But, as we all have noticed, the indie world is sliding down into a neglected, sorry state. And the buyers are taking full advantage. It is definitely a buyers' market right now and we sellers are feeling the pinch. From firsthand experience I am seeing sales diminish and interest in indie films plummet. My foreign sales agent even said that buyers would rather have a bad movie with big actors in it than a great one starring actors with no name value.
Our sales projections in one year have dropped by 75%. That is huge! I'm going to go cry in the corner right now.
So now that we have to pay for the music licenses, we are determining that it's better for the project and our investors if we trim the fees. And this means replacing some songs. It also means opening up the sound mix (which costs money) and then re-mixing the new songs into the film. This is usually something you want to avoid at all costs but unfortunately, we couldn't. It's cheaper for us to replace the songs than to pay the licenses that were negotiated last year.
And we have a deadline for the deliverables so we are racing to source and replace the songs and then create our master tapes for delivery on time. Our deliverables also include paperwork from the show. I will be spending tomorrow going through all of the contracts and scanning the necessary ones to a CD. I am trying my best to save trees -- though my agent said they need to print the paperwork anyway. At least I can feel good that I did my part in saving the world, one piece of paper at a time.
Hopefully I will be out of music licensing hell next week. That's our deadline so we can stay on schedule. It's coming up fast! Wish us luck!
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