Stealing Production Value for the Indie Filmmaker (Part 3)

Finishing up this slowly-doled-out series is what to do when you've finished the movie: the packaging. We'll go over some tips for making your DVD and the DVD case add budget to your no-budget film.

I actually wanted to put this article first in the series, but I was scared that you, the budding filmmaker, would get bored and stop reading. Not coincidentally, this is the most common thing for short filmmakers to neglect, and it’s really a shame. I currently have a DVD sitting on my shelf that a friend of mine made (not a SoCal film), and I’ve never watched it. Maybe it’s a wonderful little film, but the box looks so film-student that I have no desire to find out.

Indeed, this is a problem all indie filmmmakers face. There are so many bad movies out there, it's hard to get someone to take yours seriously.

So, imagine your movie is like a vacation package. If you're designing the sales brochure, you'd have two major goals: convey the flavor of the vacation (relaxing, adventurous, a trip to Vegas, etc.), and also make the trip seem big—lots of places to see, lots of things to do, you won't be bored for a minute.

That's how to approach the packaging of your film. When someone gets your DVD, they'll go through several steps before they watch it. They'll have to look at the box, they'll have to open it and look at the disc, they may have to navigate a menu or two before starting the actual movie. Every one of those steps should help convince the viewer that they want to watch this movie, and also to keep watching if it doesn't grab their interest in the first two minutes.

Now, you aren't going to use the language of a Vacation Brochure. Instead, use the branding approach of Calvin Klein and Nike. Use images, use mood, you should sound a little pretentious when you discuss it. And like the Cruise Brochure, every page should show a different part of the boat, and give the impression that there's a lot happening in this box.

FIRST RULE OF LOOKING PROFESSIONAL: No presentation is better than a bad presentation.

So back to my friend's DVD that I won't watch. It has a professionally printed cover, it's in a nice plastic case, but everything else on it looks awful. It's a bad photo, it's a bad font, the actors in the photo look like film students, and I'm not going to watch it.

But, had my friend given me a DVD-R with a hand-written label and said "Hey, man, watch my movie," I absolutely would have.

This is true, even outside of dealing with friends. If you can make a nice press kit, but can't make a nice looking DVD, send the festivals a plain-old DVD-R and a note that says "The nice looking DVDs haven't come back from the printers, but I wanted you to see my movie."

FIRST STEP TO LOOKING PROFESSIONAL: Take production stills

It’s easy to forget to do this, or to even decide that it’s not a priority during the heat of production. But if you don’t have a high resolution photo, your DVD box won’t look good. If you’re planning on exporting a still from your finished film, you’ll be disappointed when you print the DVD box; a framegrab only looks good if it’s less than two inches tall.

Before you finish a setup, take two minutes, have your actors pose, and have someone pop a few shots on 35 or hi-end digital. If it’s a feature film, and you intend on making a poster, use a medium format camera.

DESIGNING YOUR DVD COVER

-Let your home collection be your guide

Grab a bunch of DVDs from the shelf and look at them. What do you see? How did the deisgners create this box? What elements did they use, how did they treat/arrange them on the box? Notice glows, blurs, gradients in text. Also notice how it isn't a single picture with a title slapped on top.

We've had great luck trying to mimick a DVD cover--but screwing that up and instead getting something just as cool, if not cooler.

-Don’t write too much on the back of the box

This one is a personal pet peeve. Feature films usually have two paragraphs written on the back of their movie box, which is fine, except that a feature film is two hours long. Your short is not.

State your premise, if you like, and maybe some fun facts about the actors and the production, but less will likely be better. Slick looking artwork and a list of credits will look much more professional than two paragraphs that either tell us your entire movie or tell us nothing and simply fill up space.

-Fonts, fonts, fonts

I've lectured about fonts before, you can read it in the previous installment. Sweat your fonts. You're on the right track if find yourself saying "That font's too angry. It should be tough, but more like biker-tough than professional wrestling."

-Use 300dpi from the get go.

dpi=Dots Per Inch. Professional quality printing is at 300dpi. Many programs (like photoshop) often default to 72dpi, which not only isn't 300dpi, it waaaaay less than 300dpi. What's worse, any graphic you bring into the file gets reduced to 72dpi, and those 228 dots aren't coming back, even if you later convert the file to 300dpi. You'll think you're ready to print, only to discover you have to recreate the entire thing.

DESIGNING YOUR DVD MENUS

-Don’t use templates.

iDVD and DVDStudioPro both have preset templates that make it super easy to import your movie and have slick looking, animated menus in almost no time at all. Don’t use them.

You see, the festival judges will have seen lots of shorts, and you don’t want their first impression of your film to be "Oh, it’s that menu again." It’s far better to have a simpler, custom made menu, or even no menu at all.

-Don't add too much.

Feature films usually have four or five options to choose from on their main menus. Don't feel you need that many unless you have actual content to put on there. Two buttons is just fine.

-Have more than one button.

A menu with a lone "Play movie" button always seems a little pathetic to me, almost like the DVD is saying "I want to be a grown-up DVD, but I just can't." If you're strapped, a "contact information" button will be tasteful and appropriate.

-Coordinate with the box cover

Use the same fonts, etc.

-Don't just repeat the box cover

If it's a still menu, use a different image. Vary the color scheme while still keeping a mood. See the above lecture about Calvin Klein.

PRINTING YOUR DVD CASE/DISC

-Don't print at home unless your printer is really, really good.

I tell ya, these printers today sound slick and productive, but I'm not impressed by the results. The resolution is crappy, they often leave lines across the artwork, they smear—even the "print-on-disk" ones. Go spend some money, get someone else to do it right.

-Big print orders.

There are many companies out there that will professionally print your disc, box, mail it to you, etc. Other SoCalers have had good luck with them, and while they have a decent per disk rate, they have large minumums (like a hundred or more). I have no first hand experience with them, so I'll let another group member get into this.

-Small print orders.

Let's say you only need a handful of professional quality discs. Find a local printshop/copy place that makes it's living printing business flyers and annual reports-I don't mean a Kinko's. While they will do in a pinch, their staff tends to offer really bad solutions to relatively simple problems, like "let's convert the file using Machine X so we can transfer it to Computer Y, convert it again, and then we can use Printer Z--and, yes, we'll have to charge for all of those steps." You should just have to give them a photoshop document and they'll tell you how much per print.

Use high-gloss paper, get them to print box sleeves and disc stickers, and then buy DVD boxes at your local office supply shop. Expect to pay six or seven bucks for each complete disc with a box.

And also expect headaches. Printing labels of any kind sucks, minor changes can cause words to run off the page or other alignment issues. But it's worth it in the end—high gloss, well designed DVD stickers can look fabulous.

IN CONCLUSION

If all of this sounds hard, that's because it is. But that's a good thing: it means all you need to do to rise above the pack is put in the work. Do the hard stuff. Sweat the details. The standard is the studio DVDs (without gimicks). You want your friends to look at your film and say "You did this? I thought you bought this in a store."

Best of luck.

Andy Wardlaw