(marketing a thousand dollar movie)
"The Buck Starts Here" -- main image on the movie's website...
I had one of those "crazy ideas" to try to make a feature about some friends who plan a bank robbery...
A buddy of mine wanted in and the script was knocked out rather quickly. We then thought it would be great to use the one dollar bill on the website and trick out a few details. To keep it realistic looking, I copied small areas of the dollar bill and pasted the pieces over parts I was changing, or wasn't going to use. So for example, the serial number; you can see the reverse darker bits of the dollar bill bleeding through the white areas on the front. If that were to be painted over, or color matched with one or two key strokes, I wouldn't get the fibers. The shade would be off or I'd be left with an area that looked too clean. So it took more time. There was no reason to half-ass it.
The parts that were changed, like "FRIENDS ARE FOREVER" or "THEIR FIRST CRIME IS A HEIST" or "BANK ROLL" at the bottom -- those letters were already there on the dollar bill. I copied and pasted them, rearranged everything like a game of Scrabble until something made sense.
Here's the end result:
It's funny to me that a movie called "Bank Roll" is flashing a buck as the main image. I had bigger plans. There were six friends and I wanted each guy to have his own bill. The 2, 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 were supposed to be character posters and the 1 was for the website. I got lazy.
Not really -- I was doing a bunch of editing on the movie toward the end. Here's what I came up with instead:
2012 film festival poster.
Taken from this:
1911 city seal.
If you get a chance to see the movie, the poster becomes a little cooler. The car, the coffee cup on the car, the camera, the city of Burbank, stealing artwork, stealing money, it's what I call "an onion" because there are so many levels that this thing is operating on.
It's a total onion...
It's a total onion...
Full-length feature for the independent movie "Bank Roll" - directed by Doug Maguire (2012)
Well, in the end, this movie came out alright. We did everything for under a grand because of this digital age: the script didn't need to be printed out, websites, posters, shooting the movie, editing, marketing, submitting to film festivals, etc. So is it the greatest movie?
No, it's the greatest thousand dollar movie! But again, that's taking EVERYTHING into perspective.
No, it's the greatest thousand dollar movie! But again, that's taking EVERYTHING into perspective.
Websites, posters, shooting the movie, editing, marketing...
