ln the Editing Room

Editing and post production in general is in many ways the inverse of principal photography.  Rather than having an army of people all mobilized at once in a high intensity, almost military operation — in post you have one or two people in a room, for the most part, hunched in front of video monitors and computer screens.  Yesterday I took a few pix in the editing room — here they are.

A Word About WeEarth.com

Note:  WeEarth.com is a sister project to Beneath the Blue — it’s an environmentally themed social network and web portal which is currently undergoing a migration from a proprietary code software to open source code.  Since many of you who follow this blog are partners in a project that includes both Beneath the Blue and WeEarth, I’m posting this update here as well as on other sites. 

WEEARTH EXPLAINED…….

One of the real challenges in doing any kind of an internet project is not only mastering what is possible today, but seeing where things are going and figuring out what the “next big thing” out there is, or might be, and then harnessing those elements that give you the best chance to really be part of the “next big thing”.

When we began our analysis that led us to  ”WeEarth”,  the success models that were out there were mega-social network sites like MySpace and Facebook.  These sites were born out of the Internet population’s desire for more overall interconnectivity. For years the standard modes of communication were email, bulletin boards and discussion groups.  These served their purpose, but as technology advanced and younger generations became more computer savvy, the need for something else emerged – and MySpace and Facebook became prime examples of internet answers that served those needs. MySpace was first on the scene to explode into mainstream awareness in 2003.  By combining messaging, blogging, media hosting, forums, friendship capabilities and giving each user their own customizable web profile, comparable to a free turnkey website, MySpace took the internet by storm and became a huge success story.   Soon to follow was Facebook, which slowly but surely climbed to the top.  FaceBook offered (and continues to offer) much of the same functionality as MySpace, but with a very different user interface.  In the end of 2003, Facebook had just been created and existed only for Harvard College students.  In the past 5 years FaceBook has expanded it’s reach, first to other Ivy League Schools, then to all colleges and universities, to highschools and finally to everybody over 13 with an email address in the end of 2006.  In April 2008, FaceBook officially overtook Myspace as the world’s  premiere social networking site and the two sites continue to battle it out by constantly adding new functionality and evolving their user interfaces.

 For years now, social networks have been seen as an area of substantial opportunity,  but the unprecedented and extraordinary success these of these two networks in  cornering the global market has in some ways changed the equation.  In other words, as these two behemoth’s have grown into what they are today, increasingly it has become apparent that the “next big thing” won’t be a rival broad-based social network giant that knocks off one or the other or both of the two existing giants.  Many have tried but all have fallen short.  After all, the main draw of a social network is the user population itself and with nearly everybody already registered to FaceBook, Myspace or both, it’s impossible to compete on a broad scale — and smaller niche group or interest group social networking sites have found they are typically better served by creating groups on FaceBook and MySpace to achieve the desired levels of interconnectedness among their community members, rather than try to “go it alone”.   WeEarth is not a “niche” community but because it is an interest-based community it is not likely to displace the likes of MySpace or FaceBook.  Rather, for WeEarth to blossom it needs to fill needs that are not directly being filled by the likes of MySpace and Facebook – and moreover it needs to be able to harness some of the power that has been created by FaceBook and MySpace (and other social networking tools) in the service of the WeEarth vision.

One of the first issues that loomed large in our planning process was how to get WeEarth.com to do what we wanted it to – and in particular to get it to do things that helped differentiate it from sites like MySpace and Facebook.    To do this even a short  12 months ago, the best approach seemed at the time to be do follow the lead of FaceBook and MySpace by using what’s known as a “proprietary code” — that is an encoding system that is owned by and unique to the developer of the software.  There are many benefits to this type of system.  When you decide to go with a proprietary solution, you’re often deciding to go with a full service organization providing development, design and programming services towards the deployment of your site.  This service continues beyond the launch, playing a large role in the future evolution of your site.  This is especially helpful for businesses, like ours, which are first stepping onto the web scene.  In addition, proprietary solutions typically can be deployed much quicker and with greater initial functionality.  The software provider ensures site security and code quality, fixes bugs and keeps the system’s software and server up to date.  For us, a proprietary solution helped to eliminate some of the guesswork and risk involved in the technological aspects of creating a website while allowing us to focus more of our energy on the business we aimed to do on the web.

