Tag: acquistions

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Truly Free Film

17 Things About The Film Biz That Should Significantly Influence Your Behavior

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On May 2nd, 2013, I launched the A2E (Artist To Entrepreneur) program at the San Francisco Film Society with OnRamp (The Direct Distribution Lab).  This is a pilot lab of a pilot program designed to give filmmakers the necessary entrepreneurial skills to achieve a sustainable creative life amidst this changing paradigm.  We will be working out some bugs but I hope to launch the second iteration as soon as possible (but to do so requires some support, both financial and otherwise, so if you know anyone or any organization that might be interested in advancing film culture and enterprise, please do send them my way!).

As part of the lab, we have a first day of big ideas and case studies that hopefully will give the participants the foundation for a design for living and thriving on their art.  As part of that I have prepared three brief lectures focused on what every filmmaker needs to recognize about the business, the culture, and their practice if they want to have a sustainable creative life.  Split between the three categories, I came up with fifty things you should know.  I will provide them to you over the next week or two, but I wish you all could have been there.   It’s always different when you are in the room.

Today, I will unleash what I think it is necessary to recognize about our industry if you are a filmmaker looking to survive from the work you generate.

It's Not That We Are Alone, It's That We Are Still Green

WARNING: taking any of these points out of context, could create unnecessary fear or depression. If you want to

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Truly Free Film

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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Truly Free Film

The New Model Of Indie Film Finance, v2011.1 Domestic Value & Funding

This was once going to be a single post.  Today is part three.  There will be at least two more to come.  I started it here. And then yesterday we tried to determine the factors for accessing foreign value.  Today, let’s look stateside.

Until the double whammy of Toronto 2010 & Sundance 2011, it looked like the US acquistion market for feature content had fully collapsed.  No reasonable P&L would have shown more than a modest six figures for US acquisitions.  Hybrid & DIY models have not been developed yet to consistently deliver returns in excess of this amount (or even at these figures).  Perhaps this is now changing, but it would still be foolish for any filmmaker or investor to expect this and we can’t budget for such expectation.

How many of the 7500 films produce in the US annually return 20% of their negative cost from US licenses?  Although it puts emerging filmmakers at a great disadvantage, I think the surest determining factor for predicting US acquisition potential is

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Truly Free Film

The New Model Of Indie Film Finance, v2011.1, Foreign Value

Today continues my efforts to try to define the takeaway from the two most recent and robust US acquisition markets of Sundance & Toronto.  I (and hopefully we) will try to extrapolate from them where we are today.  How can we use our most recent experiences to determine the reality of our filmed dreams today?  How can we move to a more realistic model of indie film finance?

Foreign estimates still set the initial value for films, and it is CAST that is the predominate determinator for this value.  Before a film is shot, there are three types of actors that mean something to foreign buyers:

  • 1) stars that have been in big hits in the relevant territories;
  • 2) stars that have been in popular television shows in those territories;
  • 3) stars that can be expected to generate a great deal of publicity everywhere.

Other than stars, there are a few other aspects of a film that create foreign value.  Stars are another entity altogether from cast or actors — and it is really the stars that determine foreign value.

Are there any other factors that help shape what your project is determined to be worth overseas? Fortunately, yes!  

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Truly Free Film

The New Model Of Indie Film Finance, v2011.1

I recently had one of the top sales agents explain to me that the only indie film that gets made or sold these days are those projects that make absolute sense.  Okay, granted what he was referring to was only within the mainstream indie business — the type of films that he and his cohorts commission — but it is worthy of our time to delve a bit deeper into this.  What indie film project makes absolute sense?

The agent said there was no room for guess work in today’s mainstream indie business.  If you want to get your film made, you have to have to make it for a price that all concerned feel it will certainly recoup at.  “Absolute sense” is this regard is a film that will inevitably make back what it cost.  “Absolute sense” can also mean a project that a company feels it has to have, usually due to the people involved or the timeliness of the concept, but those “packages”  are frankly even harder to come by than those that seem to be inevitably recoupable.  You are looking for  the needle in the haystack with either, and need to build it yourself if you want to hope to come close.

My last few projects all were designed to remove any guess work for financiers.  Between foreign sales estimates, tax credit rebates, and the undisputed value or attraction of the stars, if you want to be sure your film will get made, your project needs to read that the value of the work will exceed the cost of creating it.  Value in this regard, is strictly business related, and not cultural (sorry art-for-art’s-sake fans, this isn’t going to be one of those posts).  As much we can understand or even accept, those words though, what is the math that adds up to this formula? And where do the numbers even get their value anyway?

Even with 39 or 40 (and still rising)  films selling at Sundance this year, the first take away from it is

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Breaking the Rules: To Screen or Not to Screen Before the Festival Premiere

Today’s guest post is from attorney Steven Beer. Steven’s contributed to HFF/TFF before, and was one of the original Brave Thinkers.  With Sundance around the corner, Steven offers some perspective of a question on many filmmakers’ minds.

To screen or not to screen for distributors prior to a festival premiere?  This question often plagues producers in the months prior to festival season.  Hypothetical Scenario: Shortly after you receive an invitation to premiere your film at a prestigious film festival, an established distribution executive calls to request a screener.  She congratulates you and says that she has heard wonderful things about the project.  Sadly, the acquisition executive reports that her company may not be able to attend a festival screening due to schedule conflicts.  If you screen the film for her company before the festival, however, the company may be able to make an offer and announce a deal at the festival.  What does a producer do?

In the past, cynical producers and their representatives viewed such requests as a professional seduction and respectfully declined.  Conventional wisdom discouraged filmmakers from screening their film prior to a high profile festival premiere for a variety of reasons.  Nothing compares to the satisfaction derived from screening a well crafted film in a state of the art theater — the optimum venue for which the film was created.  After pouring vast sums and sweat into producing a film that was created for the big screen experience, who can blame filmmakers for resisting requests to distribute DVDs before their premiere.  Invariably, producers prefer to showcase their projects to acquisition executives in adrenaline-charged premiere screenings brimming with enthusiastic audiences.  Given this scenario, one can appreciate the cardinal rule against pre-festival screenings.

The traditional way of thinking is beginning to give way, however.  

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