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From Michael Sellers
I just got off the phone with Scott Mansfield at monterey media who called to tell me that Eye of the Dolphin has been selected by Ingram Entertainment, the country’s largest distributor of DVD software, for the “Ingram Winner’s Program” — which is a special program wherein they select 6 independent films per month and give them a special showcase/special push to all of the more than 60,000 outlets where Ingram sells. To put this in context, remember that each month there are more than 200 independent films that go out on DVD, so in essence this puts us in a “top six” formulation with great merchandising and so on. [[Ingram in its literature describes itself as a "distributor" which can be confusing, since they are also referred to in industry literature as a "subdistributor". In our scenario, monterey media is the distributor and ingram a non-exclusive subdistributor who provides major marketing push to a wide number of outlets. As we get closer to DVD release time I'll go into this in more detail. Suffice it to say now that Ingram is a major, major player and getting them behind EOD like this is great.]]
Here’s more about Ingram from their website.
–Nation’s largest distributor of DVD software.
–Leading distributor of video games and related products.
–Leading distributor of audiobooks.
–IEI’s 2006 net sales were derived from 76% DVD, 23% video games, electronics and accessories;
–Grocery and Drug division services over 35,000 storefronts.
–650,000 square feet of office and warehouse space throughout the United States.
–IEI provides support services for Internet retailers including consumer-direct fulfillment.
–IEI provides full Category Management services to its retail partners.
–IEI provides its customers with an efficient way to do business via an award-winning, state-of-the-art, business-to-business website, AccessIngram.com.
IEI creates and maintains personalized websites for its customers under the MyVideoStore.com program.
Ingram Entertainment Inc. services over 10,000 retail accounts including video specialty stores, electronics and video game stores, Internet retailers, drugstores and supermarkets. Leading customers include:
From Michael Sellers
Yesterday I had an interesting conversation with an investor who raised a good question that I would like to answer more comprehensively here.
The question was — if EOD cost $5M to shoot and promote, how can Way of the Dolphin, also budgeted at $5M overall, be accomplished within budget considering that the WOD package also includes a) feature film, b) docu, c) dolphin research project, and d) web portal/webisodes and e) at least one higher level cast member to boost the cast.
First, nothing’s easy and this won’t be easy, but part of what the person in my position needs to do is always find ways to increase production efficiency (translation: save money) and get more and more out of every dollar that we spend for production. The short answer is that there are technological advances that allow us to save substantial cost in the production, and particularly the post production, of the feature film; plus there were financing costs for EOD that will not apply to Way of the Dolphin, plus there were aspects of marketing/promotion where, having done it once, we can increase efficiency. I’ve been taking all of this into consideration and have a high degree of confidence that we can do it — and I’ve never had a situation in 15 movies where we went overbudget by more than 5%, so there’s an experience factor backing this up.
Having said that — I believe this is an area that’s worth some extended discussion — more than I have time for in this morning’s blog.
But what I want to do today is first of all describe, as background, one of the most instructive experiences I ever had in my life was when I was, through a twist of fate, put in charge of a world class manufacturing operation for O’Gara Hess and Eisenhardt (which is now known as Centigon). The products being manufactured were armored vehicles for VIP’s including heads of state (Ogara is famous for doing armored vehicles for all US Presidents from Truman to Clinton), etc. This was my first exposure to the way manufacturing engineers relentlessly grind down the costs of creating a product such as — in this case — what we called the “Level 4 Up-Armored Suburban”, which was the top selling vehicle Ogara had at the time. (Ogara also, by the way, makes the up-armored Humvees used by the US military in Iraq, although this was done in other plants.)
Anyway …. here’s what I saw unfold. At the outset, our cost per unit was $110,000 which included $40,000 for the “base unit” (i.e. the original Chevy Suburban), plus all the materials ($35,000) and labor (1600 hours @ 25/hour=$40,000). What I saw unfold over a period of two years was how the manufacturing engineers managed to reduce the materials cost from $35,000 to $22,000 by and, more remarkably, reduce the assembly hours from 1600 hours to 400 hours. The net result is that the cost of the unit dropped from $110,000 to $77,000 through imagination, relentless attention to every detail, searching out new sources of supply, and streamlining the assembly process. And along the way — the product improved, actually got better.
And it kind of taught me to understand the mantra — better, faster, cheaper.
I’ve tried to bring that kind of thinking to the process of production but we are usually hindered by the fact that each film is different — new personnel, new locations, new situations — and usually, the same technology.
Anyway, more on this in coming days — but I wanted to start the discussion today.
From Michael Sellers
Eye of the Dolphin continues to have a good extended “move-over” phase, with bookings in 3-5 theaters each week. This weekend one of the theaters added is in Louisville, plus some in Colorado. I will have details later today or tomorrow. One of the better bookings coming up is Minneapolis on October 19th with 3 and possibly 4 theaters in that market. We will give it a good push on that weekend with the goal of getting holdovers and/or achieving numbers that will give us a “bump” in bookings coming out of Minneapolis. (Having 3-4 theaters in one market opens up promotional possibilities that are not as available when it is a single theater in a market.)
