The Ticket
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Nobody Wins Alone
Above - Lou Eisenberg (Left) and Curtis Sharp (Right) in one of many commercials for the New York State Lottery. These guys are still recognized in New York today. We followed these guys but when another film had also followed their story so we decided to focus on other lottery stories. Whatever you do - there's always someone somewhere doing the same thing.
Lou and Curtis each scored $5 million in the early 1980's. Before he won Lou couldn't speak. He was so shy he asked his boss for a job where he wouldn't have to talk to anyone. He ended up doing nothing but changing light bulbs. After he won he became the center of attention. He even wound up on Johnny Carson cracking jokes. He showed us one tape of him on Oprah's first talk show when she was co-hosting a show in Baltimore. Today he is broke and spends his time at a Florida Greyhound Track where his girlfriend works taking bets.
Curtis was a janitor in New Jersey and like Curtis he has spent all his lottery money. After he won he donned the signature hat and bought his wife and girlfriend a car each. He dined with celebrities like Andy Warhol and was cheered at Yankee Stadium when he got up to go and get a hot dog. After a United Nations sponsored visit to Ethiopia during the 80's he was haunted by the conditions there. He became an alcoholic and wound up owning a bar in Nashville. One night, lying drunk on his bed he had an epiphany. As he stared up at the ceiling God spoke to him and told him that he was meant to do more with his life. The next morning he went into the bar handed the keys to a friend and said, "Here. These are yours." He walked away from the bar and became a Baptist minister. He holds services several times a week at Nashville Prisons.
Originally we had about 7 stories to tell in the film. In the end we decided to focus on just 3. I'm sad we can't include Curtis and Lou. I really liked them both. These stories will be extras on the DVD.
Pulled more B-Roll from West Virginia this morning.
The relationships between the characters is complicated. In the test screening this caused confusion so the consensus was that we needed "lower thirds" titles and a narrative voice over. I'm okay with the title cards but the narrative really bothers me. Television media relies heavily on this device to a story. It helps the producers to make the project really quickly but it limits room for interpretation by the audience.
At this point we have to look at all options because things need to be clear so right now Darren is writing narrative introductions. We'll lay them in and see how they work.
We talked on Monday about the tag line. It was "You May Have Already Won." If all the stories were about winners and what happened to them this would work really well. Now that we've changed the focus of the film it doesn't quite fit. Since the film is now about how the lottery money affects a community of people we came up with "Nobody Wins Alone."
I don't know why it has been so hard to focus the intention for film in this way. It should be so simple but as soon as you start rolling things change. The way you thought things would work changes. Some interviews don't work and then certain elements don't work together the right way so it changes and if you let it happen you can end up with something much better. This is certainly the riskier path but if things don't work out you can always stick to your original intention by explaining the whole thing with a voice over narrative.
Above - Lou Eisenberg (Left) and Curtis Sharp (Right) in one of many commercials for the New York State Lottery. These guys are still recognized in New York today. We followed these guys but when another film had also followed their story so we decided to focus on other lottery stories. Whatever you do - there's always someone somewhere doing the same thing.Lou and Curtis each scored $5 million in the early 1980's. Before he won Lou couldn't speak. He was so shy he asked his boss for a job where he wouldn't have to talk to anyone. He ended up doing nothing but changing light bulbs. After he won he became the center of attention. He even wound up on Johnny Carson cracking jokes. He showed us one tape of him on Oprah's first talk show when she was co-hosting a show in Baltimore. Today he is broke and spends his time at a Florida Greyhound Track where his girlfriend works taking bets.
Curtis was a janitor in New Jersey and like Curtis he has spent all his lottery money. After he won he donned the signature hat and bought his wife and girlfriend a car each. He dined with celebrities like Andy Warhol and was cheered at Yankee Stadium when he got up to go and get a hot dog. After a United Nations sponsored visit to Ethiopia during the 80's he was haunted by the conditions there. He became an alcoholic and wound up owning a bar in Nashville. One night, lying drunk on his bed he had an epiphany. As he stared up at the ceiling God spoke to him and told him that he was meant to do more with his life. The next morning he went into the bar handed the keys to a friend and said, "Here. These are yours." He walked away from the bar and became a Baptist minister. He holds services several times a week at Nashville Prisons.
Originally we had about 7 stories to tell in the film. In the end we decided to focus on just 3. I'm sad we can't include Curtis and Lou. I really liked them both. These stories will be extras on the DVD.
