The “Get Rich”s can do whatever they like, however, polluting the planet is not the only issue the world faces nor is it the only issue the “Get Free”s are trying to address by building a container home. I must also add there are some businesses who are providing modular buildings/homes made from shipping containers and have been doing so for a number of years who I feel are not “Get Rich”s because they charge a reasonable amount for the end result. So my issue isn’t the commercialization of container buildings/homes, it’s selling something for $500 that cost you $5.

So what brought this on? The same thing that always makes me alert when I’m trying to do something “unconventional’; running into naysayers or people doing the same thing but trying to maintain the status quo. I have not run into any naysayers of yet but recently encountered an individual who is a part of a group of individuals who are very much trying to capitalize off of container home building. However, I won’t entertain the situation too long. I’d rather use this post to encourage the “Get Free”s to continue on their path and do what’s necessary to “Get Free”.

My interaction with a “Get Rich” gave me incentive to search the web for container home projects made for what I would consider a reasonable cost. This was hard to do because there are few with a website that actually exist (sure there are tons of container home sites, but you will notice 99% of them are all computer renderings of what could be while the rest do not list building costs). So I will do the best I can to list all costs for my container home. I’ll declare $20k to be my budget for this project.

I felt this needed to be addressed because I’ve seen this before in two of the creative areas in which I operate. The first being the music industry. A music contract is nothing more than a high interest loan to fund a musician’s career and I’ve also witnessed many an individual go bankrupt buying studio equipment they thought they needed to be “real”. All that is really needed in a studio is a room with great acoustics, a great microphone and a reliable medium upon which to record. The only reason I didn’t fall into that same trap when I created my own home studio is because I am a performing musician and I knew creating a great sound had nothing to do with any type of studio equipment. Next there was and still is the filmmaking community’s obsessive need to spend obscene amounts of money on films. The emergence of high quality prosumer camera’s should have made filmmaking seriously cheap for independent filmmakers and it did, if you chose to see it for what it is. But the majority still insists on spending large amounts of money on films in order to be “real”. It’s as ridiculous as someone saying, “hey, this diamond is yours for $2″ and someone saying “no way, I’ll buy it for $2000″.

An even better example is when I went to Ghana in 2002. Trading to obtain goods and services is a big part of the culture and economic atmosphere there. While there, I pretty much traded my whole wardrobe for a new one. The outfits there were so beautiful, I was buying them for myself and people I know back in the states. The African outfits were costing me anywhere from $10-20 for dresses, skirt and pants sets. My roommate even had a designer come in, fit her and make her an outfit and that still only cost about $40. When walking in the cities you can see scores of women working on those old cast iron black and gold Singer sewing machines and they were making the most amazing clothes.

I get back to the States and what I or my family and friends can’t fit, I decided to sell for about $5-10 more than what I paid for the outfits. After some time I was wondering why on earth they weren’t selling. These clothes were amazing! A couple I’d met a while back came over and I asked them what they thought. They go to Ghana several times a year and have an automotive business there. The woman quite simply said, “You aren’t charging enough.” I was surprised. Of course I wasn’t charging a lot because I didn’t pay a lot for them. She said “I know, but if you don’t charge enough, people won’t think they are authentic.” I was in disbelief. I reluctantly raised the prices between $150-400 and people bought them! I was disturbed. The same happened with the wooden masks I brought back. It is just a wild bit of conditioning. And it’s also this conditioning that makes it too easy to find yourself drowning in debt and/or being taken to the cleaners financially.

Being an IT professional, I can say that I’ve made what I consider a lot of money over the years, however it has not lead me to the life I desire. In taking a moment to look at where all that money has gone, it has gone mostly to “acceptable costs and debt”. That is unacceptable to me. These acceptable costs and debts include, unreasonable apartment rental rates (and now having been a landlord myself, those rates seem even more unreasonable), mortgage payments on an unreasonable loan amount, car payments (I’ve only had one car loan in my life because I’ve always driven older cars I could buy right out and the interest rate on the loan I had with Toyota was 17%!), bank fees, utility bills (I’ve had heating bills in the winter be $500+ before), and expensive supermarket food. These are things most of us can’t do without. I just feel at this point, we can make better choices over what we pay for, even for the necessities.

This realization is important to anyone who is trying to not only live without causing distress to their environment but who are also trying to improve their own personal existence by eliminating debt, having more access to the money they are working for and needing to work less and spend more time on the people and activities they love. Period.