Also, the Melbourne International Film Festival in Melbourne Florida is going to feature EOD at the festival and then we will play theatrically in Melbourne immediately following the festival.
It looks like we will be able to keep getting bookings throghout the fall and we and monterey media are scouring for opportunities to expand it.
From Michael Sellers
Ken Levasseur, the architect of the 3rd Phase Alternative program, will be visiting us in Los Angeles the week of August 1 for additional work in several areas. He will be working with Carly on underwater skills; plus doing research with a supplier who is helping design the monofin dol-fin suit for use in the film. We are also going to arrange some interaction with some other dolphin specialists, and some story discussions. More on this later.
From Michael Sellers
Elsewhere I’ve provided links to the articles from the NY Times on Ken Balcomb and the stranding of 17 whales and dolphins on Abaco and Grand Bahama in 2000 — an event which the Navy did eventually acknowledge was caused by Navy sonar.
Separately in my discussions with Ken Levasseur he talked about the fact that the Navy had developed acoustic weaponry designed to crush the hull of an enemy sub — and that this was based upon principles discovered via dolphin research. Sounded pretty sci-fi and I guess I was a little skeptical (no offense, Ken!), so I started doing some searching today and it looks like Ken was absolutely right.
First, I came across an article that caught my eye. It’s from “infomaticsonline”.
US Navy develops underwater acoustic weapon
Whales and dolphins seen running for the deeps
Iain Thomson, vnunet.com 04 May 2007
The US Navy has applied for a patent on a new form of weapon that uses sound to kill.
The system uses strong sonar pulses that travel through the water and create a phenomenon known as ‘acoustic remote cavitation’.
This is a large pressure bubble that causes shockwaves that can destroy things in its path.
“A method is disclosed of generating a predetermined field of cavitation around a remote target in an underwater environment,” the patent application states.
“The method includes identifying a remote target location, generating at least two acoustic beams from an underwater acoustic source, and controlling the generated acoustic beams to intersect with each other at the remote target location and thereby create a destructive cavitation field at the intersection of the beams.”
The blast range of the field is estimated at 100 metres and the patent claims an effective range of one kilometre.
The method sounds similar to existing thermobaric weapons which spray out a fine mist of fuel into the air before igniting and use the resulting air pressure blast to destroy the targets.
End of Story
So I did a little more cybersleuthing and went to a site that tracks Patent Applications, where I found the Navy’s application for patent on this item. Here’s what I came up with:
This is a link to the US Patent application by the US Navy entitled “Acoustic Remote Cavitation as a Destructive Device”. The abstract reads: “A method is disclosed of generating a predetermined field of cavitation around a remote target in an underwater environment. The method includes the steps of identifying a remote target location, generating at least two acoustic beams, each at a high power output, from an underwater acoustic source, and controlling the generated acoustic beams to intersect with each other at the remote target location and thereby create a destructive cavitation field at the intersection of the beams. The acoustic source and target can be located in unconfined underwater space and at a distance of at least 100 m apart.”
If you go to the link there are tabs that take you to the actual Patent Application, which was approved on April 17, 2007.
I went on for a few more minutes of surfing and came across Princeton study entitled: “Acoustic Weapons – A Prospective Assessment” which was also pretty eye-opening. It provides a pretty long list of acoustic weapons under development not only in the US but in the UK and elsewhere. Many of these are anti-personnel weapons — some designed to incapacitate (for example – one in particular was designed to try and deliver non-lethal doses of acoustic injury to help in riot control) and some are lethal.
Anyway — not sure whether or if any of this fits into anything that will come into play with Way of the Dolphin — but it is certainly thought provoking stuff……
From Michael Sellers
We are planning as part of our work going forward to create an internet “portal” site that would be content-rich and serve as a magnet for people who are interested in anything along the lines of underwater exploration; marine mammals; etc. The trick with something like this is to come up with something that is precise enough so that it has a strong identity, but broad enough to bring in numbers of eyeballs.
In working on this, we started with “dolphins” since that’s the very specific focus of our movie, but then have been working out way out from that very narrow focus to try and identify something wherein dolphins would be an important subset of a larger whole — but a whole which would not get so big as to have no focus.
The thought process goes something like this:
dolphins>dolphins/whales>marine mammals>undersea life>undersea explore>oceans
Right now that’s where we’ve landed in the analysis. The thinking is that “oceans” is a very broad term which would allow us to attract people with a wide variety of interests, but all held together by an interest in various aspects of oceans.
