Confessions of an Indie Entertainment Producer in Post-Production

These are only my confessions on the topic of being an indie entertainment producer in post-production. Not people I conduct entertainment business with.

I know other indie entertainment producers love all areas of post-production. I am not one of them.

I have tremendous respect for all post-production creative souls that build a project frame by frame.

When you sit in on an editing session as a screenwriter, director or actor you get a new appreciation for the entire craft of producing entertainment, not only just for your role in a project.

My first confession is I get extremely nervous when a project enters post-production. I get on edge because projects never and will not get done as fast as I would like.

I write and direct too, but learned through tough lessons producing entertainment is strictly a money business, unless you have a trust fund or people are dropping coins in to your cup.

The longer I’m in post-production the more money my partners and I have to spend that most indie producers really don’t have.

At least that’s the case for me. I don’t have limitless budgets to keep putting out money on a project, either do my production partners or film investors.

Indie entertainment producers (pointing at myself solely) have to survive on smaller budgets and get it wrapped, shipped and sold to customers or bills are not paid.

I can’t afford to take years to get out of post-production. The money clock is always ticking with each day a new post-production delay or cost happens.

The truth for me is the longer I’m stuck in post-production on a project the money invested in-house or by film investors is getting burned and there is nothing for distributors to sell to movie viewers.

Nobody makes money or sees the creative effort put in the project. I don’t know any screenwriters, producers, director or actors that never want people to see their work or make money from their hard efforts.

Imagine you went to the store or online to buy your favorite (insert any product you dig here) and there was a sign or notice that read, “Sorry, we’re still making it.” The longer in post-production that’s the sign being hung brick and mortar or online.

Slice of Americana Films (U.S.) and LiarDice Films (U.K) are currently in post-production on three different projects. I admit it is an ambitious move for a couple of indie production teams with limited funds to do at once.

But hell, we already rocked production of the projects; it’s time to get them done in post-production and move on to the next indie entertainment we have been hashing out.

Here’s what we have going in the post-production factory.

PSORO MOVIE

Psoro the movie an indie story of mental horror and bloody gore with only one killer scene left to film with actor Jessica Messenger cast as Punk Chick on journey into dark places. I personally love the scene.

A sexy POV erotic cinema title we are jointly releasing under our new Retro-Tica! brand and a racy reality series that is a spin-off of America’s Wildest Bachelor Parties.

No matter how much I’m a movie budget bean counter and plan for post-production it always seems an unforeseen post-production costs hits out of the blue.

I confess and take all the weight on this, I do push in post-production. Instead of going project by project my mind thinks see we have footage in the can let’s edit all the projects at once.

I can look in the mirror and laugh at myself considering all I do is a paper edit and block edit. I’m not an editor or post-production team person, the indie producer in me thinks things should happen like that.

Projects that are strictly under the Slice of Americana Films banner are edited in Virginia Beach, VA with coproducer Tim “Timbo” Beachum. I fly out East and we knock it out.

Only problem is I tried this move of editing different projects at once and our editing bay could not take it. Tim warned me “Amigo, we have lots of footage to work with at once”, but I’m thinking lets gets these done at least as rough cuts.

Editing bay fried and died. We had to buy an entirely new editing bay to handle all the projects. Post-production cost that came out of our pockets we didn’t expect.

Déjà vu confession time -  I tell Wayne “UK Diablo” Daniells (LiarDice Films) since we’re already in post-production with Psoro lets take on these two other projects I have in the can.

Crash! New editing bay has to be bought to handle our workload. The upside is we’re getting things shot and making editing bays work like hell.

It’s not like we’re sitting on our hands hoping and wishing to finish entertainment, we’re making it.

My biggest confession as an indie entertainment producer is my mind thinks like I have the money to turn out entertainment like the big dogs, but reality is my production budgets keep me on a tight leash. This is indie filmmaker Sid Kali typing FADE OUT