The ParaPod AVBGH Business Update

Hello there

I’m writing this late at night (woah, big exclusive) during a break from writing another thing, as I wanted to get you up to date with the movements on the movie.

A word about the other thing I am writing though.  I usually do “something” vaguely Halloween related for Halloween on here, and this year I am writing a short story again.  I’ve been doing it on and off this week, and am trying to put the emphasis on the “short” bit.  I’m also using it as a bit of a rehearsal/practise to get my writing back up to speed so I can continue existing writing projects.  One of the worst side effects of this whole being ill period has been the damage to my concentration/brain levels, which are absolutely ragged at the moment. So a short and simple story is, in truth, all I feel I can even manage.  My timing is definitely off in creative pursuits, which I am trying not to overthink, as that’s bound to just compound it, but it’s terribly frustrating.  I do still firmly level a pointy finger at my phone too, but continue to ignore that confounded machine for most hours in the day.

Anyways, The ParaPod – A Very British Ghost Hunt…

This week the film has been back sniffing around the top of the various applicable iTunes charts again, aided by a chunky price drop.  I wanted to explain that, prompted somewhat by the producer’s paranoia that it might look like we have dropped the price in a panic.  So, to clarify, we haven’t dropped the price at all.  That’s been done by a couple of platforms (I think Apple and Amazon) as part of their Halloween promos.  Because the movie falls into “horror” and “independent” categories, it gets lumped in there with them.

We didn’t know about this ahead of time (hence no pushing it from this side), but it was obviously cleared with the distribution company.  There would have been the option to opt out, but there is a split of opinion on whether we should have.  I personally think we should not have opted out, and am more than happy for it to just get as many eyes as possible on it.  It’s never been about cashing in, as making a movie would be a stupid business plan for that.  If it had been about making as much as possible, I’d have been much better off just keeping the twenty odd grand I’ve put in myself and buying scratch cards. Or maybe doing an extra load of tweets about my Etsy store. I think it was a story worth telling though, and a relatively unique end product.  But we know all this already, I just think the behind the scenes conversations on the nuts and bolts of releasing a film are relevant for here.

I decided to put all my faith and confidence in people who know what they are doing on the distribution front, so if they decide to take certain paths with it, then I’m gonna sign it off.  I know nothing of film distribution (well…I didn’t…I know tons more than I did a year ago), and the whole thing is immensely overwhelming.  You know when you actually sit and look at how many films there are?  At the vastness of what you are competing with, in both numbers and standard, the whole thing brings back that “impossible” feeling again.  So really, I’ve no choice but to put faith in folk who do that for a job.  I am unashamedly out of my depth, but continue to find the whole industry and procedures completely fascinating.

It’s a strange thing to see something you have made be sandwiched between “famous” releases and stuff that has had millions spent on it.  Even by independent standards, The ParaPod AVBGH has a miniscule budget.  I would not be at all surprised if, at the end of the school year, it is the smallest budget of any feature film that chart-topped this year.  And potentially by some margin as well.  So, if it being a couple of quid cheaper for a promotional period keeps it snuggled with the big guns (many of which are also a couple of quid cheaper), then it’s a bit of a no brainer for me.

I do understand the concern in some quarters that it looks like a panic drop, but  I think that would be a more valid concern if it actually had been a panic drop.  At the end of the day, that’s a concern about gossip innit?  About what other people are saying about it.  By necessity, other than having to pull quotes from reviews for promo, that’s something that I’m mostly disengaged from.  Who really cares what other people are gossiping?  In all honesty, when I hear “Your film is this” or “Your film is that” in a critiquing way, the only bit I actually take any notice of is “Your film”.  Which is the bit that just makes me proud.

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learnt in the release period of this film (and it’s not a thing I’ve learnt that I should do different as it’s been an observation) is how easy it is for folk to reframe/rewrite narratives.  There are many things that are completely out of your hands, but cause dreadful frustration.  Usually in press references, like the oft-reported claim that the movie was entirely crowd-funded.  Which it really wasn’t.  In this post alone I’ve mentioned 20K that wasn’t crowdfunded, and Bil put in more than that too.  I got pretty annoyed the other week when an article speculated that I had edited the film to present myself (and my arguments) better, and stated - as a fact -  that there are more sceptics in the film than there are believers.  The fact that these claims are completely without foundation, and one of them is demonstrably false by simple counting, doesn’t really matter.  That’s in print, and able to be referenced by anyone wishing to further make those claims. I don’t get a right of reply to those things (In fact, that particular piece rather gleefully reported that I didn’t get a right of reply, which I will choose to take as a jovial slant, rather than allowing my cynicism to be a gateway for my actual suspicions on it).