It’s not that I didn’t know that before but every time I’d thought of traveling to make a film it’s always been this big ordeal; months of planning, etc. This was different. I asked myself, “Why not?”. I mean I had four days off, Massachusetts wasn’t that far away, I could come back home the same day and not have to pay for a hotel if I wanted, etc. So I packed up my grab-n-go filmmaking bag (just the basics) and I got up at 6am and made the 4 hour drive to Plymouth.

I love to drive long distances. It gives me nothing but “me” time to think about life and what I’m doing. So this drive game me time to think about what I need to do with my film and how much filmmaking I need to do (i.e. find a balance between filmmaking, music, writing and my personal life). Making the trip also helped me take part in something where all the variables were not known. I’d never been to Plymouth and I didn’t really know what to expect from the gathering. It turned out to be a very energy-less event, however I’m glad to have done it. I did do some filming but I didn’t stay for the entire event. There were a lot of other filmmakers there and a few folks from the press. There was also this sort of weird vibe where on one end you had this national day of mourning event and just a little ways down, out door church with a preacher talking about heathens, savages, and there being only one valid god. I got a little of both on camera. I may do something with it, I may not.

Yesterday, I filmed a friends band perform live, however the footage will be used in a new short film I’m working on for dvxuser.com’s BetrayalFest. It was also very freeing to just grab my tripod and camera and go film my friend’s band at a tattoo convention. I was also lucky in that there was no on near the stage when they were performing so I was able to put my camera anywhere I wanted. You usually don’t have those kind of circumstances at a concert!

I also haven’t announced I’m moving back to Florida within the next 6 months. I feel it’s the only way I can do more films and music. I have such a tough time finding talent where I live now, I’d all but given up on trying to do films here. I look forward to getting out of here and making more films.

Cheers!

The biggest issue I’m having right now is how long it’s taking me to edit projects. Editing all of them simply takes too long. I definitely need to obtain an editor for all of my wedding films. I find myself editing them as if they were a feature film! I have to keep telling myself that its “good enough” for what it’s for. I’m not saying I plan to slack on wedding projects, just that they don’t need composting, camera movement, and special effects like a creative film project would. It took me 6 months to edit my first wedding!

I’m finding that I want to enter into the short film festivals over at dvxuser.com. They are a great way to get used to making films, editing quickly, and having your work viewed. I’d neglected the short film route for some time because I wasn’t very interested in doing fictional films. However, they have been a great way for me to build my editing skills.

The biggest issue I was recently faced with was how slowly I’ve been working on one of my big projects “Our Side of Joy”. I decided this past weekend I’m going to present the film in the format for which it was intended instead of trying to create a shorter version for film festivals. I’d mentioned in previous posts that this film was several films but I filmed it for academic audiences (volumes for higher education courses). If it were intended for general audiences I wouldn’t have picked such a broad topic. I was just about to play myself on this one.

I’ve had this film down to an hour and fifteen minutes for months now and I just couldn’t go back to it. I’m very unhappy with this length. It feels like a long “preview” for what I intended to shoot. I felt as if I should make this film for general audiences and do the whole film festival thing. In doing a little soul searching… I’m just not a 90 minutes or less kinda filmmaker.

I have no problem taking a lot of info and making it into shorter volumes that represent an entire body of knowledge. But I can not just cut and cut and cut until my message is a mess at my feet and I’m putting out into the world some other animal.

I have always made an effort to travel light however, my trip to Germany and Ireland in 2007 was the first time I officially traveled as a filmmaker. I took with me my Panasonic DVX100B, full sized tripod, mini tripod, one full sized high wattage light, 15″ laptop, and a whole host of other gear I never used. It was the first time I’d carried a large suitcase as well. The suitcase needed to be large enough for my full sized tripod to fit collapsed. That’s still a pretty big bag. I didn’t like it at all.

So now I’m planning what looks like a trip to Singapore and Thailand and I have to travel light. Here are some of the issues I faced on my last international trip.

