That’s right, finally finished.

I’ve been slack posting the news here but Valerie updated the copperheadeditions.com site with a pre-order page for the DVD.

Why have I been slack? Well, I was working on finding a streaming provider that worked without having to force people to sign up to a service they will never use and who will constantly send nagging promotional emails. I looked at Amazon, Vimeo, iTunes and a host of smaller distributers but the one that came closest to my goal was Distrify. You don’t need to sign up, you can pay by card or PayPal directly from the player, they don’t take weeks to approve or encode my film, they don’t take an unreasonable percentage from the cost of the sale or require a fee to use their service, I can embed the player in any website I choose and the final cherry on the cake is I can set the cost low. £3.49 (and equivalent in other currencies) is the lowest the service allows. So that’s how much it costs to stream.

I decided to use the Copperhead Editions website Valerie and I set up last year to sell prints and artwork. After the 17th February 2014 you will be able to watch the film here.

The same week I found Distrify, I found a local-ish DVD duplication service with an insanely quick turnaround time. So I set to work figuring out how to encode a DVD with real menus, bonus footage etc. I used Adobe Encore to create the menus because I didn’t want generic looking screens that looked like it came straight from iMovie/iDVD.
I originally planned to set up the DVD when all parts of the film were finished and released but after speaking with a few people who wanted to watch the film but lived in areas with poor broadband connections or who travelled a lot, I decided to look into small-run replication and it was more affordable and less difficult to create that I previously thought.

A note regarding cost:
I’ve tried to make this film as affordable as possible and try to give you value for money. I know £15 seems expensive for a 40minute film when you can regularly buy feature films for a third of that. I don’t have the financial backing of the hollywood system and this project was entirely funded from my own savings. Kinda like a time-consuming hobby. I know I will never come close to breaking even. That was never my goal. I’ve worked on this project for 2 years now. It really was a labour of love in the truest sense.

For the DVD package to pay for itself, including flyers, stickers and physical production (the DVD, case, inlay and booklet) I need to sell at least half of the batch I order from the replication company. My first order was 100 copies. Many of them will be given to people who helped me or are featured in the film. We also don’t get paid to package orders and take them to the post office. That’s just the physical product.

Let’s not talk about the equipment, software and hours of work that was necessary to make this thing happen.

I wouldn’t have it any other way. So far the response from my peers has ben incredible. I’m happy that the things I thought were important have been recognised by those who’ve already seen it.