Now … we aren’t the first to arrive at this place. Go to ocean.com and you will see a good example of how someone has had a simlar idea and implemented it reasonably well. It is in fact designed to attract a large part of the demographic we’re after — but it is kind of what I would term “flat” and “staid” …. kind of “armchair traveler” in tone, rather than vibrant, alive, etc. The interesting thing is that there are ways we can use the work they’ve done to benefit our efforts to capture the same demographic, and we will certainly be doing so.
We’ve reserved some domain names. My favorite at the moment is “oceans360.net”….trying to get “oceans360.com” but they want $5,000 for it and I’m not sure it’s worth that. I got “oceans360.net” for ten bucks……
From Michael Sellers
Okay. I don’t want to make too much of this but I just re-read the Ken Balcomb story which is linked in the previous post and I found it just as compelling this time as I did a few years ago when it first was published. In movie terms — Balcomb is the classic “willful protagonist” — the guy who knows what he wants and will knock down walls to make it happen. What I had forgotten was that he succeeded to the point of actually getting the Navy to admit that yes, their sonar caused the beachings and deaths. This is a minor but in some strange way emotionally satisfying victory for a guy who gave up a lot in his relentless pursuit of getting them to do this.
Anyway — here is the Joint Report put out by the Navy and the Department of Commerce and it’s groundbreaking because the Navy admits….they did it.
I have a kind of dual reaction to this …. on the one hand I find it compelling — on the other hand I feel that to be a compelling subject for a movie it really needs to resonate in some larger way. Remember the context for this — post 9/11, Navy doing exercises, America at risk …..So on one level it’s like, what are you complaining about ….killing a few whales is no big deal in comparison to saving American lives, etc, etc….On the other hand — there is this huge overarching issue of — who are we? Where do we fit in? Are we the supreme players and all else is subordinate to that? Or do we exist in a continuum that makes us part of, not apart from, the world we inhabit?
Part of what you try to do in a movie is present an argument — two sides, each compelling, but one which you ultimatley stand behind. To me this seems to offer something interesting….but the challenge is to make it resonate at a high level with issues in the post “Inconvenient Truth” world we inhabit.
And in closing — I should note. Many of you have said that you find it interesting to get a sense of what’s going on between my (our) ears as we try to figure things out. I’m encouraged by this to share with you preliminary half-formed thoughts like this. I would just caution that at this point these are just musings that are part of the process of sifting through ideas and possibilities en route to a firm decision about an approach to a story or subject matter.
From Michael Sellers
I’m starting to do some digging and thinking about story elements for “what comes next”. I’m not ready to start connecting the dots — but I am starting to come across some “dots” that are interesting. So — without saying that this is an area that will specifically figure in Way of the Dolphin, I thought you might enjoy starting to see some of the things that I’m coming across that are interesting to me.
One topic that is definitely interesting is the probable connection between navy mid-range sonar and beachings of dolphins and whales. There’s a lot “out there” in the media about this. Look up Ken Balcomb on the internet — he’s one of the top authorities on this and was the subject of a fascinating New York Times Magazine article a couple of years ago. The link I just gave you is a link to that article and it’s fascinating reading. There was a time when I was considering modeling Hawk in EOD on Balcomb, but ultimately I decided not to go down that road.
The issue of Navy Sonar causing mass beachings of whales and dolphins is also gaining some celebrity attention — which among other things means that we might be able to get some low-cost, high-value celebrity support if we highlight this subject matter.
So…with that as background — here’s an article that just appeared in the Navy Times. (By the way, Navy Times is not an official publication of the Navy.)
James Taylor joins anti-sonar campaign
By Philip Ewing – Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Sep 12, 2007 13:08:07 EDT
Marine mammals learned Tuesday they’ve got a friend — in James Taylor.
The gentle-voiced folk singer-songwriter has joined an environmentalist campaign to stop the Navy from training with medium- and low-frequency sonar because he and other critics say it’s cruel to the ears of whales and other marine mammals.
In a letter posted on the National Resources Defense Council’s Web site, Taylor wrote that he’s not anti-military — his father was a Navy doctor and his family “loves” the Navy — but that he’s against the “acoustic onslaught” that he says so afflicts undersea animals that they beach themselves to escape it.
“Imagine a sound so disorienting or so painful that you jump out of the sea and die on the beach rather than be subjected to it for another minute! From a whale’s point of view, the Navy’s sonic assault must seem like torture,” Taylor wrote.
Taylor is the most recent celebrity to join the NRDC’s campaign against Navy sonar training; other high-profile backers include ex-“James Bond” Pierce Brosnan; Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong; and Laurie David, ex-wife of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” star Larry David.
The Navy has acknowledged in certain past cases that its sonar causes pain to marine mammals, and commanders are required to make sure there are no whales or other marine animals in areas where it plans to train with sonar. But Navy officials refuse to impose a wholesale ban on using sonar, and point to research that shows whales will beach themselves for a range of causes, not just sonar or other loud noises.
The Navy also won its most recent court decision concerning the use of sonar. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Aug. 31 overturned a lower court’s ruling that banned sonar training.
