| Death
Rose: On the Story and the Use of Promotional Trailers in Film Financing
by
Tony Caulfield, 25.09.2006
Death Rose: Introducing the Project
Death
Rose is a feature film project based on a story/treatment developed and written
by screenwriter and director Dirk
Woiciech and producer René Tiemann in the summer of 2006. René Tiemann's Germany-based
production company Earth
Evolution Picture is intended to produce this horror/mystery thriller for
worldwide distribution on DVD. A theatrical release in Germany, the US and the
UK is also possible.
The movie will be directed by Dirk Woiciech. Attached
are Tanja Braun, Tanja
Kindler, Frederick Lankau, Tony
Caulfield, Klaus Witzge and Michael
Eisenburger to star in the lead roles. An option to become part of the crew
was offered to Philipp Hönig
(director of photography) and Johannes Henke (lighting cameraman and camera assistant),
Ralf Burmester
and Andrea
Muenzberg (special FX and special make-up FX). Consulting and catering by
Heidi Tiemann. Outfits by Zamani,
Siegburg. The movie will shoot mainly on location in Siegburg,
Germany.
Death Rose will be shot in English language.
The cast and crew
listed above has assembled in Siegburg from August 13.-15. 2006 to shoot a promotional
trailer consisting of select scenes of the yet-to-be-produced movie which will
be presented to potential investors in order to finance the movie project.
This
article will introduce the main characters and outline the story of the movie
Death Rose as developed by Dirk Woiciech and René Tiemann, as well as inform about
the practice and the pros and cons of using promotional trailers as a mean to
attract investors.
Death Rose: Character Profiles
Dave
is around 30 years of age and a successful restaurant owner. He's engaged to Sandra
and they both have planned to marry soon. Grown up in a family of business people
he acquired management skills early in his life and took over his parents' restaurant
at age 20, when they died in a tragic car accident. Having grown up faster than
most of his peers he's developed into a self-secure, energetic and straightforward
personality with a dry sense of humor. For Sandra, he is a caring, sensitive and
loyal partner. Most of the time, he's dressed rather elegantly.
Sandra
is 28 years old and has grown up as the only child of caring parents who did everything
for her and also spoilt her a little, which is the cause for some personality
flaws that lead to her easily becoming difficult and unpleasant in situations
she's uncontent with. On the other hand, she's idealizing family-life and wishes
to found her own family with David whom she helps with his restaurant. Dave is
the more dominant partner in their relationship and she has already attuned to
that. She's usually dressed quite elegantly.
Max is around 25 and
the youngest of the five main characters. He's fascinated by (electronic) gadgets,
studies journalism and is usually perceived as somewhat "weird". His dream is
to write for a renowned music magazine someday. Max is a very creative person
and capable of coming up with the most incredible stories. He communicates in
a highly cultivated manner. Since Max' wealthy parents take good care of him,
he has a lot of spare time when he's not studying. However, he doesn't like others
to know that his family is well-off and therefore lives rather spartanically in
a small apartment. Nor does his clothing style betray that he's got money.
Cindy
is 27 and grew up under difficult circumstances. As a foundling raised in an orphanage,
she had to fight for everything she has now. Today, she's a fashion designer and
runs her own tailoring that's already become somewhat established within the business.
Usually, she's wearing jeans and sexy tops. Cindy is intelligent and consistent.
She's able to hide her general mistrust against strangers. Her relationships do
not persist and mostly end up very disappointing to her. The only man she trusts
blindly is her best friend Ken. She is undecided whether she is in love with Ken
and therefore never addresses this possibility since she is afraid to lose Ken
as a friend.
Ken is a 28 year old coiffeur whose business is located
right next to Cindy's tailoring. That's how the two met each other. While Ken
is usually an extrovert person, he doesn't dare to inform Cindy that he's in love
with her. He never had serious problems in his life and is known as a funny guy,
always in the mood for jokes. In addition to his modern hairdo, he usually wears
"hip" clothing. His visual appearance goes well with that of Cindy; that's why
most people usually consider the two a couple. Sometimes, Ken can be stubborn
and become angry. But he always calms down very quickly and is able to admit to
his own mistakes.
