Chris Hadley of Snobby Robot - Thanks for watching and liking our show!

We are so pleased that Chris Hadley at Snobby Robot chose to cover our new Web series I Love My Annoying Spouse and that he likes the show! Check out his awesome article here: I LOVE MY ANNOYING SPOUSE: Our Spouses May Be Annoying…But We Love Them Anyway.

I really love the coverage that Chris does on Web series. He's very thorough and insightful and really gets to the core of why a series exists. I'm really glad that Erik Urtz founded Snobby Robot. The Web site is providing such a wonderful forum for learning about video creators, big and small.

Looking back, we had so much fun making I Love My Annoying Spouse. My husband Steve and I brainstormed the episodes, using real life moments from our 20-year marriage and we decided to test our new Nikon 7100 still camera with the video function and employed our H2 recorder to capture the sound. Steve is a still photographer by training but he was able to make the leap from stills to video pretty seamlessly. It was really nice to have him as the DP.

Then Jonny Loquasto and Ann Tierney Kelly embodied those wonderfully annoying marriage moments and brought their own twist to the characters. And Annie Bydlon was an all-around huge help on set.

We proved that you don't need many resources to make entertainment. It really comes to down to story! We hope you like the story we're telling!

If you haven't seen any episodes yet, you can check them out on my Meritage Pictures YouTube Channel here:

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Stop Spending Time with Toxic People (from Entrepeneur)

I came across this article I want to share from Entrepreneur: "Stop Spending Time with Toxic People".

I completely agree with its sentiments. It's inevitable that at some point in your career, you will associate with toxic people. They may be good people but for some reason you and that person are oil and water.

Not everyone is meant to get along. You will do yourself and even the toxic person a favor by limiting or even letting the relationship go.

There is nothing healthy about forcing a toxic relationship to continue. You will both be better off walking away or at least letting the business relationship fade away. You may make better friends than business partners. And that's okay.

We filmmakers are entrepreneurs. We are only as good as those we work with. So if the people you work with are toxic then everything you do will have toxins.

Cleanse yourself in 2014! It really makes a difference to your performance and your life!

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Merry Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas everyone! It's been a great year and I hope you all have a wonderful day. I am truly blessed by all of the amazing people in my life.

Here's a little Christmas treat: A new episode of I Love My Annoying Spouse.





And if you missed our Christmas video from So Natural TV and Overly Attached Andy, here it is again. Cheers!!

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Happy holidays!!!

From all of us at Overly Attached Andy and So Natural TV and All About Indie Filmmaking!!

And Happy New Year too!

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Casting Call for Funny Women in 20s/30s for New Web Series!

Our Web Channel So Natural TV is casting for its new comedy web series, Mommyhood. It’s the story of two long time friends who discover, after having babies, that they have very very different outlooks on parenting.  Looking to cast four women, ideally comics with great improv skills. Must love the web/web series and be socially engaged and willing to participate via Twitter, Youtube, Instagram and other outlets. If interested, please send a headshot and a paragraph about yourself to sonaturaltv11 at gmail.com. Here are the character descriptions:

ANIKA (late 20’s, early 30’s): Is a fashion entrepreneur who recently sold her t-shirt company to a large company. She is busy and very focused on her career, and ambivalent about being a mother. While she loves her daughter, she is very slow to embrace some of the new things that come with motherhood, and often throws herself into her work. She is terrified of becoming “one of those women” who is obsessed with mommyhood and can’t talk about anything else.

MELODY (late 20’s, early 30’s): Is an engineer who recently gave up her job because she feels that nothing is more important than staying at home with her daughter. She is the perfect “So Natural” mom meaning that everything has to be green, natural and perfect. Her life revolves completely around motherhood and can’t talk about anything except her baby. She is very caught up in the “LA mom” “So Natural” vibe.

MARGARET (late 20’s, early 30’s): Is a WASPY upper class mom who just divorced her hubbie and now spends her days poolside while a “team” takes care of her baby. She has no time for middle class mommy issues, and has had a recent sexual awakening that has her exploring men, women and everything in between. She loves her baby, but because she got married at age 25, she is now 32 and facing a life crisis.