Pulled more B-Roll from West Virginia this morning.
The relationships between the characters is complicated. In the test screening this caused confusion so the consensus was that we needed "lower thirds" titles and a narrative voice over. I'm okay with the title cards but the narrative really bothers me. Television media relies heavily on this device to a story. It helps the producers to make the project really quickly but it limits room for interpretation by the audience.
At this point we have to look at all options because things need to be clear so right now Darren is writing narrative introductions. We'll lay them in and see how they work.
We talked on Monday about the tag line. It was "You May Have Already Won." If all the stories were about winners and what happened to them this would work really well. Now that we've changed the focus of the film it doesn't quite fit. Since the film is now about how the lottery money affects a community of people we came up with "Nobody Wins Alone."
I don't know why it has been so hard to focus the intention for film in this way. It should be so simple but as soon as you start rolling things change. The way you thought things would work changes. Some interviews don't work and then certain elements don't work together the right way so it changes and if you let it happen you can end up with something much better. This is certainly the riskier path but if things don't work out you can always stick to your original intention by explaining the whole thing with a voice over narrative.
Labels: Curtis Sharp, lottery, Lou Eisenberg, The Ticket
¶ 5:07 PM 0 Comments
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Middle Men
Pulled more footage for the Elecia Battle story this morning...
Elecia claimed she won $162 million in the Mega Millions Jackpot. She said she had bought the ticket but it fell out of her handbag. People hunted in the snow for the missing ticket (above left).
The media went crazy. Above and to the right is a copy of her police report. (Sorry for the small print). In the report the police officer states that Elecia was extremely convincing and she didn't hesitate when answering his questions. The media went wild - just imagine losing a ticket worth that much!
A short time later the Jamison's (below) stepped forward. They had bought the winning ticket. Elecia made an unsuccesful legal bid to stop the payout claiming the ticket was hers.
Had our conference call with Stacey this afternoon. We both came away thinking that there are a lot of middle men in the business nothing seems clear (probably for a reason). It's really difficult to tell who is reputable and will be worth the huge chunk they take. Stacey said we should contact filmmakers who've worked with distribution companies etc. to see which one's are good to deal with.
Only 5-10 films a year will get an up-front payment deal. The rest are basically taken on deals where overheads can be rolled into the cost of promoting the film so that as a filmmaker you have little control over how the money is spent. You can have a great looking film and end up with nothing because of all these overhead costs. Payments are quarterly over a contract that usually lasts 5 or 7 years. You can somewhat protect yourself by hiring an entertainment attorney on retainer but here again more costs. Wherever you look there's someone ready to step in the middle. The question is how do you know when you're getting value?
Forging ahead we have a list of solid festivals for submission and we're optimistic about the changes we need to make to the film.
Here's our Film Fest List:
Tribeca
SXSW
LA Film Festival
Toronto
Raindance
Telluride
Hampton
Hot Docs
Buyers come to each of these festivals so that's where we want to be to start with. Fingers crossed we'll get in to at least one of these. This is completely new territory. Bottom line is to make the film the best it can possibly be.
To see what Darren's thinking about - go and see him at his place. It's clean and he keeps the lights on so you can see to read. Eclipse Cafe ¶ 6:03 PM 0 Comments
Pulled more footage for the Elecia Battle story this morning...
Elecia claimed she won $162 million in the Mega Millions Jackpot. She said she had bought the ticket but it fell out of her handbag. People hunted in the snow for the missing ticket (above left).
The media went crazy. Above and to the right is a copy of her police report. (Sorry for the small print). In the report the police officer states that Elecia was extremely convincing and she didn't hesitate when answering his questions. The media went wild - just imagine losing a ticket worth that much!
A short time later the Jamison's (below) stepped forward. They had bought the winning ticket. Elecia made an unsuccesful legal bid to stop the payout claiming the ticket was hers.
Had our conference call with Stacey this afternoon. We both came away thinking that there are a lot of middle men in the business nothing seems clear (probably for a reason). It's really difficult to tell who is reputable and will be worth the huge chunk they take. Stacey said we should contact filmmakers who've worked with distribution companies etc. to see which one's are good to deal with.
