27/10/2005 - "Low budget is better "

Cineuropa : H. P. Lovecraft - The Terror Within is a low budget film. Where did financing come from?
Andrea Marotti: The film cost 300,000 euro for 4 weeks of shooting, which also included location scouting. In fact, the film developed as we were shooting. Fifty percent of the budget came from Digital Desk. Minerva Pictures became fascinated by the project and came on with the other fifty percent, for post-production.

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Therefore, you received no institutional financing.
No. H. P. Lovecraft - The Terror Within is the first film to come about from a collaboration between Digital Desk, Minerva Pictures and FilmMaker, for the production of low budget projects shot directly in English by young Italian directors who aspire to DVD distribution in the US market. In order to accomplish this, we cannot depend on the drawn out waiting periods and modalities of public financing. You can work better with a low budget, you are projected towards the international market, where you can earn back your money. As opposed to the weak Italian market.

Will H. P. Lovecraft - The Terror Within have an alternate distribution in cinemas?
It will be distributed in digital beginning on Halloween night in at least ten cinemas that screen DV in Rome, Florence, Bologna, Milan, Bolzano, Rovigo, Turin... It’s a kind of promotional tour that will serve to make the film known.

So you’re focused, above all, on selling the DVD. What reasons induce alternative productions to shun the path of cinema distribution?
There is, first of all, a financial reason. A film plays in a cinema so that people will see it, but people go to the movies less and less. And if a film does poorly in the cinemas, it becomes 'burned,' in a way. From a strategic point of view, home video is the best choice, the democratization of distribution.