These are the Kind of Posts I Love

If you've been reading the past couple of posts you've read both Bill Martell and myself talking about the DVD market and what it takes to make a successful, sellable movie.

Deep Structure took the time to post this, needing clarification on why there are so many "bad" films clogging the videostore shelves. (I've edited for grammar and clarity)

Both you Bills have mentioned needing "more" to make a low-budget dvdp movie sellable. Either to care more about quality or to bring more style or inventiveness to the work. But if that's true, why is there so much shit out there? Obviously someone is buying (and presumably others are watching), these terrible films. It's like the market doesn't demand quality - there's no Darwinian (n)or capitalistic forces eliminating the bad films from the shelves.

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Is it because you guys are dealing with a better section of the d2dvd market? The upper-end vs the ultra-low-budgets? I ask because as a writer/director I feel a value I bring is that I'm good at what I do, and I'm not just in this to make millions. I'd be happy getting paid what I make in my day job to be a full time filmmaker. I care about the material I write and film and work hard on making it the best i can. Innovative, intelligent, exciting - All the qualities I look for in a film.

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But I sometimes wonder if offering quality, even if at a budget, matters to this market. In the extras for 'Vampire Sisters,' which I didn't see, but a friend who's a vampire movie fiend did - the director and producer apparently comment that they made the film for like $5k - and they could have spent more, but that the market wouldn't have paid anymore for it and wouldn't care, so why spend the extra money?

It makes me feel that having talent as a filmmaker isn't necessarily a selling point for the d2dvd market. No?

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I think you're making my point for me, but let me reply about this by using an analogy that I used in a recent article I wrote:

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The DVD Premiere market today is like the pulp magazine market of yesteryear.

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1. It is very marketing driven - designed to be as enticing on the shelf as possible.

2. The product is inexpensively designed, manufactured and delivered.

3. The product feeds a pop culture "machine" on a regular schedule.

4. It is a great training ground for new writers and writers seeking to become directors.

5. It has many levels.

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Think back to all of the icons of modern pop culture literature - Tarzan, Philip Marlowe, The Thin Man, The Shadow, Zane Grey's westerns, Doc Savage, Sherlock Holmes, Arsene Lupin, Fantomas and many others... These characters all got their start in cheap publications printed on wood chip flecked paper - and yet they endure even today in reprints and other media. Why? Quality.

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Edgar Rice Burroughs started writing to put food on the table. He was 35 with a wife and child and a failure at every business venture he had undertaken. Working with stationary taken from the business he worked at, he wrote the first draft of Tarzan longhand. Then he wrote another book, A Princess of Mars. He cranked them out to save his family, and in the process built an empire (and the city of Tarzana built from the Burroughs Ranch).

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His talent as a writer was spinning a great yarn for his audience. That was the quality he put into his craft, and today he is remembered for it.

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There are a lot of movies that clog the shelves - that's a given. They are filling a slot on someone's release schedule. Five years from now, "Vampire Sisters" won't be one of them. Not because they didn't spend the money, but because they really didn't care. I haven't heard the commentary myself so my comments are based on what you've written, but I don't think the producers took any pride in the craft of their movie, and offered up the budget as some sort of excuse for its faults.

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You have to do your best every time out of the gate - if not for the earning of your paycheck, then for the pride in doing your best work. So spin a great yarn and move on to the next one, taking enough pride in your work to do your best. There are a lot of people who have made and released one movie, but it's the ones with talent, craft, perserverance and savvy that have careers, and keep getting remembered and rewarded.