Only 5-10 films a year will get an up-front payment deal. The rest are basically taken on deals where overheads can be rolled into the cost of promoting the film so that as a filmmaker you have little control over how the money is spent. You can have a great looking film and end up with nothing because of all these overhead costs. Payments are quarterly over a contract that usually lasts 5 or 7 years. You can somewhat protect yourself by hiring an entertainment attorney on retainer but here again more costs. Wherever you look there's someone ready to step in the middle. The question is how do you know when you're getting value?
Forging ahead we have a list of solid festivals for submission and we're optimistic about the changes we need to make to the film.
Here's our Film Fest List:
Tribeca
SXSW
LA Film Festival
Toronto
Raindance
Telluride
Hampton
Hot Docs
Buyers come to each of these festivals so that's where we want to be to start with. Fingers crossed we'll get in to at least one of these. This is completely new territory. Bottom line is to make the film the best it can possibly be.
To see what Darren's thinking about - go and see him at his place. It's clean and he keeps the lights on so you can see to read. Eclipse Cafe ¶ 6:03 PM 0 Comments
Friday, January 25, 2008
Planning Ahead
Over the last day I've been going back through Elecia Battle's Footage pulling B-Roll from Cleveland. We've still got a lot of unused footage to lay over the film to tighten things up.
Tomorrow we've got an informational meeting with Stacy Parks of Film Specific. She's a former film sales agent so hopefully she will have some great advice to help us focus our marketing efforts.
Lunch with Virginia, my wife, at China King Buffet today. There's a mirror all along the wall where the booths. The waitresses can't resist checking themselves out while they're seating you or when they bring you your check and fortune cookies.
Fortune cookies don't contain fortunes any more. They're always just complimentary statements. Virginia noted that our fellow diners at the next table had a way to make sharing fortunes much more fun. They simply added "in bed" at the end of their fortunes.
When we got ours, Virginia read hers first, "You have a natural grace and great consideration for others in bed."
Mine said, "You have an unusually magnetic personality in bed."
On the backside there are always lottery numbers in red ink. You might consider playing these but be aware that if you do someone else is most probably playing them too. A large number of people are likely to get the same fortune as you and some of them will use them to play the lottery. That means you're unlikely to be a single jackpot winner - in other words you'll have to split the winnings with the other people who got the same fortune. This advice comes from Keith Devlin who's a bit of a math genius at Stanford University. He also happens to be in The Ticket.
Tomorrow we've got an informational meeting with Stacy Parks of Film Specific. She's a former film sales agent so hopefully she will have some great advice to help us focus our marketing efforts.
Lunch with Virginia, my wife, at China King Buffet today. There's a mirror all along the wall where the booths. The waitresses can't resist checking themselves out while they're seating you or when they bring you your check and fortune cookies.
Fortune cookies don't contain fortunes any more. They're always just complimentary statements. Virginia noted that our fellow diners at the next table had a way to make sharing fortunes much more fun. They simply added "in bed" at the end of their fortunes.
When we got ours, Virginia read hers first, "You have a natural grace and great consideration for others in bed."
Mine said, "You have an unusually magnetic personality in bed."
On the backside there are always lottery numbers in red ink. You might consider playing these but be aware that if you do someone else is most probably playing them too. A large number of people are likely to get the same fortune as you and some of them will use them to play the lottery. That means you're unlikely to be a single jackpot winner - in other words you'll have to split the winnings with the other people who got the same fortune. This advice comes from Keith Devlin who's a bit of a math genius at Stanford University. He also happens to be in The Ticket.
Labels: fortune cookies, jackpot, keith devlin, lottery
¶ 6:54 PM 0 Comments
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Out of the Ashes
Darren and I talked last night - why was the audience confused? What have we done wrong?
The Ticket contains three stories each one concerns a winning lottery ticket. In our introduction we've been saying that the film is about three winners; Jack Whittaker, Elecia Battle and Dennis Sanfilippo. The trouble is that we've mislead our audience. The audience is expecting to see exactly what we told them - three stories about the winners.
Our first story is about Jack Whittaker's granddaughter and her boyfriend who had access to money and drugs. Jack Whittaker won $314.9 million which makes him the largest single jackpot winner in history. That kind of money in a poor working class state like West Virginia is a recipe for disaster. In making the film we didn't interview Jack so the story isn't about him at all. The second story follows Elecia Battle who claimed that she had purchased a ticket worth $162 million but she lost it. She never bought the ticket so she's not a winner. The third story is about Dennis Sanfilippo who is a winner but he has truly helped his community of friends and he still has the same friends from high school.
