Presenting: ARCHON DEFENDER!

From the d00d who brought you Rocketmen vs RObots comes an awesome looking new ORIGINAL animated feature film called "Archon Defender"!

Visit the site here

This post is all about the new animated feature film by Dave4096 aka nodelete... This is an animated feature film made by one crazy d00d... see the trailer here

Dave told me he's since replaced the synthesized voices with human ones and I am anxiously awaiting his new trailer ^ ^ Follow along at his blog here where he gives tons of behind the scenes info and even makes tutorials and other useful thangs to us types ^ ^

PleaS go check it out!

Now Dave asked me about how I released WATS DVD and all that stuff and I was going to answer him in a youtube video but it would have been too long and its easier to write it all here wif links and all that... So here's my experience releasing WATS for DAve and anyone else interested but be sure to check out the Archon Defender stuff and let him know what you think! ^ ^

So what I did was contact Filmbaby I started talking to the main d00d Jamie who you can see here at SXSW giving away cookies ^ ^ He's a real straight forward c00L guy. So I could have done the cheapo DVD cases but Jamie and I agreed that it was worth it to do the more expensive digipak's... as they would be more attractive to retailers etc... So filmbaby has a partnership with cravedog they is a dvd replicator... So Jamie and I decided that making 5000 DVD's would be the best way to go... Cravedog would charge me I believe it was around $9,000 or $12,000 I cant remember 0_o for 5000 digipaks... So I borrowed the money 0_o and I did all the design getting the specs from Cravedog and all that..and oh yeh I check with other replicators about pricing and I was getting a good deal at cravedog....

It was a pretty scary time... because I wasn't making any money and I had to put out more money BUT they went ahead and made them and I made a youtube video announcing they were on sale AND with the first check from filmbaby based on online sales ONLY I was able to cover the cost of the replication and made like $4,000... since we had a shiny digipak and animated feature films were kinda rare... Jamie took the DVD's to retail trade shows and was able to make some deals with retailers to sell WATS DVD's... now this is the great part... once I had finished the DVD design and sent them the master disc and art my job was done... Filmbaby took over and did all the sales stuff and I just got checks... I still get checks from them today... not as much as at first but they are still coming in... So I believe the first retail order was for 1000 or 2000 discs can't remember but retail is kinda lame cause they have all these fee's....distribution fee's, they withhold like %15 in case of returns and give you that 6 months later and all this stuff... now this wasn't filmbabys doing its just the policies retail stores have.... I don't know how many discs we have left 0_0 because as enough money came in to fund the new film thats what I have been doing...but I'll be meeting with Jamie in a few weeks and if you have any questions you want me to ask him let me know....

So then maybe 3 or 4 months after the DVD was released I put WATS in its entirety onto youtube... Now I didn't wait for a reason it took that long to get things sorted with youtube to get me in the partner program and extend my time limit and for me to encode the videos properly etc and I was traveling a lot at the time... As a partner I monetized the WATS videos and I think I've made like $2,000 from them at this time... but the pennies keep coming in forever ^ ^

NOW I'm sure I could have sold a lot more IF I made it my #1 priority to be a salesman and like get a booth at comic-con and stuff like that BUT I am an uberector not a distributor nah mean? My goal was to fund HSM and I did that and away I went...

One thing I never did exploit was online downloads of the film... Itunes NEVER did open they doors to TRUE nobodies like me for FEATURE films probably because they are rolling in bed with Hollywood and Hollywood hates competition and doesn't want to share space with people they are not in bed with... Ever wonder how much it costs to get an in store display for your DVD? Well it was so expensive I couldn't do it so my DVD must hide in the back IF its even in the store...most of the time it has to be special ordered... but yeh anyway retail sUX and Itunes won't let us in for digital downloads... Now there are a bunch of places where you can sell downloads of your film BUT no one is really there checking shit out... SO I think thats where the whole twitter thang comes in... Sell your digital download on your own site or some random place then in a perfect scenario the link would be retweeted round the world and you would like sell..hella! ^ ^

NOW this is why I love youtube... there are doing deals with the studios BUT they make room for little guys like me... I posted on her before about Youtube's paid download ability... its still in beta I guess but I've had the feature for a while... I haven't tried any paid downloads yet just free ones but it has REAL potential! BUT I wasn't able to see the download buttons on my videos when I was in iceland so I suspect its a US thing only... that HAS to change for us to be successful... I think more than half of my audience is outside the US...

Nice scenario for the future... Release your film in its entirety for free viewing on youtube and offer paid downloads... let people know they now have the choice to decide what films are made... if they pay and download it they are funding the filmmakers next film... So this would force filmmakers to be in touch with they audience and really make GOOD films as we have no mega budget to get "stars" and plaster the real world and online world with ad's....

So Dave... that's my experience... I could write more but I dont want to rant forever..if you or anyone else has any questions lets start a discussion in the comments...Brought to you by professional weirdo M dot Strange.