Death Rose: The Story
A small town
in Germany. The five friends Dave (Frederick Lankau), Sandra (Tanja Braun), Max
(Tony Caulfield), Cindy (Tanja Kindler) and Ken (Michael Eisenburger) start their
weekly party in Max apartment with a few drinks and a joint or two. Max got a
new handycam and tapes the scene, taking the camera with him when they leave,
in the evening, to start their nightly journey through several bars.
At
3:00 they discover the entrance of a small, run-down theater in a dark alley.
Drugs and curiosity drive them to go inside where they're being greeted by an
eccentric-looking mime (Klaus Witzge) in a pink Versace suit who sells tickets
to the bunch of friends and hands over a white rose to...Max, much to the amusement
of the rest of the group.
The next morning, everyone - or almost everyone
- of the five friends awakes in his/her own bed. None of them can remember what
had happened last night. In the evening they meet at Dave's restaurant for dinner
- everybody but Max. Cindy tries to phone him at home but the line is always busy.
Ken visits Max' apartment but finds it abandoned. The TV set is turned on and
the telephone handset lies on the floor. Somebody has placed a white rose on Max'
bed - drenched in blood. Ken first alerts his friends, then calls the police.
Friends and cops arrive at the apartment almost simultaneously. Searching the
apartment, they find that the rose and the blood are missing without any trace.
Dave
and Sandra doubt Ken's story just as much as the police does, only Cindy believes
that something strange is going on. Looking for evidence after the others have
left, Cindy and Ken find Max' handycam. Max has taped not only last night's party,
but also how the friends entered the small theater. Then suddenly the video turns
black and the mime they met last night starts performing to the music of Rossini's
Figaro. At the end of the exhausting and rather funny performance, the man breaks
down. As his head suddenly shoots up again, facing the camera, he has turned into
a hideous monster. Rewinding the tape, Cindy and Ken find that the scene was miraculously
erased and decide to go back to the theater the next day to investigate what happened
to Max.
That night Dave awakes and finds Sandra's place in their bed empty.
Looking out of the window, he sees her sleepwalking through the streets and follows
her...to the old theater. As he reaches her she is already entering. Inside the
theater, Dave makes a gruesome discovery, short before the demonic eyes of the
mime fixate him and render him unconscious. He awakes in his bed again, believing
he has merely dreamt; but Sandra is missing and on his nightstand he finds two
roses: a bloodstained one for Sandra and one for himself.
Dave meets with
Cindy and Ken immediately and they inform the police again. But the cops don't
believe the more and more bizarre-sounding stories of the three friends and tell
them to wait until Max and Sandra are missing long enough to officially report
them missing. Disappointed by the unwillingness of the police to help them, the
three friends go back to the theater, which suddenly looks different, as if nobody
had entered it for a long time. A homeless man tells them the story of the "Figaro"
- a mime who had supposedly sealed a pact with the devil.
Cindy researches
the Figaro and finds out that he was a juggler traveling the land in medieval
times to entertain the people with his performances and tricks. The most beautiful
maiden of every village he visited was given a rose. One day, while visiting the
hometown of our five friends, the mime fell in love with an amiable young girl
who returned his feelings and agreed to marry him. The wrath of a farmer's son,
who wanted the girl for himself, lead to the young girl being wrongfully accused
of witchcraft. She was burned on the stake and the Figaro was imprisoned.
Inconsolable
and full of rage about the murdering of his beloved one, the mime invoked the
devil to give him the power to take revenge. His plea was answered and the mime
was turned into the demonic creature that would later become known as "The Figaro"
due to his choice of music to go with the performance he uses to charm his victims
into following him. Then he kills them, rips out their hearts which he replaces
with roses inserted into the bloody wounds, and takes their souls in the name
of the devil. The legend has it, that to kill the Figaro one would have to rip
out his heart, too.
The friends' fight against the monster is about to
begin...
The Use of Promotional
Trailers in Film Financing
"Nowadays, most people aren't willing
to invest in a film anymore if they've seen nothing more than a treatment. They
want a screenplay right away to know how much making the film will cost. We're
giving them a complete trailer, so they will see how the movie will look like
when it's done. Then we're raising as much money as we can and shoot the film
based on what we have."
Dirk Woiciech
The way screenwriter and director
Dirk Woiciech and producer and managing director of Earth Evolution Picture René
Tiemann have chosen to finance their latest movie project Death Rose is a relatively
new approach to attracting investors and it might as well revolutionize the film
and entertainment industry.
