By David Grove on November 4, 2014 MovieMaker Magazine
A decade ago, the primary focus of independent horror moviemakers was making a good horror movie,
knowing that if they did their job well, they were virtually guaranteed
to find an audience and make their money back (and then some). Horror
was the Teflon genre—or so it seemed.
“In the last decade it’s gotten cheaper to make movies, and harder to
make money off of them,” says J.T. Petty, writer-director of horror
features
The Burrowers (2008) and
Hellbenders (2012).
“The ‘guarantee’ most people took for granted was the DVD market, and
that’s all but gone.” Today, the business of independent horror
moviemaking has changed dramatically, and while making a good movie is
still paramount, the moviemaker of 2014 must wear other hats just as
well in order to survive: branding expert, distributor, producer,
publicist, sales agent. “And,” as Eduardo Sanchez, director of 1999’s
game-changing
The Blair Witch Project and the upcoming
Exists, says, “most of us didn’t get into this to become distributors.”
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