 It was in this context that we initially set up WeEarth using a system developed by a company called “Onesite”.  Under this system we could — we thought — get WeEarth to do what we wanted to do, and to do so at the highest level of functionality by harnessing the proprietary code developed by OneSite.

 But as is often the case with the net, things were moving very quickly, and new concepts and opportunities were emerging.  Increasingly there was a perceived need for a kind of convergence in which web users or social network members would not be locked into a proprietary system where they could only easily communicate with others in the system — but rather there was a perceived need among developers and users alike to move away from proprietary code and into what is now referred to as “open source” code — that is code that anyone can use and from which a user can easily navigate in and out of the system.  The problem for WeEarth was that — even six months ago — no open source code existed that could do the things that we want/need WeEarth to do, so this wasn’t an option.  But in recent months there have been exciting developments in Open Source Code, and the advantages of migrating to an open source environment started becoming increasingly apparent.

 In the Open Source world there are 3 main competing codes:  WordPress, Drupal and Joomla.  It is commonly accepted that WordPress is the leader in progress, developer base and overall functionality. We had actually considered WordPress a worthy candidate initially before deciding to go with proprietary software but, while being a premiere content management system, site-building platform and blog tool, it had 3 key deficiencies which kept us from adopting it.  All of these issues have recently been resolved. The deficiencies were:

 1) No abilty for each user to have their own blog -  We could create a compelling and dynamic online publication with multiple users, each blogging and creating articles for our blog, but this only served part of our plan.  We set out to build an online publication powered by a blogging community connected through a social network and at the time there was nothing offered through WordPress.  This all changed when WordPress MU (Multi-User) was launched.  Now it is possible for each person to have their own blog (or blogs) and for our site to have as large a blogger population as we want.

 2) No sophisticated social networking functionality - This was (and is) essential to our project.  Our concept is based on connectedness and we could not consider an option lacking community-building features. Only 2 months ago, on April 30, 2009, the makers of WordPress launched BuddyPress, allowing our users the interconnectivity we desired for WeEarth.

 3) No viable e-commerce solution – A year ago, there were e-commerce solutions available for WordPress, but none of them could be used to develop anything more than a basic online store.  The world of e-commerce, and more recently, social commerce, have set the bar pretty high for online stores and we needed to be closer to the cutting edge.  At the beginning of 2009, the Shopp application was launched for WordPress, opening the doors for a truly dynamic online store for the platform.

 By combining and customizing the new multi-user applications WordPress MU, BuddyPress and Shopp, we are creating a truly innovative and cutting edge website far beyond what is possible in a proprietary code environment.  These tools have hardly begun to be deployed and, for now,  WeEarth is the only project bringing all three together in one site. We’ve hired Lisa Sabin-Wilson to lead our development process.  She is the author of WordPress for Dummies and highly acclaimed in the WordPress community. 

At the end of the day it comes down to this: we invited people to our site to “Use Your Voice… and Be Heard” and the “Be Heard” part of it was lagging in a closed, proprietary code environment where connectivity outside the site itself was not easy to achieve.  A key element to ‘being heard’ on the web these days is an open environment that allows for the highest degree of connectivity around the web. People don’t want to recreate their online presence on yet another site, they want their web presence interconnected with as little repetition as possible – using various tools such as DIGG, Feedburner,  RSS Syndication and others so that what they communicate on WeEarth is easily and seamlessly fed to the widest possible audience including their FaceBook,  Twitter, and other such accounts – as well as social bookmarking and other mechanisms all making it far more possible for the voice that is speaking to be heard widely throughout the internet social network communities.

 Based on all of the foregoing, we made the decision to migrate WeEarth to new open source technology that, in addition to achieving all of our initial goals, will allow users to receive and distribute content via RSS syndication, connect their WeEarth profile with their Facebook and Twitter Accounts, allow users blogging elsewhere on the web to join our blog network without recreating their blog, an iphone application, and much more.

