The Making of the Love Tricycle DVD

Gastbeiträge

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Before we started production on Love Tricycle, there were not many examples on DVD or in books of how short films were made, apart from a few feature animation DVDs from the major US studios. We wanted to document our production process as a small independent team, as an example to other low-budget filmmakers. We knew there would be a lot of concept and production artwork, so we carefully collected it throughout the production so we could include it in galleries on the DVD. As Love Tricycle is only 14 minutes long, there was a lot of space left on the DVD, so we were able to include a huge gallery of artwork.

The most important thing I wanted to show was a comparison of the various stages of production. We kept the 3 in-progress edits of the film (storyboards, layout and animation), and on the DVD, showed them side-by-side with the final picture, for the full duration of the film. Other bonus materials include music-only and sound-effects-only versions of the soundtrack, as well as a trailer, production notes and biographies of the key creatives. What we have now is a document of the making of the film, accompanying a high-quality version of the film with a Dolby Digital 5.1 sound mix.

Apart from documenting the filmmaking process, the other major reason for making the DVD is that film festivals only account for a very small portion of the possible audience for a film. The DVD allows the film to be seen by people who love watching films at home, but either cannot or do not usually attend film festivals. It’s also a good souvenir for people who have enjoyed it at festivals and want to watch it again and again, or learn about how it was made. Finally, it serves as a self-contained press kit which we can use to promote the film.

As we have some prior experience working in multimedia, we authored our DVD ourselves over a few months after finishing the film. We had to find the right software which would allow us to include all the features we wanted to add, and to ensure a top quality product. Luckily, good software is now cheap enough to make this possible. Often a distributor will be responsible for creating a DVD, but doing it ourselves meant we retained all our rights, and full creative control over the DVD design.

We were also able to find a replication facility which gave us a good price and delivered a professional product. We made PAL and NTSC versions, and they both work in all regions.

This DVD is our best way of making back some of the money we spent on production of the film. Production funding is difficult to get and never enough, so we need other income such as DVD sales to enable us to make more independent films. We sell the DVD directly through the Love Tricycle website – lovetricycle.com. Even though this DVD contains only a single short film, many people are giving great feedback about it, and some people, especially children, enjoy watching it over and over again.

I would encourage more filmmakers to put their short films on DVD. There is a burgeoning market for them, at the right price, and self-distribution ensures that filmmakers retain their rights. Of course, if they choose to have their film distributed, a DVD product like ours can look more attractive to a distributor since the hard authoring work is already done!«

Andrew Goode

Rendition Films

PO Box 45

Indooroopilly Qld 4068

Australia

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