Indie Film Thoughts

There is a lot of concern at the moment with the BBC daytime drama Doctors being cancelled, it was a mainstream way for people to gain a foothold in the industry and seen as a staple of daytime TV for many. People are naturally, wondering what this means for those entering the media market from the cast side to crew.

Changes to the market are always difficult to navigate and people are now looking for alternative avenues within the mainstream but overlooking the potential of commercializing ideas in the indie sector and utilizing avenues that are already in place such as HOD TV and the fantastic New Village Video whose platform is focused on the indies and the classic old school “straight to video” movies or the more familiar “streaming service original.”

Talks are underway for collective motion to pull new and emerging talent into pools and building something fresh. What this means is the indie scene has an opportunity to build a new network, a new platform and create.

With this in mind The Lost Creatives is willing to support and to start we want to share the books and sites we feel will be a major benefit to this:

Distribution and sales avenues.

HOD TV submissions a specialist in horror and thriller, the terms are fair and commercialization is possible, a full breakdown of the requirements is available, just drop us an email and we can share the details.

New Village Video, a friendly, open minded team who accept all genres of film and advocate for the indie scene while supporting and selling projects with success.

Books

Don’t F*ck Up Your No Budget Movie by Ivan Peric, a fantastic and personal insight into creating a feature film with a low budget, Ivan talks about the perils and offers up his own tried and tested path to creating a film and getting it sold by planning strategically. A real must read and a part of the lost library of books.

Opening Doors For Working Class Actors by Patricia Jones, a wonderful and open insight into the world of an actor giving you a clear and honest way to start out as an actor. Patricia Jones is a wonderful lady who talks honestly about her journey and gives pointers to those who would otherwise feel they cannot make the leap into the arts.

Cast and Crew

vShowcards, an alternative to the main networking and actors/crew sites, vshowcards is actor run and supported by various casting agents, production houses across the world, and offers a cohesive platform for you to market yourself to the media landscape.

Over the next few weeks we will be exploring avenues of marketing and other elements of the creative industry with a view to showcasing the potential for the indie scene.

The Lost Creatives Christmas

In the last few weeks of 2022 (where has the time gone!!??) The Lost Creatives has gone from strength to strength, don’t get me wrong there have been pitfalls, but overall we have been able to create a network of people that is amazing, offer PR and other forms of support to fellow creatives that was after all the goal of the site.

Christmas for us, will be a time of relaxation with a heavy focus on what will be done in the new year, with commercial work and PR for clients having been the heaviest part of our workload, our creative director JamesC, will be returning to work as a makeup artist on a more open basis and taking on smaller projects to bolster the public side of his work and spending time on some personal projects that will be featured not just here on the Lost Creative but his own site and our partner site The Lost Agency who will be taking a heavier hand in our own marketing and internal affairs. *This means we will be returning to Instagram soon!

We have had some disappointments lately, with meetings and reaching out to potential collaborators falling through mainly due to scheduling issues which as you can imagine as a freelancer, has been a pain, however that will not stop us from pushing forward and with our ties to HOD TV, we will be focusing on that for the future and tackling things in a much more hard-line manner.

Our passion for the arts is not waning, far from it, we have collated magazines, festivals and other information that we intend to make full use of for ourselves, up until now we have put a vast amount of time into clients and not been able to put the lost concept at the forefront but, we are incredibly proud of the fact people have trusted the team.

In the next few weeks we will be releasing our goals and a schedule for this through the site along with a few snippets of art projects to test the waters.

For the moment we are going to allow ourselves a little breathing space for the festive season and release more information soon and options to get involved.

Working The Makeup Dept Budget With Desired FX

In the world of film and TV, budgets can be the biggest constraint alongside time, to the creative process. For the makeup department often this means we have to search out cost-efficient options to create a particular look or downgrade the process to fit the money available, thankfully, there are services like Desired FX that can help with this and give you a budget-friendly, professional add-on to your kit that will push the department ahead.

From silicone wounds to scars, tattoos including bruising and standard designs, Desired FX offers up a range of products that will work for most scenarios and even offers a studio custom service to allow further scope for creativity on a budget.