 And that’s where we are today.  In a matter of weeks, the new open source WeEarth will be up and functioning with a degree of interconnectivity and functionality that the old WeEarth could not hope to achieve.  It will also allow us to maximize the benefits of a huge developer base — developers who are familiar with the code we’re using and who can and will be developing widgets, plug-ins and other add-ons all the time.  (Having a huge developer base is one of the top advantages of open source code.)   Each site using the software has different needs, some unique to the site and others overlapping the needs of other sites out there.  The way the open source community works, whenever a piece of code (a widget, plug-in or other feature) is developed, it is released into the community for all to share.  Not only does this mean more features at a lower cost, it encourages a culture of rapid progress and shared development that is continually defining the cutting edge of internet technology.  The release of WordPress MU, BuddyPress and Shopp, all since the start of the WeEarth project, is a testament to the power inherent in this type of system.  By deploying these 3 tools in tandem in support of our WeEarth “Use Your Voice … Be Heard” credo, we believe we are now going to be positioned—and have the tools – to have a bona fide shot at becoming at least one of the “Next Big Things” on the ever-evolving net. 

Cannes Report

As promised, following is a guest post from Jamie Thompson, COO of Quantum Releasing.  It is Jamie’s report on the overall market situation as experienced at Cannes — and includes specifics about the market reaction to Beneath the Blue.

NOTES ON CANNES ‘09

by Jamie Thompson, COO, Quantum Releasing

It has been two weeks since we have returned from the Marche Du Film in Cannes. Since returning we have obviously been doing a tremendous amount of follow up from the market. Market conditions are tougher than they have ever been and there is a lot of work and communication involved with the buyers, so that is where most of our concentration is directed. First I will give you a quick set of details on Beneath the Blue — then will write more generally about the overall market conditions.

BENEATH THE BLUE

Regarding Beneath the Blue specifically, I have seen more positive, excited responses to this film that I haven’t seen in the marketplace for quite a while. It seems to be defying the odds with regard to the buyers response and the speed that decisions are being made. From the first day of the market, during which we screened a 15 minute promo of Beneath the Blue, we had a rush of buyers. That day we started receiving offers for territories, which is usually unheard of in today’s market (see the more general report below which provides context for this accomplishment by Beneath the Blue.) .   Although we had only intended to “sneak preview” the film and were not actively trying to close deals — at this point we have closed deals with France and Canada — each at an advance Mininum Guarantee that is 3-4 times higher than was the case in the same territories for Eye of the Dolphin (or any of our other films, for that matter.)  We have also taken deals  Czech Republic, Poland, Former Yugoslavia, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Thailand — all at very good prices in terms of the up-front minimum guarantee as well as the other deal elements.  We are in advanced discussion with buyers for Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, and Australia with offers coming in. Additionally our buyers for Latin America are very excited and we are confident we are going to close a deal there soon. The excitement level for the movie was actually a great surprise to me, because the market has
been depressed. I had premiered other complete movies that we had anticipated to be our best sellers and we had expected Beneath the Blue to be a preview of what was to come, but with an interest level that high the decision was made to start closing deals at the market.

ASSESSMENT OF THE OVERALL MARKET CONDITIONS
In light of how difficult the market environment and industry in general has been since the financial collapse last year, the Marche Du Film was a very active yet cautious market. Leading up to Cannes this year far we have been dealing with severe problems collecting money on existing deals, having our buyers come to us to renegotiate existing deals, and sales have been down since the economy took a dive last year.

Michael Werner, veteran executive at sales company NonStop Sales was quoted prior to Cannes in the Hollywood Reporter as saying that “Prices have gone way down. You now need 10-15 deals to make the revenue you used to get on
1-2.” 

On Day 6 of the market, page 1 of the Hollywood Reporter had an article that quoted one festival veteran as saying that he had “never seen so much to buy… And no one’s buying anything.”

Variety’s day 6 headline was “In a tough market, it’s survival of the fleetest…“

It’s not all bad news though… The market is changing considerably. This Variety piece concludes that “In the old days, a buyer would view a film, make a bid and firm a deal, all within a short timespan. Now it’s more common for companies to lay the groundwork for a deal pre-fest, then announce it at Cannes, or else do the basics here and unveil the deal later.”

