even if we had a star - we pay their rate and let it go at that...

SCARECROWS has not been released on DVD (that I know of)

Fun Joel said...

Forgive the ignorance, Bill, but where do trailers for D2DVD films show? On other DVDs? TV? Other outlets?

Just curious.

Cunningham said...

No problem, Joel. They play on other DVDs; they play on trailer discs that the distributor sends to the sub-distributors (Ingram, Baker& Taylor, Ventura, etc...)as well as major rentailers like BB, Hollwood/Movie Gallery to let them know what's coming; They play at WalMart stores who have a scanner system set up - you scan the bar code and the trailer plays on a monitor instore; they play at the suites at all of the international film markets - Cannes, MiFed, AFM, Hong Kong, etc...

As well as being online for the consumer to play and make a choice whether or not to purchase it.

I have never seen a DVD Premiere movie from an indie have any broadcast time, but it could have happened...it actually probably will happen more as direct response marketing gets further along.

Cunningham said...

That's because every deal is different...and no rental company wants to disclose how much each deal is worth.

Aric Blue said...

Wow, just 10 days, eh? That's staggering. I'm trying to figure out how we can shoot FOC2 over 17 day schedule and it looks tight.

And yeah, 35mm will cost ya...

MaryAn Batchellor said...

Well, how cool is that!
And, I finally understand your bio pic. DOH!

Roger Alford said...

Bill, thanks for posting the trailers. Great fun watching them.

Have you seen the trailer for Snakes on a Plane yet? Now THAT's a movie I can't wait to see!

http://www.tagworld.com/snakesonaplane

Cunningham said...

I said this over on Denis' blog - this is a movie that, ten years ago, would have starred Van Damme.

Colin said...

ha! I grabbed a few promo slicks for Scarecrow last year at the market in Cannes. btw getting a kick out of your blog