The Pudency of the Pariah

I am attempting something. I’ve taken quite a bit of time off from promoting myself, the Sonnyboo.com site, and the free things I have for filmmakers. As we gear up for fundraising for ACCIDENTAL ART as a feature, it seems like a good time to spread some love, put out the good karma and hope it comes back.

I doubled the number of songs from 20 to 40. I think 8-9 years ago when I first put some songs out there, I held back a few things for sentimental reasons. Even though several of the songs out there were personal favorites, most of the songs were throwaways. I have become so disinterested in anything I did in music that nothing is sacred or worth keeping to myself, so I uploaded 20 more songs that either had quality (a relative term when referring to anything I did in music), or just might be in a genre of music useful to people no matter how much the sound or composition sucked.

I’ve added some new images, now adding HD sized (1920x1080) FBI warnings, film festival laurel leaves, etc. For video, I only had a countdown leader, because AVID users didn’t get one with their software and everyone else did. It’s still standard definition. Now I’ve thrown together 4-5 new HD videos of things too.

I think helping people is essential. I have to do it in the broad strokes because my time is not my own anymore. It’s important to pay back to the world for what help and good has come to you. I want to help others and I will need help in the future. Helping others first, and knowing full well that it’s a 1,000 to 1 help back ratio (if I’m lucky). The most I’m doing is putting the links for donations for INDIE GOGO and KICKSTARTER. Anyone can download for free and some want to give something back.

I’ve barely started letting anyone know about the site re-vamp and we’ve already gotten in $50 in donations. It’s a “soft opening” and pseudo beta testing. I’m finding more new things to add, re-arrange, tinker, and poke at the site. I’ve done some new designs and looks, and even this blog might get a little new look soon.

I felt like making a silly action movie style promo and here it is.

Aural Fixation

I tried to take this week off of my new project in a way. I’m a little burned out, at least creatively, so I wanted to take a break before delving into the sound mix, plus I needed a score and finding the right composer was eluding me.

Part of the problem for me is that this is the first project I have ever made that I did not already know what kind of music I wanted. I was completely and totally without a clue as to what I wanted for music.

I am a former musician. From the time I was 5 years old and began tinkering with the piano, and later saxophone, guitars, keyboards, drums, and virtually ever instrument on the planet (sans the harmonica that ultimately defeated me as the one instrument I could not even begin to get a real note out of), I only wanted to write film scores. The first 45RPM I owned was STAR WARS MAIN TITLE and a B-Side of CANTINA BAND. Until my late 20’s, this was the singular goal of my entire life to write music for movies. I gave it up when I started writing and directing and I do NOT miss it, not even a little.



Every movie I’ve ever made, I had some idea or notion as to what I wanted musically. Even if I gave up my preference for that of the composers, I at least had a starting point that could always fall back on. Now, this movie stumped me. The tone of the film is odd enough, but I was without even a single direction to go with. I tried several temp tracks, and nothing worked. I even screened the current cut at Indie Club Columbus this past Monday with temp music. That made it evident that I needed just the right music more than anything.

Since last week I started talking to Bill Wandel (www.billwandel.com) the composer who did the action music for HORRORS OF WAR. He’s a pro and does this as his sole income, so I generally don’t pester him for my low to no pay shorts, but this is the introduction to a new feature film. I need to pull out the stops and make this as good as I can. The music needs to match Greg Sabo’s cinematography and all the actors’ performances, all of which are top notch.



Bill got the chance to see the cut, placed ever so secretly online sans any temp music; don’t want to influence any compositions with outside music, plus I wasn’t 100% sold on the temp music (hence the term “temp”). That’s not to say the quality of the temp music isn’t good, but it wasn’t written to match the mood of MY movie.

I wrote out my spotting session in an email. That means I wrote down the time codes of where I felt the music should start and stop, and also places where I thought if Bill wanted to try something musically, to go ahead and try it. He said he only had 2 days to get this done, but he’d try.

Yesterday morning I got the email with a link to music files and that was a mere 16 hours later. What I wasn’t prepared for was the perfect score. The style was modern and familiar, and yet I never would have thought of it. The moods and melodies are perfect. Basically, he says with the music what I wanted to convey to the audience about how to feel about the movie I have. Because of how complex and strange my story is, Bill Wandel’s score set the tone right from the start and it will be hard for the audience NOT to be in the right frame of mind that I intended.

My aforementioned aspirations to be a composer aside; sometimes music still knocks me on my ass. If ever I needed proof that I never need pick up an instrument ever again, Bill Wandel’s music is my proof. We share a love of several film score cats, and his talents equal any one of them.