I’m still very upbeat on how we are going to do in the current market climate. We came into the market with 218 meetings booked for our two sales people and I was there for support. We were so busy for the first few days of the market that we were often taking three meetings at a time, with me showing trailers from my laptop. Though I was there to primarily assist them in their meetings and be available for negotiation, we were often so busy that the end of the day would come and we would realize that we hadn’t even
had an opportunity to eat lunch.  [[Michael Sellers comment:  I want to try and provide some context for Jamie and his team's accomplishment in lining up 218 meetings prior the the market.  Most companies like Quantum go to a market with, at best, 50-60 meetings lined up in advance.  A couple of year's back we first heard about one company, American World Pictures, having more than 100 meetings lined up and that always stood as a high water mark.  Jamie and his team came up with 218 meetings through sheer hard work, including having sales personnel work graveyard hours so they can call Europe on European time, and call Asia on Asian time.  They are truly to be commended for the extraordinary level of effort prior to the market.]]

All of these meetings were fruitful, but we, like everyone else, experienced the reality that many meetings did not result in sales at the market, but rather were a step toward a potential sale that will close in the months after the market.  Many buying companies had cut the number of employees attending the market and were waiting to make offers until after the market, when their DVD sales departments and TV sales departments could also evaluate, crunch numbers, and come up with an informed offer. We are still closing deals from AFM last November and just starting to get offers from meetings in Berlin — there is a time lag and an ongoing process that has to carried out.

The challenges aren’t isolated to just companies like ours. Many of the large companies dealing with major theatrical movies are even having problems. With less overall buying in the marketplace, big movies are going for less money and many are having trouble finding distribution at all. This makes smaller independents with cast that is less internationally recognizable very difficult to sell.

But we did manage to stay busier than most companies, have more meetings, and extend our database of buyers who are actively engaged with us.  As the global economy stabilizes, we believe we are well positioned.

Important Announcement

We’ve just put out an important announcement to investors and partners at a separate private blog. To get the password to the private blog, please send an email to sellers.michael@mac.com asking for the password and it will be sent to you. Thanks!

Quick Post-Cannes Update

I’m going to have Jamie Thompson from Quantum Releasing do a guest blog next week to describe in some detail the recent Cannes film festival and market and buyer reaction to Beneath the Blue, which was sneak previewed there via a 20 minute extended promotional reel. The short version is that Jamie and the sales team came back quite excited over the reception to Beneath the Blue, and even though the intent was just to promo the film, and not pre-sell it — Quantum did end up taking a few deals in key territories where the amount offered was more than double what has been offered for any of the other movies carried by Quantum. I will leave the additional details to Jamie — in the meantime, for me it’s back to editing and completing the film.

About the Name Change

Guest Post by Jamie Thompson, Chief Operating Officer, Quantum Management Associates

Hi everyone.  Just wanted to log on and say the feedback so far about the name change from “Way of the Dolphin” to “Beneath the Blue” has been extremely positive — so much so that we’re wondering, quite frankly, why we agonized as long about it as we did.  It seems to be universally perceived as a positive change.   In the midst of all the favorable comments there was one nervous query by one of the film’s investors who was concerned that the name change might have some implication for the ownership structure and might in some way be affecting his position — and the answer to that is absolutely not. The only thing that has changed is the title.  Titles change all the time — in fact something that may be worth remembering is that before Eye of the Dolphin was Eye of the Dolphin, it was “Blue 14″, and before it was “Blue 14″  it was “Spirit of Paradise”.    In that case, as in this, same sort of testing was done and in each case the testing and focus groups supported the final changes that were decided on, but the business structure remained constant thoroughout.  So there’s nothing to worry about on that score.

As for the film itself, we are extremely excited about getting it into the marketplace.  The new trailer is a huge step toward success, as is  the poster and key art.  We will be starting the process of unveiling it in Cannes en route to what is projected now to be a late August US release.  We will be coming online here on Michael’s blog now and again to update about that, and will also be posting information on our blog at www.quantumgroup.typepad.com.