Our audience was confused because we lied. The film is not really about lottery winners. It's about the effect money has on a community of people. Through the making of the film the focus shifted and we lost sight of that. All we need to do now is restate the intention.
Now that the focus has shifted this frees us up to go back and look at some of the shots we passed over before. We can cut out any repetitive pieces and replace them. Most importantly we are going to lay in more b-roll and intercut between different interviews. Now what felt like disaster has reignited our belief in this film. No more confusion - no more boredom. ¶ 6:57 PM 0 Comments
Darren and I talked last night - why was the audience confused? What have we done wrong?
The Ticket contains three stories each one concerns a winning lottery ticket. In our introduction we've been saying that the film is about three winners; Jack Whittaker, Elecia Battle and Dennis Sanfilippo. The trouble is that we've mislead our audience. The audience is expecting to see exactly what we told them - three stories about the winners.
Our first story is about Jack Whittaker's granddaughter and her boyfriend who had access to money and drugs. Jack Whittaker won $314.9 million which makes him the largest single jackpot winner in history. That kind of money in a poor working class state like West Virginia is a recipe for disaster. In making the film we didn't interview Jack so the story isn't about him at all. The second story follows Elecia Battle who claimed that she had purchased a ticket worth $162 million but she lost it. She never bought the ticket so she's not a winner. The third story is about Dennis Sanfilippo who is a winner but he has truly helped his community of friends and he still has the same friends from high school.
Our audience was confused because we lied. The film is not really about lottery winners. It's about the effect money has on a community of people. Through the making of the film the focus shifted and we lost sight of that. All we need to do now is restate the intention.
Now that the focus has shifted this frees us up to go back and look at some of the shots we passed over before. We can cut out any repetitive pieces and replace them. Most importantly we are going to lay in more b-roll and intercut between different interviews. Now what felt like disaster has reignited our belief in this film. No more confusion - no more boredom. ¶ 6:57 PM 0 Comments
Tulsa O.K.
First post of first blog. Richard Needham here director and producer of The Ticket. Our documentary has taken 3 years to make so far we've had all the usual hurdles - raising money and all the expected obstacles with making a film and at long last we're done - almost.
Darren Ingram (producer) screened the film for friends and colleagues who worked with him on King of the Mountain I got his email
yesterday morning and can only imagine a test-screening in which crickets were chirping. Here's a sampling of what he says (following some viewer comments which literally included the word "excruciating")...
"Now, here is my overview before you get out the razor blades. These are all just opinions and some may be right and some not. As I was watching it though again with some distance, I feel like much of what was said was at least partially right. My two biggest fears were true- that it was too long and that the first two sequences were confusing. "
It appears that we've successfully managed to break two golden rules of filmmaking: 1. we confused the audience 2. we bored the audience. Not bad for 3 years hard labour. We already submitted to Tribeca and SXSW film festivals so chances are we won't get in.
On the upside all is not yet lost. In closing Darren writes: "I don’t feel depressed or hopeless yet, but I do know we have to have some serious shit to do. Lets set some time aside this evening to talk. I’ll call you at 7:00 my time tonight and I’ll tell you my ideas. "
July, 2007 post production OBX
Darren (left) Richard (right) pour over the morning papers at Stack 'em High, OBX
Darren Ingram (producer) screened the film for friends and colleagues who worked with him on King of the Mountain I got his email
yesterday morning and can only imagine a test-screening in which crickets were chirping. Here's a sampling of what he says (following some viewer comments which literally included the word "excruciating")... "Now, here is my overview before you get out the razor blades. These are all just opinions and some may be right and some not. As I was watching it though again with some distance, I feel like much of what was said was at least partially right. My two biggest fears were true- that it was too long and that the first two sequences were confusing. "
On the upside all is not yet lost. In closing Darren writes: "I don’t feel depressed or hopeless yet, but I do know we have to have some serious shit to do. Lets set some time aside this evening to talk. I’ll call you at 7:00 my time tonight and I’ll tell you my ideas. "
July, 2007 post production OBX
Darren (left) Richard (right) pour over the morning papers at Stack 'em High, OBX
Visit Darren's place Eclipse Cafe
Labels: documentary, filmmaking, lottery, OBX, SXSW, tribeca
¶ 1:26 AM