With increasing options in the digital market from Amazon to HOD TV (Horror on Demand), the indie film sector has never been so popular with the on-demand film/TV sector becoming bigger year on year, but budgets being tight in the circuit, having the option of a team like Desired FX who can provide cost-efficient options for the FX department, there is scope to bring a different dimension as a department head working smart with the available funds.

To learn more about Desired FX or to purchase see:

Desired FX shop ( 10% off on all products with the promo code "JamesClark10")

Desired FX Instagram.

Desired FX Facebook.

Creating a Story and Building the Brand

When Lost Creatives was first started it was about a journey and finding a path, in that time we have covered a wide range of people’s stories and given a voice to some amazing filmmakers who have helped bring our creative narrative as well as their own, to the public domain.

Over the next few months we plan to add to the stories in a more visual sense, with so much of our work having to be held due to publication terms, it will be fun to finally be able to showcase the work that has been done in the background by our creative director and head of makeup JamesC. Some new portfolio pieces are being finalized with the JamesC portfolio site (frustratingly) taken longer than planned we will be reverting back and reworking the current site with the new content and bringing in a much more cohesive workflow across the sites we already have with the additions of showcasing his work as a photographer into the bargain.

When it comes to production, there is some light at the end of a long tunnel, we have chosen two TV shows to produce along with two short films that we will use as entry back into the market, and with our work with some Amazingly talented filmmakers when it comes to cost, we have been able to work the angles and find additional avenues of marketing, sales, and of course open up our team to different potential projects outside of horror and thriller.

Naturally, we will be working with vshowcards who have been fantastic and are rapidly gaining ground in the production realm and have even got Bollywood on their side which is an amazing coup for the team.

In the next few weeks, we will be making a return to social media with the Lost Creatives and Lost Agency Instagram being updated with new work and some experimental shots we have been playing around with as part of a planned concept.

More news and updates on The Lost coming soon.

Motivational Changes

With so many changes happening in the world of cinema, our predictions are starting to look more and more like a reality as people move toward digital platforms and the rise of the Indie film scene as smaller companies step to the plate and create films and TV projects that are specific to the likes of Prime and Amazon in general and of course our own personal favorite HOD TV.

Part of this for us has been about rethinking the websites and the content, we have made some small steps in this and will be taking our creative director’s portfolio site fully offline for a few days to reorganize and rebrand to fit upcoming projects.

While this is happening we did pull out some images that for us are a marker of what we are aiming to showcase and have a very commercial leaning that suits our style and future plans. What we have also been doing is talking to other small companies via Twitter, where we have been making a push toward support for Indie film of all stripes and will be publishing interviews with some fantastic small companies who have been talking about their pre-production work for their projects and how they are working within the guidelines. taking time to talk to distributors about what is out there for us as a team.

Naturally, for us, we are going to be looking at web TV first and foremost and have looked into various festivals and options to promote with our ultimate plan being commercially driven.

Film Festival Tie-ins

In the run-up to the festive season, we were talking to various small film festivals gathering information, and planning for the future. Naturally, this meant opening accounts with sites like Film Freeway and doing some in-depth checks and planning around our goals for the company. What this has led to will be announced soon with full details of how and where we will work. One of the festivals (in Eastern Europe) reached out to us and we are now talking in terms of being a media partner which we do love as a concept. Film and TV, particularly web TV, is something we as a team are keen to push forward with now more than ever.

This does not mean we will be abandoning our editorial work, far from it, we will work with magazines on a continuous basis as part of our marketing strategies but will not be the sole aspect of what we do. In fact, we have found a very interesting film crew based magazine that looks really promising in marketing terms so we will be writing inhouse articles to publish and take ad space later in the year.

Our plans are coming together well and there is some diversification in motion. More announcements and news will be released on the completion of the contracts. We are excited about the prospects of 2021 and look forward to showcasing the hard work that has already been done in the background.

A New Year A New Plan

In many respects, 2020 has been a lost year for a lot of people with the world changing dramatically. For us, it has opened up doors to a whole host of new potential avenues and given us a chance to reevaluate what we have been doing and look at how we can fit ourselves into the market long-term. To do this we have broken our work into key areas that will be public and those which will be kept private to the inhouse team.