Post Production Update as of April 23

We’re deep into post production and there’s not quite as much to write about in terms of behind the scenes activity — it’s basically two or three of us locked up in a room with computer screens and speakers and lots of coffee. But we’re progressing through the edit and feeling better and better as we get deeper into it.

One thing that I know I’ve blogged about in the past but maybe some of you haven’t seen it, is to explain the steps in post production.  And anyway — this time it’s a little different since we shot on the red camera, which has it’s own post production workflow.  So here are some bullet points:

• Director’s Cut:  Normally if you have the entire film in the can, the director is given about 10 weeks to do his cut.  If it’s a DGA (Director’s Guild) film, the director is mandated those 10 weeks.  In indieland, it might be a bit less. In the old days before Final Cut Pro and Avid Express, the director’s cut always involved having a fulltime editor simply to work the machines.  Nowadays many younger directors (or young at heart anyway) have their own editing equipment and in some cases the editor isn’t brought on fulltime until the director has had his whack at it.  Anyway — April 15 was 10 weeks past the end of our shoot so that gives you a sense of where we are.
• After the Director’s cut, there are producer revisions.  In my case, since I’m a director and a producer, what happens is that I try to follow two different thought patterns.  During the Director’s cut phase, I try to make sure that everything I was trying to do at every step of the way in the film at least gets tried out.  I also try to shape the story the way I was shaping it when I directed the scenes–thus if I felt there were three or four particular “moments” in a given scene that were important, I emphasize that.  Or if it’s more from one character’s point of view, I skew it that way.  And I just basically plow through the film trying to get the most out of I can based upon the script, the shooting plan, and the directorial “vision”.
• After that, though, it’s time to look at the film differently.  Invariably, films shift and change during the making.  They are not just a carbon copy of what the director wanted — they in some fashion take on a life of their own and it becomes important to “listen” to the film and what it’s trying to say, and begin to make changes that are more responsive to the film.  In our situation, the editor and Susan Johnson are the ones who take the director’s cut and then have their wicked way with it.  I go away and wash my head of it.  Then — after 2-3 weeks of that, I’ll come back in and we’ll work our way to the finish line of the EDIT (which is a long long way from the finish line of Post Production.)
• When we get to a finished edit, what we have is something that’s pretty watchable — it’s got temp music, maybe some effects, perhaps some effort has been made to equalize the sound and get rid of any really offensive production sound elements.  But all of this is just temp stuff done in the service of trying to make the cut watchable enough that it can be judged.  Now, with the cut decided on (at least provisionally), the post moves on to the next stages which involve:
  • Building up the sound.  The dialogue must be cleaned up and isolated, the foley added (foley is natural sounds you make on a stage by replicating the sound you should hear on the screen — a glass getting placed down, the rustle of clothing, footsteps).  The reason you need to foley eveyrthing is that eventually your sound track has to be compartmented in souch a way that the dialogue can be removed for foreign language dubs without removing all the other sounds that are attached to it on the production recording.  So that’s why you “re-record” the sound — through foley and hard effects you try to recreate and enhance the naturally recorded production sound, making it more expressive and compartmenting it.
  • Special Effects Shots.  Some of this can be one while the first round of editing is happening, but most of the SFX shots happen later in the game, replacing temp effect shots that were dropped in during the edit.
  • Music–The composer in indie films usually doesn’t start until the edit is complete, although he or she might start ‘noodling’ with some themes before the cut is done.
  • Eventually the sound is locked (6 weeks is about normal for sound) and so now we have locked picture and locked sound, with special effects shots in place.
  • With the RED camera, at this point we have to do a conform which is really pretty easy.  The RED gathers so much information that for editing purposes, we only use a “reference movie” that has 1/4 the info on each digital frame that the “real” Red frame has.  So now before doing color grading and final visuals, we rebuild the film using the full resolution of the red.
  • We then go on to color grading and finalizing the picture, adding titles, and getting all of the SFX shots in place so that we can finish the film.

