Who wants to get their own video made?

[vincent_richter]

I'm going to take this time to echo what I take to be the sentiments of LK here, in a number of points raised by Blackbat: you may be making a huge mistake partnering with this director (at least from a potential revenue standpoint). I call bullshit on every single one of his points, simply because it resonates with his product to demonstrate a severe lack of discipline.

Time. You MUST have storyboards before even THINKING about booking models. Anyone who figures they'll just freeform behind the camera - especially when they're being paid to produce pay-content - needs to back. The fuck. OFF. This isn't fucking cinema school; this is a for-profit business. Keep this artsy-fartsy "it'll work after I try it a couple times" bullshit out of the equation. You're not fucking Shyamalan, and that really only worked for a couple flicks; furthermore, when you ARE doing this very thing, the issue of "not having enough time" rings hollow.

Money. Buy a camera. Even a shitty one. Even from Craigslist. If you're losing a substantial portion of your budget to hardware loans, alarm bells should be going off like mad. Again, storyboards dictate timelines better than "as fast as we can do it, in one take" ever could - with the upshot that you have a battle plan going into the project.

Also, care to wager a guess how much Paranormal Activity cost?
15. Grand.
The exact total being requested here, and that's an estimate INCLUDING existing technology.
350k buyout to $150 million under Paramount's ownership.
Recurring returns of TWENTY TIMES OR MORE the investment in each "shitty" sequel.

Shoot with a plan or go home.

Space. I can buy the lack of a sound stage. The question here is whether the current technology is being used to its fullest potential, and it seems like the green-screen chroma-keying errors haven't gone away from recent buyer reviews. Mocap? Huge computers? For the love of Christ, get a Kinect and a cheap-ass laptop. $500, tops, going through third parties.

My point is this: I cannot comment on this effort from a directorial perspective. I can only interject good business sense into the idea, as it seems - Qzar - that you're being pushed into a business venture that could be infinitely more lucrative were the principal more concerned with the end product than immediate financial gain.

You could get so much more out of a couple G's with the right cinematic eye, than you ever could throwing money at someone who seems to deliver hit after hit of identical "masterpieces"; I suspect that - from LK's perspective - he's just largely concerned that encouraging your principal will only waste your potential at best, your financial future at worst.