Step 1: Choosing a Production Vehicle
Thursday, February 26th, 2009
All right, I’ve made some rash decisions in the past, and you might think that packing 2 camera packages, lighting, grip, sound and personal gear into a VW Beetle to travel across Canada in the dead of winter for 2 months might be a little… you know.
And you might be right. But rest assured, aside from the obvious entertainment value (nailbiting stories about cruising past overturned semi’s on the Coquihalla don’t pack the same punch if I’m motoring securely by in my wife’s Pathfinder), and the sentimental appeal (who wouldn’t want to traverse our great nation in a Beetle?), I have good reasons for choosing the Beetle. Damn good ones…
It’s a documentary, and I am funding it (for now) by myself. Documentaries, unless they have bankable marketing elements, lose their sales appeal as budgets rise. It’s all good to try and fund a 5 star round-the-world trip by taking a camera, calling it a travel doc, and getting investors to pay for it, but unless you’re Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in a film sponsored by Speedo… good luck! What investors and distributors want, aside from marketable elements, is a sense of fiscal responsibility… that you have done your homework and have found the most efficient, yet entertaining way to tell your story. In a word; value.
The Beetle is great on gas, which for this first trip will be about 15% of my budget as opposed to 35% in the other car… a definite value! Plus, the Beetle has a bitchin’ stereo, and if you’ve ever done the Edmonton to Winnipeg leg of the cross Canada trek, you’ll know how important that is.
One might even call it a safety feature. m:)
PS. A personal note; we all have aspirations and dreams that we have given up on or put away because dreams tend to speak to our deepest fears (success not monsters). Dreams tend to die because, let’s face it; it’s a lot easier to make an excuse than to make an effort. The film I’m making is about a man who faces his fears for a living… every day. If his story, and my telling of it, inspires someone to stretch a little, face a fear, dream a dream… then I will be a happy man!