In the public sense, we have two key areas we will be focusing on in the first quarter of the year:

Editorial and print: we have been putting this on the backburner in some respect taking time to look at locations, edit work already shot, slowly build up a series of images and work that will be released over the early part of 2021 with additional planned small shoots that will be a combination of artistic and commercial. *This will include product placement in behind the scenes imaging and video with brands such as Lord and Berry, Mykitco, and Brushwork Cosmetics to start. We are open to new potential brand partners for projects contact the team to discuss.

Film and TV: something that we have been doing since the start of Lost Creatives is supporting a range of festivals including Micromania and The Nepal Cultural and Film Centers' own festival. We do have plans to partner with a European festival and will reveal details on that soon.

Our initial goal is to work on 3 projects that will be shorts, designed specifically to go to festivals and as an opening gambit for our planned digital TV shoots in the horror/thriller market (for Which we have already spoken to several distributors and have options in place including the HOD TV route which is our number 1 choice).

In the coming months, our projects will be smaller in nature to help push forward and test the waters of the market and expand out. Our ties to South Asia (Including Nepal Film Production and our key actor contacts in India), will play a heavy part in our work as we are questioning how we will be able to work in Scotland and the UK in general.

Each of the current websites: JamesC mua. Lost Project and of course Lost Creatives will be receiving overhauls and updated images across the galleries, and the welcome pages, additional sites are being planned for our film/TV work to keep the Creatives solely about marketing and the background elements we have built.

Further updates will be released over the course of the month. We are really excited about our plans for 2021 and look forward to pushing the boundaries of our work.

Festive Thoughts From The Lost Creatives

Featured brand Lord and Berry (UK)

A slight departure from our normal scheduling but we wanted to get this post out before Christmas day and say a big thank you to all our supporters, the brands, and of course our readers as we share our final thoughts for 2020. From here we will be focusing heavily on the future and what will be happening for the team in the new year. We have been busy over the last few weeks setting in motion concepts, finalizing and in some cases reediting images for the various websites we run, there will also be a run of work that is designed specifically for editorial (we have some really fantastic magazines we have shot work for). We do want to look at the festival circuit, there will be an announcement of a new film festival media partnership in the new year, the goal of this will be to boost our video content and bring a little attention to talent. Naturally, these projects will be small crews/cast to keep the costs down and very much in the kitchen sink drama territory which will develop into other areas and our ultimate goal of tackling the horror/thriller market for TV, scripts are already earmarked for this.

One of our biggest supporters and our favorite writer, has offered us a development contract that will expand our portfolio to include video games for a variety of platforms which is an exciting prospect.

Our creative Director; JamesC, is working around different ideas and is editing, shooting, and managing our background work such as the brand placement and of course stock levels.

We will of course keep you all in the loop of changes and updates through the website and till then we want to, again, thank you for the support and wish you a Merry Christmas.

Upcoming Changes to The Lost Plan

With the new rules and mandates in place for England coming soon and those in Scotland already started, we are disappointed that it has meant we are going to have to make massive changes to the way we work now and how we will continue forward. In the coming weeks, we will be updating the websites and blogs to reflect changes to the business and our goals.

The Lost Stories will continue as it stands with the support of our various PR contacts and the JamesC website along with the Lost Creatives will be looking at how we can work within the rules and regulations outlined and taking the time over the next 14 days to talk with our remote teams in Nepal and India to discuss options. Our ultimate goals will not change and we will continue to work diligently and professionally in the capacity of media with new websites and extension to our business being set up including the registration of our production company that will be solely aimed at the Horror and Thriller market along with the fantastic team at HOD TV.

By 2021 we will be a completely different company within the media realms and pushing toward what is an old school method of working which we will reveal soon. While we put these changes in place we do have projects that we will be working on alongside our normal business and look forward to what the future has to offer.

It is time to start with a new way of looking at the business we are in and thinking differently to move into the future. Additional training is being looked at alongside the certification our creative director has taken for safe sets and makeup safety with Dermalogica., we are looking at production training short courses for the longterm benefit of the team.

