Making And Selling Dead Wood: Truly Independent Filmmaking

If you're interested in independent filmmaking, perhaps even hoping to get your own film made and sold to a distributor, then this post is likely to be of interest to you – particularly the video that comes after the break.

Dead Wood is slightly unusual for being an almost zero-budget horror film, but particularly odd for having three co-credited directors. David Bryant, Sebastian Smith and Richard Stiles made their feature debut entirely under their own steam, with their own money, and with nothing but optimism and goodwill to keep their cast onboard. There never was any guarantee of distribution, but true to their 'Build it and they Will Come' dreams, the film has now secured a US DVD release from Lionsgate, set for the summer, and a UK outing courtesy of DNC entertainment, with that disc hitting shelves this Monday, April 13th.

The perfect time, then, for me to catch up with Bryant, Smith and Stiles and chat about how the film was conceived, funded, made, sent out to festivals  and sold to distributors. The four of us cooked up this video-interview scheme together: I'd call up, and interview the guys via speakerphone, they'd record the whole thing and then cut it down to something tighter, and include some clips from the film as well as some behind the scenes footage. If it came out great, I'd be posting it to /Film and, lo and behold, it came out pretty nicely indeed.

The original interview ran for just over an hour, but this somewhat more rapid-fire video clocks in at around 13 minutes.

[flv:http://bitcast-a.bitgravity.com/slashfilm/trailers/makingdeadwood.flv 400 226]

I hope that's inspired the aspiring filmmakers out there. Their official site was crucial to their success, so do go and check it out.

What the Dead Wood boys didn't leave in was any reference to their upcoming projects. Maybe we'll come back to those once shooting starts.