25 Feb West Contra Costa Filmmaker Spotlights Ups and Downs of Post-Production

West Contra Costa director Alex Zajicek did the bulk of the work himself to get his debut film, “Sorry, We’re Dead,” made in hard copy. (Joe Porrello / The CC Pulse)

By Joe Porrello

About a year ago, director Alex Zajicek finished his first feature-length film, “Sorry, We’re Dead,” shot mostly In West Contra Costa County where he grew up and still lives. It was the first movie filmed primarily in El Sobrante in about 70 years, since the days of the old Park Theatre.

The film has been screened at nearly 20 film festivals, won multiple awards, and become available on top streaming platforms, as well as in physical form.

Zajicek’s favorite screening was the most local, at SF Indie Fest.

“We basically sold out the Roxie Theater — it was a great time,” he said.

At the Seattle Asian American Film Festival, “Sorry, We’re Dead” won the award for Grand Jury Bes Narrative Feature. At Michigan’s Royal Star Festival, it took home the prize for Best Feature Film; at the Comedy Film Festival in Austin, Texas, Best Belly Laugh.

In addition, the film’s star Sara Lee earned a nomination for Breakthrough Female Performance at the NYC Festival of Cinema.

But the rest of post-production was not as rewarding.

“The distribution process is difficult and complex,” said Zajicek. “Most filmmakers I talk to don’t like their distributors.”

He says many directors are promised payments of profit percentages that never come — regardless of a movie’s popularity — while forfeiting ownership of their creation.

“I definitely had a fear of selling my film and losing all control over it,” said Zajicek.

Instead, he used a platform called FilmHub that he says is most highly regarded among indie filmmakers because it takes the smallest fees, is most transparent with the film’s viewing and purchase numbers, and lets directors maintain ownership of their product.

“You do more work like creating posters and providing them with copy, but they do the work of pitching the film to various streaming platforms,” said Zajicek.

And more work is exactly what Zajicek did.

With the film available to stream on major platforms such as the Roku Channel, Tubi, Apple TV  and Amazon Prime Video, his next goal was to release “Sorry, We’re Dead.” in physical format.

Doing all the artwork, coding, and design himself — while using out-of-date technology — Zajicek spent weeks going back and forth with Adobe customer support to make everything come together.

“It was ultimately a big mess just to get the software running, and then there were so many other layers of problems,” he said. “Even just deciding deleted scenes ended up being way more complicated than I thought.”

Other than graphic design advice and a sourced disc and case printer, Zajicek made the DVD and Blu-Ray combo product almost entirely himself.

“It was either going to be me, or it was going to be spending a bunch of money that I didn’t have because I just spent it making the movie,” he said.

Indeed, any post-production costs were paid by Zajicek.

“Whatever money I’m putting in is essentially being thrown into a black hole, and I’m not expecting it to come back,” he said. “Almost no film is profitable — the ones you hear about are, but that’s only less than 1% of films made.”

Of the more than 20 film crews Zajicek has been a part of, he says none have made a significant profit, if any.

Getting the film on hard copy was important to Zajicek both to reach a larger audience and for nostalgic reasons.

“I made the decision partly because I loved physical media when I was young,” he said, “the commentary tracks and just kind of learning about the process behind the scenes — I wanted to do the same thing with my film.”

The two-disc multiformat version of “Sorry, We’re Dead” includes not only deleted scenes but also director and cast commentary, bloopers and two of Zajicek’s short films.

He also printed the movie onto discs to preserve it.

“I feel like in this all-streaming world we live in, so many projects get deleted from catalogues,” said Zajicek.

After writing the first draft about a decade ago, he says finally holding the finished product in his hands felt like a good ending point for the project.

“This is the bow and kind of a sense of accomplishment,” said Zajicek. “I can move on to the next project and know this one is done.”

He hopes to start shooting his next film this year — if finances allow — but he’s still soaking in his achievement of movie No. 1.

“I achieved a life goal; making a feature film is something I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid,” Zajicek said.

“Sorry, We’re Dead” can be purchased at www.aqlex.com/sorryweredead or at Pegasus Books in Berkeley and rented at Video Vortex in San Francisco.