Sound is 50% of the experience of any movie. Music is 25-49% of that (variables on the scene, dialogue, and other sounds of any given moment of a movie). This is how important music is to a movie. This music has me so freakin’ jazzed; there will be no time off. I foresee some late nights and weekend hours working on audio mix and finishing this sucker off ASAP. Also, I have found many film festival submission deadlines that I intend to make this month.

It’s amazing to me how much this reinvigorates. The music has generated a lot of creative juices and now I have to change my underwear.

Too bad I also booked a shoot Friday for two new podcasts, one a general helpful film tip version, and another set of short film specific video podcasts featuring my shorts past and present. I have cast My Sexy Girlfriend Veronica ™ because let’s face it; people would rather look at her than me. I have to put my ego in check and think of the greater good.

Has anyone else noticed that I’m getting really good at using the semicolon in my blog?

- Peter John Ross

The Sundance dream has died....

In the not too distant past, the dream of every filmmaker was to get into the Sundance Film Festival, and with that golden ticket came the studio deal for the feature, an eventual limited theatrical run, and then a real career was made.

THIS article in VARIETY (click here) has a perspective that I've had for the last 2-3 years. "Indie Film" as most of us knew it has died and with it went he delusional Sundance Film Festival dream. The times of KEVIN SMITH's, QUENTIN TARANTINO's, RICHARD LINKLATER's, ROBERT RODRIGEUZ's, and the like does not exist in today's film markets. Studios and even the remnants of the indie divisions or independent studios are NOT looking for unknown talent. At least they are not paying any decent sum to find out if there are diamonds in the rough.

I liked the article for explaining the WHY for this scenario changing. The now-dead dream of getting your movie into Sundance and getting a distribution deal has died a horrible death. Statistically speaking, the movies that have sold in the last year or two have LOST money at the box office, so everyone who used to buy movies (Miramax, Weinstein Company, Fox Searchlight, Paramount Vantage) either do not exist now or they are gun shy for losing money on their gambles the past few years.

HAMLET 2 - sold for $10 million, made $4.9 million
CHOKE - sold for $5 million, made $2.9 million
AMERICAN TEEN - sold for $2 million, made $942,000

So now that movie studios are run by bankers, and realistically, the movie business IS a "business", and these are not bankable any more. The speculative reasons are that the audience isn't that interested anymore or that there is too much glutton of movies with NAME stars of some kind available on TV, DVD, on demand, online, etc. 

The last few "indie" success stories from Sundance are for movies like LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, that had a budget of $3 million and starred Oscar nominees/winners and Emmy nominees/winners.

The future is unwritten and at some point a complete unknown will take the world by storm and then the "indie films" movement will have wheels again, but who knows when or how that will happen? I can't wait for something outside any kind of studio system will connect with audiences and redefine the industry.... again.

Sundance expectations tempered

Sellers and buyers both have modest hopes

By ANNE THOMPSON

There's a new reality at Sundance: dramatically tempered expectations.

Amid a tough economy, a veritable decimation of specialty-film divisions and a run of less-than-stellar returns for last year’s crop of Sundance faves, sellers are coming in with much more modest hopes than in other recent editions. And buyers aren’t looking to disabuse them of that outlook.

"We’ve all been to ‘Happy, Texas,’ " says Focus Features CEO James Schamus of the much-hyped 1999 entry that sold for some $10 million and grossed under $2 million upon its release.

Last year’s most-ballyhooed Sundance sales found no glory at the domestic box office: Focus Features’ $10 million worldwide acquisition "Hamlet 2," Searchlights $5 million "Choke," Overture’s $3.5 million "Henry Poole Is Here," Paramount Vantage’s $1 million-$2 million "American Teen," and two Sony Pictures Classics pickups, ‘The Wackness" and ‘Baghead" (which were bought for under $1 million). Overture will finally open its $2 million ’08 pickup "Sunshine Cleaning" on March 13.

The success stories of last year’s Park City confab turned out to be docus "Man on Wire" and "Trouble the Water" (both made the early cut for Oscar’s doc competition). Micro-budget neo-realist dramas "Frozen River," starring Melissa Leo, and Lance Hammer’s "Ballast" also fared well with critics, although theatrical revenue was modest. Rookie director Hammer released "Ballast" himself, setting a new model for others unable to make the right deal.

Now, with the economy in freefall, it’s tough for filmmakers to hold onto the usual fantasies of getting scooped up by a deep-pocketed specialty distrib like Focus. While a plethora of films were made at the end of the financing bubble, only four studio distribs are still standing, plus five or so mid-size indies.

