ARD6504 – Creative Futures 3 Creative Futures 2013 - Documentary Production for TV & Home Video hosted by David Robinson a Skype Q&A with Anthony Masi

MasiMedia LLC began in 2006 by Anthony Masi, his vision was to produce innovative content for film, television, and DVD in all genres.  Although only a new company MasiMedia already has developed a strong foundation and has a good future ahead of it.  In the 7 years since it began they have worked with National Cinemedia, Anchor Bay Entertainment, Starz Entertainment, The Shout Factory, Paranormal Pictures, and Camelot Films to name a few.

“The company continually strives to work with talented directors, writers and producers to bring impactful and visionary projects to life.”

MasiMedia pioneers a new kind of documentary for the DVD market, a retrospective epic for major horror franchises, their first two projects “His name was Jason: 30 years of Friday the 13th” and “Halloween: 25 years of Terror” have sold hundreds of thousands of copies in over ten different countries.

When I read the programme schedule and found we were having the opportunity to have a Skype Q&A with Anthony Masi I was really pleased, although I am not a major horror fan, his reputation of creating quality documentary films was something I was very much aware of.  David Robinson (Sessional Lecturer in Creative Media) has been friends with Anthony Masi for a number of years, so it seemed fitting that he was a host for the session.

Anthony started by talking about “His name was Jason: 30 years of Friday the 13th” a celebration of the film “Friday the 13th” series.  During the making of this documentary they spoke to between 80 and 90 people about the 12 movie range of the series.  The ensured they spoke to people who worked on the films to discover how they defined the horror genre of the films and how they created the basic template for the slasher genre.

Anthony then went on to explain how he got involved in the media business, in 2002 he worked at a convention for horror, as he has always been a horror enthusiast or as they are termed “Horror Junkies”.  It was at this convention that he came up with the idea of creating Horror Expo’s.

Anthony talked in depth about “Halloween: 25 years of Terror”, made to celebrate 25 years of the film Halloween (1978) written by John Carpenter.  Halloween is about a psychotic murderer institutionalised since childhood for the murder of his sister, he escapes and stalks a teenage girl and her friends whilst his doctor chases him through the streets.  It was released at the Chicago International Film Festival in October 1978 and has a huge following amongst horror fans as a great Horror film and is classed as the first slasher genre film.  Anthony explained how he decided to plan and set up a convention to celebrate the 25th Anniversary, as they had released the 8th film for the 24th Anniversary but had nothing planned for the 25th.  Anthony got as many as the actors, writers and producers to come to the convention, and his film crew recorded the convention, recording interviews with the various actors and crew members but also the attending public.  MasiMedia then set about reviewing all the footage taken and retrospectively discussed how “Halloween” had shaped the horror genre.  The executive producer of Friday 13th told this in interview that without the success of Halloween, Jason and the Hockey mask would not have been born.

Anthony found himself editing the footage and enjoying it so much that he then he founded MasiMedia.  MasiMedia then went on to create a feature length documentary of the extremely successful Halloween film to celebrate its 25th anniversary, the DVD includes over four hours of bonus features.  Anthony through editing had rediscovered his creative spark, and realised that MasiMedia was the future.  Anthony quickly found support for his company as following their next documentary on “Friday the 13th” they signed a local bookstore called Dark Delicacies, which was renowned for specialising in DVD’s and books for the horror genre.  Anchor Bay Entertainment who were also fans of Horror quickly became fans of horror documentaries and gave financial support to the making of Friday the 13th documentary, following the success of the “Halloween” documentary.

Anthony went on to explain that finding the funding to create films is one of the hardest parts especially when you are new in the industry.  Although historically actors do not get paid for appearing in documentaries as they technically aren’t working but just talking about their work, this is changing as the fascination with the film industry is causing more documentaries to be made.

Using film clips is documentaries is not cheap, as you have to pay the production company for use of the clip (8 minutes costs approx $80.000) even though by making a documentary about an iconic film will raise its profile and bring more revenue for the production company, they still charge the documentary maker.  Anthony then went on to explain that this isn’t the only cost, you have to get waivers from all the actors in the scenes granting their authority for the clip to be used, and if the clip has music in it, you also have to get the licence to play the music on the clip.  Anthony said it is due to these added expenses that clips in documentaries are kept to a minimum and are often played without the sound.  You Tube doesn’t have the same legal requirements, as Anthony went on to explain there you can use clips with no legal paperwork of fees cause you are not profiting from making a You Tube documentary.

