Fourteen months ago at the Galway Film Fleadh in Ireland, my producer Gary Hoctor and I sat opposite Ted Hope. We were pitching our 72 Hour Movie project and Ted was listening intently. The majority of the producers and financiers we met in the large hall that day listened intently, but unfortunately none could offer us money. Admittedly, Ted helped us a great deal by giving a few pointers, along with fellow American Richard Abramowitz; many of the Europeans only offered tea and sympathy. A year later our 72 Hour Movie project ‘The Ballad of Des & Mo’ was in the audience top ten at the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF). So how did we get from the rejection in Galway to Melbourne in those twelve months?
Month: September 2010
By James Fair
One month ago I led a team of filmmakers (of varying experience) into shooting and editing a feature length movie upon RED in 72 hours, and then screening it to a festival audience at the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) in Australia. The purpose was to demystify the filmmaking process and illustrate that it could be done differently. The film ‘The Ballad of Des & Mo’ has been deemed a success by those involved as it successfully played to a sell-out audience at the Australian Centre for Moving Image and made it into the Top Ten Audience Favourites of the entire festival. This is no small feat considering we only screened once, with only a fraction of the budget of the other films, and filmed within three days of our screening. Over five posts for Truly Free Film, I want to share some of my findings from the process.
Watching my business partner’s production of Anton Corbijn’s THE AMERICAN the other night, I was struck by how few truly cool American films there are. The American is certainly one, but cool is an aesthetic that few truly dare to tread. The cool that I refer to, is not something that is just neat or novel. My cool differs from the way my son uses the word.
Cool is a committed style. Cool is a discipline. Cool embraces both content and all the elements of execution. In a cool movie, everything other than cool is truly secondary, and ideally non-existent. Cool movies thrive on an existential protagonist. Cool is about the sustain and not the flash.
What are the cool American films of relatively recent vintage?
- The American
- The Limey
- Stranger Than Paradise
- Out Of Sight
- Jackie Brown
This list is far from complete. What have I forgotten? Yet, the real question is “why are there so few truly cool films?”.
I recently had the pleasure of coming across this fine bit of reading, and I thought it summed up our current state of the film biz quite well. And heck, it may even protect you from some liabilities down the road…
The Parties hereby acknowledge that there is presently no executed agreement with any distributor to distribute the Picture. The success of the Picture will be dependent upon the Company’s ability to complete the Picture, the attractiveness of the final product to distributors and the distributors’ willingness to commit substantial sums to promote the Picture successfully. The Company will not have the financial capability to distribute the Picture itself. The gross revenue derived from the Picture is dependent, among other things, upon the interest of distributors and their ability to obtain suitable distribution via theatrical, television, home video, and/or other media, and in selecting proper release dates and appropriate advertising and promotion for the Picture. The negotiation of final distribution agreements, which frequently occurs (if at all) near the time of completion of motion pictures, will have a substantial impact upon the amount of receipts available to the Company from the exploitation of the Picture. There is no assurance that such negotiations will result in revenues or profits to the Company. Furthermore, although the Company has agreed to use commercially reasonable efforts to cause the Picture to be distributed, there is no assurance that the Picture will be distributed or that such distribution will be profitable to the Company. The fact that any distributor derives profits from its distribution of the Picture will not, in turn, assure that the Company will also derive profits therefrom.
Unfortunately if I sought to get compensated for the work I do, my movies would not get made. If I sought to get paid like normal people are, I never would have been able to produce any of my films.
I have been fortunate enough to have made about sixty films in about twenty years. I am not foolish enough to think I was the deciding factor in bringing good ideas into cinematic being, but I do know that certain practices of mine, have helped significantly. Yes, it is also true that good work begets other good work, and a track record certainly helps — particularly a track record of profitability — but generally all of my films depend on two things to get made: 1) superior quality of the material, and 2) the willingness of the collaborators to make great sacrifices.
There’s more though on why these films have happened; there have been commonalities amongst all the films that have helped significantly in their getting made. I have to repeatedly go out on the limb, believing in the film and the filmmaker for years on end, with no remuneration, pushing to make the project better, figuring out how in the hell to bring more “value” to it, shopping it, strategizing and the like.