Groundswell’s Michael London has experienced the swings of the erratic indie market over the past year. Overture’s "The Visitor" was a hit, but Miramax made no money on Sundance pre-buy "Smart People."

Last year London left Sundance without having sold "Mysteries of Pittsburgh," starring Peter Saarsgard.

It took another year to make a deal with small distrib Peach Arch for a limited theatrical release.

"We made it on an outmoded business model," says London. "It’s impossible to spend money on a quality drama -- without big foreign pre-sales -- in order to sell for a profit or cover your investment at a film festival. The market is too flooded with good movies, and distributors don’t want in unless you have big stars or a marketing hook."

"Mysteries of Pittsburgh" wasn’t the only film to leave Sundance empty-handed last year. Other notables to pack up without a distrib deal in place included "What Just Happened?" and "The Great Buck Howard."

And there will be plenty more without a deal this time around. Putting distribution together can take months.

Last year, producer Lynette Howell ("Half Nelson") went into Sundance 2008 with high hopes for "Phoebe in Wonderland," which stars Elle Fanning as an imaginative girl who adores "Alice in Wonderland."

"People were still expecting the trends of the last few years of big sales," she says. "It was frightening when over the first few days nothing sold. It took a slow burn. If you need to get a $5 million sale you have to be ‘Little Miss Sunshine.’ "

When "Phoebe" didn’t land a one-stop buyer, Howell’s husband, Endeavor agent Graham Taylor, who was repping the movie, got creative. He raised $3 million by selling exclusive TV rights to Lifetime Network, non-exclusive DVD and streaming rights to Netflix’s Red Envelope, and a reduced minimum guarantee from theatrical and DVD distrib ThinkFilm.

"Our investors were able to recoup," says Howell, "and we reached a broader audience than we expected going in.’

But even last year’s flex approach is less possible this year. Since then, Lifetime has shuttered its film label, Netflix has closed Red Envelope and ThinkFilm is a trying to restore confidence under ex-New Line exec David Tuckerman, who plans to release "Wonderland" on March 6.

Fingers crossed, Howell says.

This month, Howell faces a similar challenge with competition entry "The Greatest," written by rookie helmer Shana Feste. Her screenplay about a family dealing with the loss of their son and the unexpected visit of his girlfriend arrived out of nowhere, says Howell, who lured to the film Pierce Brosnan and Susan Sarandon and vet lenser John Bailey. Howell and Endeavor easily raised $6 million from Bavarian Film Group and debt lender Oceana.

Howell did not finance against foreign pre-sell estimates, although Sidney Kimmel Intl. did sell a few foreign territories at Cannes.

"We are holding out on most of them," she says. "You get bigger numbers if you have a distributor."

But even if the movie plays like gangbusters, that does not mean Endeavor will land a distrib.

This year, people are fiscally conscious about the few movies that work, Howell says. "I’m taking it to the fest and hope it finds support and a home."

Another wrinkle in this year’s acquisitions mix: At least one major studio may not allow its specialty arm to acquire films shot under a SAG waiver while the Guild lacked a contract for seven months.

Usually, a new contract will supersede the waiver, but there’s no contract in sight, and some studios are in no mood to be helpful to SAG (though others are not concerned about this issue.) If a major’s specialty wing refuses to buy SAG waiver films, that could take the biggest potential deals off the table and cede the field to the likes of Summit and Overture, which are hungry to buy.

"I Love You Philip Morris" was completed under the old SAG agreement, but hot sale title "Brooklyn’s Finest" was not.

Having survived last year, Howell must weigh paying back her "Greatest" financier against wanting the film to play theatrically: It isn’t always the best exposure for the film. Most smaller distribs offer limited New York and L.A. releases geared toward a DVD release. And sometimes a direct TV sale is the best deal. "If it doesn’t sell at Sundance," adds Howell, "it’s not the end of the world."

London is relieved to be taking a year off from the fest.

"Sundance is a unique and wonderful way to get immersed in the real dreams coming true of indie filmmakers," he says. "But that little piece of social and creative connection, and discovering movies and filmmakers, has been overwhelmed for me by this shopping mall for movies. Maybe when I return people will go up not to buy or sell, but to watch."

And for filmmakers and would-be sellers keen to keep the old Sundance dreams alive, there’s always the remote prospect that a buyer will take to a passion project, and damn the tough times.

"I’ve lost money on movies I’ve loved and acquired and made money on movies I’ve loved and acquired," says Focus’ Schamus. "I’ll overpay this year if I feel like it."