As a first timer or someone new to the industry it is very difficult to get doors to open, Anthony recommends you use something popular as the fan base and following it has will help open doors for you.
When making a documentary you need to create the right balance between serious moments, funny moments as it is very easy to become academic with the information rather than interesting.  The way to approach each documentary is to create as a unique experience, the approach of tone needs to reflect the subject matter, what works for one will not work for all.

The editing of interviews can be extremely time consuming, each actor, producer etc will often record between 30 and 45 minutes of interview about a chosen film, if you have 90 interviewees for a 90 minute documentary this means you are using less than 1 minute of 45 minute interview, and you can create a documentary that is solely interview after interview you need to break it up with location footage, film clips etc.  Although Anthony did confirm you can use some of the extra footage by creating a Bonus DVD.

Anthony then returned to explain more fully how he really got started in the horror documentary business., yes he did co-ordinate and run a Halloween expo in 2002 for the 25th anniversary but the story really started in 1998, when Anthony started a horror fan website cause he was so avidly into horror.  Anthony explained he used to photograph his horror collection and upload to the website (started caused he initially wanted to learn about HTML web programming) and was soon completing a blog daily, horror fans sent n horror stories they had wrote and soon the fan site was getting popular, so when Anthony announced on the website that he was organising a Halloween convention the tickets sales were soon taking off, and he was delighted and amazed to watch his PayPal account increasing daily, this in turn funded the convention.

Anthony for the convention wrote to the producers of Halloween and asked them to attend, when they accepted this again increased sales as he published it on his website, but the interesting twist was that when the producers saw what was happening they were so impressed they hired Anthony to run their websites and create documentaries for them to use as advertising in the cinema and on television.  Anthony concluded this part by saying Halloween has been an amazing experience for him and it has opened a lot of doors.

Anthony recommended that to make your dream a reality keep knocking on doors, don’t give up, you need a passion for it, it can’t be just a job, and you must really want to do it.  So if you are interested in making documentaries find a project or film that is popular and has a large following as this will help you to get funding and open doors for you.

Anthony confirmed his documentaries are available on DVD and Blue Ray (available on Amazon and other places), but consider a digital potential as with the advent of media via internet, Anthony sees DVD’s etc becoming a thing of the past.  Anthony did have a bad experience with You Tube, when he launched “His name was Jason: 30 years of Friday the 13th” it quickly became the number one pirated films, and quickly had over 150,000 illegal downloads on You Tube, but he was happy to say that’s been resolved however it is a growing concern for any film maker.  Anthony just wishes that the people who download the illegal copy understand what they are doing to the film industry and how they will make people leave the industry and soon films like this won’t be made.

Anthony then passed on his Tips & Tricks for interviewing actors for documentaries.  If possible set them up to occur on the same day, set them to start on the hour, this way you can hire a makeup artist to ensure the actor looks their best (all actors want to look good and sound good).  It enables you to have continuance for your films, with lighting and sound etc.  Anthony just reminded us to beware when he used his Canon 70D, the camera didn’t enjoy working all day and kept threatening to overheat, so try to work with two cameras then you won’t incur this problem.  You might only want a 5 minute interview with the actor but remember no actor wants to only work for 5 minutes so plan to record at least 30 minutes, ask the actor to include the question you ask in their answer (i.e. “How did you get started in the film industry?” becomes “I started in the film industry by….”) this will be beneficial when you come to edit cause you then won’t need to include the questions in the documentary.  Anthony also stressed the importance of asking an actor to talk slower, this normally gives them chance to think of their answers and prevents the unnecessary umm’s and arrr’s which causes you editing problems as the actor invariably moves when saying them.

I really enjoyed this session, as it was great to hear how he had started in the industry, the problems he incurred and overcame, but also the fact that you really felt he wanted to pass on his knowledge to help others get into the industry.   Anthony’s Tips & Tricks and discussions on funding I found really useful as they were from his own experiences, but gave us a practical insight into recording and creating documentaries.

I appreciated the opportunity to hear from Anthony even though he didn’t leave America, to me we benefited from modern technology by having a Skype Q&A and actually felt I got more from the session as we were able to ask questions.

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