RUBY (late 20’s, early 30’s): Is a jewelry entrepreneur who swears off kids and can’t understand why anyone would want to have them. She travels all over the world selling her wares. She tends to have long-term boyfriends, but then ultimately freaks out and never settles down with anyone for various reasons.  She doesn’t minds her friends kids, but def doesn’t want any of her own. People are always trying to convince her how wonderful mommyhood is, but she is pretty clear on her point of view.

We hope you submit!

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First Episode of Our New Web Series I Love My Annoying Spouse Is Here!

It's here! Our first episode of our new Web series I Love My Annoying Spouse.

Starring Ann Tierney Kelly & Jonny Loquasto. Produced, Written and Directed by me. My husband was the DP - go Steve Kosek! And Annie Bydlon did everything else - haha. She was a huge help on set and helped me edit the episodes. We had a lot of fun shooting these short episodes. Learned a lot and realized that you're only an idea and effort away from creating entertainment.

This first episode is inspired by true events... Let me know if you've ever had a similar experience. Gotta love your spouse! I do!

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Making Foreign Sales for Indie Films Yourself

Looking back at my indie films and how they performed in both the domestic and foreign markets, I am coming away with the thinking that we need a much better system for selling small independent films into the foreign markets.

Duh!, you say. And rightly so. I am a broken record but it really hits home when you personally experience the inequities that exist for small indie films.

It's such a struggle to find a foreign sales agent to take on a small indie film. And once you do find that company, they will present you with deals that don't have you earning any money until after they have recouped tens of thousands of expenses.

I understand there are expenses to travel the world and sell titles to foreign buyers but indie films can't bear tens of thousands of expenses. Too often all of your revenue is eaten up by these expenses. So you spend years making a movie and then you get excited to share it with the world and earn some money to pay your investors and yourself only to find out that ALL the money is lining the pockets of your sales agents. It's a harsh reality and one that needs to change.

So how do we sell our small indie films into the foreign markets without foreign sales agents? That is the question.

Sure, you can email foreign distributors and ask them if they want to consider your title. I have had some success doing this and I have sold one of my small films myself in a foreign territory in the past. But what happens if you do reach out to foreign buyers yourself and you aren't able to get any deals that way either?

I don't have all the answers - yet. But I'm working on it.

Right now, I am seriously considering sites like IndieReign or Distrify. I just have to get to that point where I feel that our title has a chance to reach a large audience through these sites. I have a couple of shorts on IndieReign right now. Their performance isn't great but they are shorts and I don't have time to actively promote them so their underperforming is largely my fault. I think a feature that I and my team actively promote will do much better.

The fear is that you load your film on these sites and then you have no way to market the film to an audience in these global territories and then your film lies idle in that territory. At least with a deal through a foreign sales agent, you are assured of getting your film distributed and exposed to an audience in the territories they sell. The problem is you may never see any revenue from that sale.

So is it better to get exposure through your foreign sales agent's deals and the real possibility of seeing no revenue or is it better to control the rights yourself, approach foreign distributors yourself and/or put it on a site like IndieReign, and take the possibility of getting little exposure and the high probability of little to no sales? It's a Catch-22 to be sure.

I'm leaning toward controlling my own foreign rights on the small indie films I make. I have great appreciation for the work of foreign sales agents. But they are best for larger films that have the ability to garner major sales. And I think they would agree with me.

When it comes to small indies, I'm thinking it's better for me to control the foreign and establish my own way of selling into these markets through relationships I establish or through marketing efforts we employ.

The upside to a site like IndieReign is that you do control the rights to your film. The success of your film is up to you and you can get creative on how to promote your film on these kinds of sites.

The downside is that once you expose your film in that foreign territory, you run the risk of that country's distributors never wanting your title in the future because you have already exposed it in their territory. A sale to a major distributor in one country can be significant to your bottomline so you don't want to take this decision lightly.

In the end it comes down to a fear of the unknown - could you one day get a sale in that foreign country so hold onto those rights or is it better to take your chances on a self-distribution platform and risk the sale to a distributor? It's a tough question.

Whatever you do, you need to think about the best interest of your film and investors. Do your research and come to an educated opinion about what the best path may be for your title.

I am definitely a risk-taker and I think we may be ready to embark on the road less taken and start making our films available in foreign territories ourselves. We just need to make that leap!

Has anyone else been able to sell foreign themselves? What are your stories?

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