Editorial Makeup Submission Featuring World Fashion Media News

Frustration is really kicking in for a lot of the creative talent out there (understandably) and it is gratifying to know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel for those who are returning to salons and for the photographic community this also means we can push forward with plans and marketing strategies with fresh, exclusive content for the digital market. The online magazine and long-standing supporter of the Lost Concept, World Fashion Media News has been hard at work creating new avenues for creative talents and revamping the website to better showcase artistic work from catwalks to individuals. Submitting your work has become a much easier prospect in the last few years and we (like many others) are getting our work collated ready to submit, promote and showcase our inhouse creative talents such as creative director JamesC.

While we are going down the exclusive route there are options to have editorials, covers, and tears with magazine logos that can be used to create not only a stellar portfolio of work at a low cost but a chance to experiment with new ideas and stretch your artistic muscles.

Our primary focus is going to be about exclusive content and will be shown across websites and as you can imagine with our ties to the HOD TV team, Horror concepts will be played alongside some other fashion portraits and of course we will be doing a full series of images and conceptual work with exclusive to our websites in amongst this.

In our capacity as a creative team and with the support of our partners in Nepal Film Production, we are structuring this to be a wider campaign based concept with a series of long and short term goals to be met over the next 12 months.

*To learn more about submitting to World Fashion Media News Click here.

Project Planning With Nepal Productions

We really do owe a debt of gratitude to our team in Nepal especially Digbijaya Bharati from the Nepal Film Production team, who has been patient during the lockdown and happy to continue working via Whatsapp so we can as a team which gets our work moving forward, not just with media but other elements and promotional avenues we are exploring. As our regular readers will be aware our plans are geared toward Intenet TV, in particular, the horror and Thriller genres with a sideline in the editorial market to boost marketing via social accounts and strategic placement of ads.

For us, it has become planning and strategy that allows us to focus our energies in new areas of business and develop further as a business although at heart we still love makeup work and our creative director JamesC is part and parcel of the ongoing plans, we are all on board with changes being made to the business and have some smaller elements such as the facecharts being brought back in (the JamesC facechart will be available again via his site soon).

We already have several scripts in play for development in the realm of TV and will be working on a range of new images and behind the scenes work while the weather is good and allows us flexibility, the new guidelines for production work will be a big part of how we move forward ensuring everyone involved is safe and the work is handled carefully.

As our previous blog has stated we are going to also look at skills development for our in-house team to allow us to multitask and keep the crew requirements to a minimum and safe.

*Change in how the media and fashion industry will be massive and we are doing all we can to ensure that our staff is safe, the team (both the UK and South Asian) are up to date on the latest changes.

Internet TV and The Future of The Lost Creatives

We have been making calls again today to discuss a range of different business matters with our partners at Nepal Film Production, one of the subjects that got covered extensively was the future plans of The Lost Team. Naturally, we have talked in detail about the editorials for marketing and the video plans but it was the option of Internet TV that really captured the focus of our energy and where we are looking at for the future of our company. There has been a lot of research done into this and we feel that for us, TV (series based concepts) is the best route for us to go and we have been looking at keeping it genre-based. Obviously, Horror and Thriller are the two primary categories we are really looking at as we feel this is without question where we can make the most impact hence our teaming with HOD TV as a partner.

The biggest advantage we see in focusing our talents, efforts, and energies in this area is really about more than just sales avenues but how people are now viewing content ranging from streaming to TV in your home or directly to a tablet/smartphone you use on the move. In our research (and more than a little experience of traveling for business), we found that train and bus journeys, in particular, could be tedious and worked out a time frame along with our writers, that would suit this: taking a 40 to 45-minute journey to work you can potentially view a full TV series over the course of a working week of 5 days, it’s possible to watch a 25-minute episode at each end of the journey to and from work will not only kill time but gives you the space to find a seat, get settled and have the program ready to roll.

For ourselves, this is a method we feel works best and there will be extended features and standalone projects over time but our primary concern is to be TV projects.

If your are interested in learning more about HOD TV as a consumer click here or if you have a film/TV project you would like to sell check the HOD TV link on our partner’s page.