June 20, 2012 – Hope For Film

If You (Let Rising Artists) Build It, They Will Come

Guest post by Jill Savarese

If you read “Sell Your Film WIthout Selling Your Soul” you are surely familiar with THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST. Or perhaps you saw it in one of the over 200 bookings they had on their way to being one of the greatest Direct Distribution stories of 2011. Either way, how can you not be excited to hear not only of a filmmaker’s success in bringing a film out themselves — particularly when the process not only yields a new business, but that business has the possibility of helping out over 30 new films? Well, if you like such stories, keep on reading…

There was a joke floating around amongst the production team at The Best and the Brightest that this 4 million-dollar film’s distribution was in the hands of a stay-at-home mom and a student with cerebral palsy. It was tempting to be a little offended since I was this “mom” but considering that our team got the film 200 screenings and such momentum that Emerging Pictures picked it up for more, I would have to say it’s a coup for moms and people with disabilities everywhere.

When Do You Submit A Project To A Financier?

I have been producing movies for about twenty-five years. And it still is a thrill when an executive asks me to submit a project. But does a simple request mean you should send the project you have slaved over on in to them?

I have never had a company actually finance a project that is not either already somewhat packaged with cast or has pre-sales done on it. I have to remind myself over and over. Good acquisitions execs craft all sorts of arguments of why I should submit my projects early — and sometimes I fall for it. I think when they succeed in suckering me in they too honestly believe that they can get it made without already being fully realized (short of execution); but they soon learn they can’t. Which is not to say that they can’t get it set up, but that is often a far cry from getting it made.

Acquistions executives job is to bring projects in, period. So they ask. And often we comply. If the sign of insanity is to repeat the same action over and over, expecting the result to change, are we insane to keep doing this practice?

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