Commonly, trailers are little clips, mostly
ranging from one to four minutes in duration, composed of scenes from the finished
movie and used to motivate the end-consumer to go see a film in the theater or
buy the DVD. In the case of Death Rose, the trailer was produced before the actual
movie. The result is a strange animal not yet widely known (let alone made use
of) inside the business: a "trailer shoot".
Vital scenes from the treatment
for the feature film were chosen to write a screenplay for a promotional trailer
that will fulfill every function of a "conventional" trailer: capture the essence
of the story without giving away too much and make those who will watch it want
to see the complete movie...or finance it.
The shoot was like a very short
short film shoot. It took three days and involved the visualization of everything
the audience expects to see when watching a good horror/mystery movie: interesting,
well-developed characters (admittedly, not something every horror movie has),
good acting (admittedly, also something not every movie of this genre has), an
eerie atmosphere, suspense, shocks, blood, horror, special effects and one of
the most important things: a "villain" that is not only scary but at best also
original and unforgettable.
Klaus Witzge's Figaro got everything it takes
to become a cult character such as A
Nightmare on Elm Street's Freddy Krueger, Halloween's
Michael Myers or Friday
13th's Jason Voorhees. Actually he's more reminiscent of Pennywise from Stephen
King's It, but far from being a copy. No doubt the movie will find an audience
willing to see the film based on the trailer. However: so far there is no film.
Earth Evolution Picture is a young independent film production company
that still partly relies on "other people's money" when producing movies that
require the kind of budget that is needed to adequately adapt a story like Death
Rose for the screen. The function of the promotional trailer is to show potential
investors that Death Rose is a movie which people will pay for to see and by that
provide investors with what they're looking for: a way to make money inside the
film industry.
But the promotional trailer does more than just prove the
quality of the story itself. It also makes it evident that the company which produced
the trailer is able to produce the complete movie as well. The well-used camera
has already captured the quality of the director, the cast and the special-FX
team. The editor and composers have showcased their work in the post-production
of the trailer.
While an experienced investor who is presented a screenplay
will have an impression of how well the story itself might work and how expensive
the movie will be - watching a promotional trailer made by the cast and crew that
will also work together on the complete movie, will present him or her the whole
package and provide an insight into the abilities of everybody involved in the
project and how they're being used in creating something that will do well on
the market.
In case of Death Rose, the movie's promotional trailer will
be screened at film festivals, sent to select potential investors, released to
the press and presented to the public, made available via the internet,...
The
end-consumer is being addressed no less than the primary target group of investors.
The more people want to see the movie the bigger the motivation to invest in its
making.
As soon as a reasonable budget for making Death Rose has accumulated,
pre-production can start. All cast and crew members signed a contract that allows
them to exercise the option of playing the same role in the movie they played
in the promo trailer. Some of them have already declared their intent to star
in the film once it can be made.
The Pros and Cons of Using Promotional
Trailers to Attract Investors
Pros:
- Potential investors will
not have to spend an hour on reading a script and/or treatment to make an informed
decision on whether they find the story interesting and marketable. Watching a
trailer that captures the essence of the story and the feel of the movie will
suffice to make a first impression.
- The trailer will display the abilities
of everybody involved in the project. Ideally, the cast and crew members are officially
attached to the movie, so the investor will be presented a whole package not just
on paper but in action.
- The production company makes it clear that the
project will not be "given away". Those who made the trailer can and will produce
the movie as well.
- Presenting the trailer to the public allows to get
a first impression on how an audience might react to the plot and vital scenes.
Through feedback, improvements can be made before starting to shoot.
-
The more people want to see the movie based on the promotional trailer, the bigger
the motivation to invest in the film's making.
Cons:
- The
production and distribution of a promotional trailer is more expensive than writing
and marketing a treatment and/or screenplay. If too many people fail to invest
in the making of the movie, the money for producing the trailer is lost.
-
Investors might become fixated on the package presented. A cast member quitting
and having to be replaced might cause a withdrawal of money already given, unless
a contract that doesn't allow for this option was accepted.
Death
Rose: The Promotional Trailer Cast and Crew
Writing
|| Articles | Death Rose: On
the Story and the Use of Promotional Trailers in Film Financing | 
|
Web
Design by