Anyway, if that sounds complicated first of all I’ve simplified it a bit so apologies to any techies out there — I know I didn’t describe that well enough to satisfy you.  But it’s actually a bit easier and more streamlined than the traditional film system, wherein as soon as the edit was “locked” you would then have editors go and physically start cutting and assembling negative.  Plus you would have to do “opticals” for things like dissolves and fadeouts and so on.  Then build an “Answer Print”.  Not so anymore.

BENEATHTHEBLUE.NET is up (with trailer)!

As we make the switchover in title from Way of the Dolphin to Beneath the Blue, there’s a good bit of plumbing that needs to be put in place. For starters, a clean, elegant, not too cluttered website is now up at beneaththeblue.net.

It will grow in coming weeks into something VERY nice.  As it is now, it’s got the poster, trailer, stills, and a cast page.  Like I said, it will grow.

Here’s the link to the BENEATHTHEBLUETRAILER

Welcome: BENEATH THE BLUE

As I think many of you know, it’s not uncommon for the original working title of a movie to be changed as it gets closer to time for it to come out on the market. There can be many reasons for this. In our case, we originally selected “Way of the Dolphin” in part because our gut instinct was that “dolphin” was a net positive to have in the title for many reasons — worldwide fascination with dolphins, linkage to Eye of the Dolphin,and so on. However even before we tentatively selected Way of the Dolphin as our working title, we were also aware that there might be advantages to using another title, one that did not have the word “Dolphin” in the title. This was based on feedback we were getting that Quantum Releasing was getting from a number of international buyers (not all, by any means, but more than a few), as well as from some US film bookers and theater reps. There was a general sense that having the word “dolphin” in the title might be limiting the audience rather than expanding it.

So, quietly, over the last several months Quantum’s marketing team under Jessica Kelley have been conducting quite a bit of title research including focus group sessions and communication with distributors, buyers, and theater owners. This has yielded some very interesting information and has led us to make the decision to make a change.

Following is an email that came to me from our head of marketing, Jessica Kelley, summarizing the process and making a recommendation:

After conducting focus groups and speaking with international distributorsover the course of the past month, I am now ready to make the firm recommendation that we change the title fromWay of the Dolphin to Beneath the Blue. Through a variety of means we have established ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ that  Beneath the Blue offers more adventure and resonates very strongly in a positive way with our key demographic. Below, I summarize the data that supports this conclusion.

First, after narrowing down alternative title choices, we conducted focus groups of the demographic (females 11-17) as well as people who fell outside of the demographic. A total of 132 participants were informed about the movie and read a synopsis, leaving the film nameless. They were then asked to rank 9 titles (one being Way of the Dolphin). Of the 92 participants that fell into the key demographic, the top three choices were Beneath the Blue, Surfacing, and Smith Point. Of the remaining people ranging from age 18-55, BENEATH THE BLUE made far and away the biggest splash – 34% of the group thought that this was the most exciting title. In addition, they claimed that they were more likely to go see a film with this title than the others presented.

Digging deeper, one of the reasons why BENEATH THE BLUE is so well liked is that it not only lends itself to being an adventure, but also the title builds an association with two blockbuster hits which also targeted much the same demographic – Into the Blue and Blue Crush. Both of these films did extremely well pulling in over $400M worldwide from theatrical and DVD sales.  Creating this association within the same demographic can only boost our film’s sales.

Third, from the conversations with various international buyers, many are looking for a family adventure. Presenting them BENEATH THE BLUE has lead to much intrigue.

In conclusion, the title BENEATH THE BLUE is not only well perceived by our demographic, but also the general population and prospective distributors. In addition, the title creates a great association with two films that did quite well. Therefore, I strongly suggest that we change the name of the film to BENEATH THE BLUE.

So, there you have it. We’ve held off pulling the trigger on this until now so that we could continue testing and making sure that all the data adds up to support the decision to make the change. And the data does just that. In one carefully considered stroke the film’s appeal to the target demographic has been strengthened and its stance in the marketplace has been widened.

Welcome — BENEATH THE BLUE

Some More Stills

Here are some more stills — I know they’re a little wider than the column so they spill onto the right side of the site but I don’t have time to resize them now. Will fix that later.