Vaguely spoiler paragraph but genuinely not daft spoiler - jump to next bold sentence if you want to avoid but I promise it's just about participants rather than proper specifics:

Thing is though, for all the grief and stress stuff like that causes me, I do generally try to take the stance of dismissal.  If somebody watches that film and their takeaway is that it is edited with bias, or weighted with sceptical participants, then their judgement isn’t to be trusted anyway.  For the record, in the six talking head moments (all of which are very brief), there are four folk who would be considered sceptics and two who believe in ghosts.  Only one of the sceptics explicitly voices scepticism, the rest are pragmatic.  Both believers explicitly state their beliefs. In the “Action” of the film itself, notwithstanding the passive audience at the sceptics convention, who we could reasonably assume are all sceptics but not state as definitively so, there are eleven featured participants, one of which is a sceptic.  One. No prizes for guessing who that is.  Hello. So, on aggregate we have 17 active participants (although 2 of these appeared to be mute), and 5 of these were sceptics.  This isn’t the first time I’ve counted them.  I did actually think about these things…

(Incidentally, if you are now thinking “well that’s not balanced either”, I can assure you that the balance also takes into account ‘standards of effectiveness’...)

Ok you’re all good again…

Basically, the lessons learnt are that some - potentially influential - things will be completely out of your hands.  But hey, grant me the serenity and all that…

In further distribution news, as the North American release creeps up, we have been enquiring about a rest of the world release, and I thought it might be worth mentioning that, as I know there’ll be frustration.  This aspect of the release, does actually come down to money.

The quickest explanation is, we are now negotiating a potential deal for whole world distribution.  So pretty much every territory.  This however would have to be done as a bulk deal with a Minimum Guarantee (hereafter known as an MG, because that is what the cool movie folk call them, and I’ll teach it to you too so we can all pretend we are big shot movie movers and shakers).

With the existing distribution, the box office is split between distribution and production, and then only when production has recouped its debt, does the money start getting distributed as residuals.  For most independent movies, residuals are irrelevant as it never gets to that stage. That could well be the case with The ParaPod and there'd be no shame in that. Neither myself or Bil presumed we would get our money back (although he has always been more confident than me). 

In those two major markets it has existing distribution, this process obviously goes through a lot of departments and pairs of hands, so if whole world was on the same system, there would be loads more companies, loads more beneficiaries, and loads more pairs of hands. Additionally, both of the present distribution deals cost us thousands up front in things like sending the movie, legal rep, bespoke art, all that sort of thing.

It’s not an option to do this several more times for further territories. Despite the obvious not wanting to pour more cash into it, there is another huge cost in that it would need to be native-subtitled for each territory.  

I’ve had a handful of frustrated messages about the movie not being subtitled in the English-speaking version, and so looked into this.  I was actually rather appalled by the costs involved.  For the record, I obviously believe that every release of every movie should be subtitled as standard.  Also for the record, having seen the astronomical costs involved in doing this, I completely understand why independent productions simply cannot afford to do it.  And this is in my situation where there is already a dialogue list written up (which also cost a fortune and which I was under the impression was so it would have subtitles – it wasn’t for that apparently, it was yet another legality).

If we are able to secure a worldwide distribution deal, this will all be done by whatever company secures the rights.  They would essentially buy the film from us, with an – altogether now – MG, and then be free to go exploit it in all the territories they cover.  Short of a complete buy out (which is an option), there would still be residuals back to production but they would be miniscule.  Myself and the producer both think that if this deal comes up we should take it, as it could potentially clear the budget in one go.

So that’s basically what we are waiting for.  The performance of the film in the UK has put us in a relatively decent negotiating position, and we shall see how the US release either bolsters of weakens this.  Nobody is expecting any great shakes from the initial US release, but I personally remain confident that the movie will continue to find its own way.

Blimey…that was a bit of a heavy drop huh?  I had honestly thought it would take me twenty minutes to write something getting you up to date.  This post was meant to be a break from my other writing…

I wonder how many people just tapped out of it?  I very much envy them today...

Can't say you don't get extreme variation on here though.  I will remind you that yesterday's post was a cartoon robot having a meltdown.

Hope your week is going brilliantly for you over there.

Sending much love

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