1. I worried about overweight baggage fees every time I had to catch a flight. At my home airport, I had to run to a gift shop, buy another bag, and transfer some items from the large bag to the new smaller bag to avoid paying $80 in overweight baggage fees. Later, I ended up having to pay $250 Euros on my trip from Ireland to Frankfurt because of my overweight bag. That was almost $200 Euros more than the actual cost of the plane ticket! **The airline was Lufthansa which does well on long flights (I flew from the US to Frankfurt with the same bags with no charges) but does not do well on short flights (I guess you have to travel damn near naked on short flights).

2. I had to lug around a heavy bag and my backpack. I did plan ahead with this as best as possible but the reality is, my bags were heavy. The smaller bag I had to buy at the airport fit on top of the larger bag and the large bag had wheels so I could just pull them around but again, the bags were heavy and I felt like I was running a marathon anytime I had to move them. I also stayed in a 3 story hotel in Germany with no elevators (yep I was on the top floor), and a 3 story B&B in Dublin with no elevators of course (and on the top floor again). So it was quite unpleasant trying to get my bags up and down the stairs. My backpack was also heavy because in it were my Panasonic DVX100B, 15″ laptop, batteries, tapes, microphones, etc.

3. I drew too much attention for my taste by using my fancy camera and carrying around my tripod. This by far became the biggest issue for me, although I had no idea I would be bothered by this prior to this trip. This is more of a personal preference if you will. I know many filmmakers who have no issues with drawing attention while they film, it comes with the job. However, I do not like this at all. For me there are some safety concerns as well as creative concerns. Some things to consider… I was grilled at the airport in Frankfurt about whether or not I’d filmed anything when I went to the Reeperbahn. My camera is always thoroughly checked at the security check points. This means pulling out all your gear for everyone at the check point to see (Not very safe; especially when they do it while you have to take your shoes off and on and you can’t glue your eyes to your stuff).

A funny thing… I was carrying around my tripod in it’s bag while in Dublin and I was riding the buses a lot. I got on this one bus and the driver asked me “Is that a gun?”. I had to laugh, it did look like a rifle bag. But what was really interesting is that the driver was serious but he didn’t seem at all concerned if it were a gun. Funny those Irish folks are. :)

So, now I’m committed to creating quality films with Still Guerrilla Films and High Contrast Media just as I have with Ijaba Films.

Still from Sociopathica:

1. Purposeful Content
The first thing for filmmakers to consider is the purpose of their content. If your content has no social purpose, then why are you making it? Responsible filmmaking is entirely in your hands. Don’t get me wrong, this social purpose can be purely entertainment, have deep meaning, or both. I’m just saying filmmakers need to make sure the films you make are not hurting society, but enhancing, educating, and/or entertaining it.

Examples of responsible filmmaking:
The Color Purple, Nuts, Bin Jip, A Tale of Two Sisters, The Signal, American History X,The Accused

Examples of irresponsible filmmaking:
300, Birth, Training Day, Halloween (2007), Bastard Out of Carolina, The Professional, Tropic Thunder

2. The Money Crisis
This is by far the fall of the art of filmmaking. When filmmaking went from being a grassroots art to big business … I take that back, when filmmaking became about big budgets and box office sales is when we began to see the incredible decline in filmmakers’ abilities to tell good stories on film. It’s funny, when filmmakers first started using more CGI in films, they always claimed it significantly brought down the cost of making films. That wasn’t all it brought down. It brought down the quality as well. Also, while this may have been true initially, why is it the cost of making films have reached such astronomical numbers? Compare the cost of the movie Aliens to any major box office sci-fi movie since 1996 and you will find an astronomical increase in production costs. When we decide to perfect the art of making great films with less money, only then will filmmaking resurface as a true art.

3. Gear Rip Off Madness
Ahhhh the great gear rip-off. This is the insanity where manufacturers and sellers of film gear convince filmmakers that great films can’t be made unless they own the latest and greatest equipment that they make and/or sell. But here is where your critical thinking has to kick in. Were great films being made prior to this new and improved “must-have” gear? And even more importantly, did you enjoy these films made prior to this new and improved gear? Of Course! So it’s important to realize when you are being brainwashed for the sake of profit. Folks can argue you down about gear and format quality but none of that matters if the film itself is of poor quality or exceptional quality. I enjoy movies on film, I enjoy them on VHS, I enjoy them on DVD and I will enjoy them on whatever else they make them on. Likewise, for what they were created with.

