By Heidi Hughes

I’m writing this article for two reasons. First I’d like to tell everyone that our Houston Monster Movie is finally available on www.bigtexmovinpictures.com. Secondly, I’m going to reveal a few truths about Independent film distribution that you won’t read in those popular How-To books.

Before I get into the grizzly distribution details, I have to say how proud and excited I am to finally offer our film, “The Color of Blood” for sale. It has everything! It’s got a great Monster, a bevy of beautiful screaming damsels in distress, wonderful cinematography and a city that is as dark and foreboding as any in Carpathia! In fact, Houston was intentionally included as a character in the movie. We wanted to take this modern glass and steal metropolis and turn it into a foggy, wicked jungle of doom. I think we really accomplished this and we want everyone to see it… so log on now and order your copy today, while supplies last!

Ok, so much for the commercial, now on to the instructional part of our program. I opened “The Big Tex Movin’ Picture Company” in 2004 to complete a process that started when my husband, Bill, and I began writing screenplays together some years before. When we started to write, the stories just seemed to pour out. Before we knew it, we had a stack of completed ninety page screenplays.

Our first screenplay won some festival awards. That was enough to get us hooked. We cleaned up the rest of our screenplays and proceeded to send them off to the movin’ picture folks in Hollywood.

After many months and several bites we figured out that shopping a screenplay around was, as much about being there to bang on doors, as it was about doing good work. The truth is, we are in Texas and we plan on staying here. Still, writing a screenplay is like an addiction. To get our next fix, we had to have these stories come to life.

That’s when I began to wonder why we couldn’t make these movies ourselves. Bill had spent a lot of years behind the scenes as an illustrator and designer for Star Wars and he knew how to put films together. But I wasn’t going to sink money into camera rentals, food for a cast and pug-dog baby-sitting fees if there wasn’t some way of making it back. So we researched Indie Film distribution options. To neophytes like us, they sounded pretty good!

Since the advent of digital film making, a lot of low budget projects have made it to the market. We rented a dozen real stinkers and realized that anything we did would be better than what was already on the shelves. We also asked distributors what they wanted and they told us they would buy blood, babes, maniacs and monsters. Eureka! We decided to make a Monster Movie. After nine months of production, “The Color of Blood” was born.

Distributors loved “The Color of Blood”. In short order we had ten thick contracts resting in our hot little hands. So far so good, right? Well this is where I tell you what others won’t. A distributor’s number one goal is not to sell your movie. Their goal is to acquire your project and that’s about it. None of the contracts we received required the distributor to promote the movie. If they ever did sell a copy, the contracts divided up any possible proceeds in a way that left us, the filmmakers, nothing.

In all fairness, “Kick-Your-Teeth-Out” contracts do not mean that all distributors are evil (though that may in fact be the case). What these contracts do reflect is the changing nature of the direct to video/Indie film business. Like the music business, technology has caused the distribution currents to shift and Hollywood doesn’t want to miss the boat.

With the advent of the 24P camera, the budget equation for a major film has changed dramatically. Hollywood saw films that cost 20K sitting on the shelf next to their 200 million dollar babies. The big players made a decision to own that shelf space and they created mini-majors to gobble it up. The result pushed reruns of Seinfeld into your local video store where the Independents used to be. And please don’t be fooled by what Hollywood calls “Independent” film. If you look close enough, everything at Sundance has a major player financing it. The Majors have made a strategic decision to provide lower budget films. If you want proof of this, just look at who won the Academy Awards this last year.

So for all the Independent filmmakers out there, make your best work and realize that the market is changing. As storytellers, we must be aware of the business of filmmaking. When a Distributor tells you what they are looking for, realize that they are in a shrinking market and have little interest in your survival, especially when their own is on the line.

So what’s an intrepid filmmaker to do? The answer to that question is self-distribute. Learn that end of the film business just like you learned how to edit, color correct and shoot. I never wanted to get into distribution, but no one else is going to do it as well as I can. Handing your work off to someone else is actually, sort-of lazy.

The Internet is the new frontier and only the brave explorer will survive its wilds. The great news is everything is fresh! Everything is in flux! These are pioneer days and a great new land spreads out before us. Technology has evened the playing field. The new winners in media will be those with the best content and the guts to market it.

Speaking of guts, be sure and get a copy of “The Color of Blood”! It really is fun to see Houston in a new light (or lack of it). Much of the Movie was shot in the Art Crawl area. It also features local artists, studios and locations like The Continental Club and Crostini’s Restaurant. The film has a hometown cast and music by several Houston rock bands. (I just can’t resist this new Marketing/PR gig. It might be as fun as filmmaking.)

At any rate, please support your local filmmakers! Who knows, you may be in our next production. We’re all just “Squatters” in the new media frontier anyway, right?

Heidi Hughes

Owner of The Big Tex Movin’ Picture Company, LLC