Hey all, sorry I've been absent...work is crazy. And it's going to continue to be crazy for some time. However! That won't stop me from my shipping duties.
Another ~25 copies went out this morning, emails to follow later today.
And I'm really, really happy you guys (and girls!) like it so much! So far I've only seen one remotely negative comment, and that was essentially 'you could tell it wasn't made on a big budget.' Which doesn't bug me, since in the grand scheme of things it really wasn't.
I really appreciate the posts and emails, they're very encouraging. Thank you very much!
And now if I may drag out the soapbox a bit; I saw on another forum someone requesting a download link, as they thought $20 was a bit high for such a short film. After I posted and explained to him why this was a bad idea, he came to his senses, pledged to buy a copy and locked the post.
But I'd like to explain to everyone here why downloading is a bad idea.
First off, $20
is high for a film of this length. And that's less than we originally talked about charging. Thing is, we had to find an amount that we could possibly make some kind of profit with, given the size of the community. Nobody's really sure of the buying power of this gang of freaks; while we have something like four thousand registered members of the forum, how many of those will buy? We don't know, nobody's ever checked. So we had to cover our asses as much as possible. And as I've said, if I personally make my investment back I'll be amazed. But hell, if enough people buy a copy to show that this kind of thing can make money, and if a sequel gets made, then you might see something like the length of a sequel increase while the price doesn't change. And I guarantee making a longer short would cost a lot more money.
In short, it is a bit costly, but it's up to you guys to show us that it doesn't need to be! If we can sell enough to show this whole thing is profitable, well hell, the net cost to you guys could go down. But we need to see that profitability first. As I've said, this is a market test as well as a labor of...love.
Second, why people pirate things. See, I understand why people pirate Hollywood movies and music, on a certain level; these industries are still pulling in billions of dollars despite piracy. And they try to screw their customers as much as possible besides, with tactics like the RIAA trying to demand a license for every single digital copy of any song you have on your machine, including whatever's in say a browser cache. So as far as 'sticking it to the MAN' I'm right there with you. I don't think anyone would take that stance against Rolfe and I, but I just wanted to explain how I can understand some of it.
There are other reasons people give that I won't go into, because I'll start frothing; leave it at they all come down to 'I don't want to pay for it.' To them I usually ask how they'd feel if their employer didn't want to pay for their labor, but they usually don't care. Anyway.
The end result is, this is a very small operation. We're not some big corporation that can absorb a little piracy; every sale matters to us. And the fact is, if you're pirating our short, all you're really accomplishing is to make sure there will never, ever be a sequel. I mean, financial considerations aside, if we're going to put this much work and money into something, for this long, and then once we try to even get our money back on it it's made freely available to all; well, if the community I love so much would be willing to screw me and the folks working their asses off to make something that community would enjoy, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be willing to make anything for that community no matter how much money I had available. As I've said in the past, artists (and producers!) that are driven away don't stop creating, they just stop
sharing.
Folks, I'll be honest; there is nothing I would like more that to quit my job and set up Stuffed Shirt as a real production company and just keep making BE movies and giving the BE world a steady stream of new, professional work. But if that same community won't even show appreciaton for my effort by paying for it; I won't even try to continue doing it as a hobby.
If it makes any difference, I'm pretty sure Rolfe feels the same way. He worked his ass off to make this movie, called in a lot of favors, took a huge risk just to see if there was money to be made here. And if you show him that no, the BE community prefers to just take what it wants; well, he'll walk away, and it wouldn't suprise me if he stopped putting BE gags into the rest of his movies, since he knows what would happen to them.
I hate to sound cliched, but if you're pirating stuff, you're only hurting the community, and making sure you'll get less content in the future.
Thanks to anyone that read all this way.
The Warlock