4. Reclaiming the filmmaking community
The sooner the filmmaking community gets rid of elitism the better. Film snobs have no place in art. Nothing ruins a film community faster than the seeds of negativity and arrogance. Either you are in it to create something fantastic or you need to walk away. You won’t find a painter needing his ego stroked by his brushes will you? How many film projects have fallen apart because of egos and attitudes? How many have gone to ruin because of directors, cast and crew, who thought they were too good to listen to a good idea or creative criticism? You’ve all seen it, felt it, heard it. Solution: When you find these people, drop them. Let them go create by themselves like the little kid in school who couldn’t get along with others. Cast, crew or talent think they are too good to show up when scheduled or on time? Drop ‘em. What about the contract? Add attendance and attitude clauses. This may sound harsh but we are talking about an art that takes collaboration from entire groups of people. The last thing this art needs are internal knives when there are many external ones every step of the filmmaking process.

She’d written about this emerging business model where on and offline companies, including broadcast and cable networks are essentially paying filmmakers less than what they deserve for creating digital content. In addition to paying less, they are also offering less supportive services to these filmmakers as well such as covering licensing fees and insurance, etc. She mentioned that the end result will be that it becomes the norm that filmmakers make little if any money from creating films and digital media and even worse; we come to accept this.

One only has to take a look at the book publishing industry to see what the true end result of this can and will be if we allow it to continue. Publishers, particularly vanity publishers, have been robbing authors in this same fashion for decades. They have taken it a step further, requiring authors to actually pay them to publish their work. So filmmakers should beware and take this very seriously. The next step is being asked to pay to give some company world rights and total ownership of our footage.

Mrs. Bernard’s article made me give more thought to the entire process of not only being paid for footage but also thinking about the worth of the work I do. For instance, there are many such websites out there offering a mere $100 or less for video you create and edit. In addition to that, they own all the rights to the video footage. So if you think about it in terms of labor, they are paying you $100 or less for a completed video that will take at least a few days for you to finish. To break it down even further, you may spend on average 6 hours a day on the video getting it finished. And based on what I know about artistic filmmakers, the real number of hours one would spend on the video would be closer to 10-12 hours a day.

Let’s take a closer look at this. let’s go with the very least amount of hours you would spend on it; 6 hours. Then let’s say it takes you 2 days to complete the video. If you are being paid $100 for the finished video, you are being paid $8.33 /per hour. That kind of hourly rate may be fine if you are working at McDonald’s but that is not OK at all when you are making any type of film or video. The amount is even more ridiculous if you spend longer hours and/or more days to finish the video. Imagine having to add a voice over or motion graphics to it as well…

$100 is actually being pretty generous from the sites I’ve visited. Many only offer $50 or less per video. If you upload some clips on free sites, you still own the clip. So there is a difference. You can upload your work for free and then do whatever else you want with it; including create your own DVDs to sell. Trust me, you would make more money selling your own DVDs than you would giving your footage away for peanuts to these companies. They need to pay according to licensing. If they want world rights, they need to pay for world rights. It is unethical to pay filmmakers $50-100 for world rights for any footage. Period.

Why so many business models that resemble that of the plantation, slave master and slaves relationship? Why are executives being paid obscene amounts of money relative to those who create the content? Their business and organizational skills are irrelevant if they have nothing to organize. Like any group being taken advantage of, we have to assess our collective self esteem and our egos as well. We can’t be so hell bent on seeing our work on TV that we give away the rights to it for less than what should be paid for those rights; thus making it impossible to make a living as a filmmaker and to get it to the audience for which it was intended. This is exactly what happens to authors; hence the term “vanity press” is used to describe publishing services that mainly attract authors who are more hell bent on seeing their work in print than they are with effectively managing a writing career.

We also have to watch out for deception as well. As with Current.com, it clearly states on their website that compensation for videos selected to air on TV range from $2,500 to $60K. So why was I only offered $500 to put something together with cutdowns from my documentary for TV? I’m glad that I found Mrs. Bernard’s article because after having read it, did more research and given things more thought, I decided not to go the route of being paid for content unless what I am being paid is fair for the license use requested. Seriously, I used to be annoyed by what I thought were insane licensing fees charged by photographers for a single image. But I’m thinking filmmakers need to learn from them and begin to reassess our worth and the value of our art.

If you would like a general idea of what you should be charging for your time and work, please visit this reference article at NJ Creatives Network.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru-FTo1o8hI

www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKEuiAk_nYw

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sul0c3gzodY