If you have been reading the TFF post on the sale of Septien, you know that IFC bought it for Sundance Selects. What you may not know is that it is up on VOD now but it’s only on the market until February 24th, though it will be VOD-able later in the year once it gets a theatrical release and has a (hopefully) healthy spring/summer festival run.
Today’s guest post is from George Rush, producers rep and attorney. Yesterday George started telling us about how he engineered the sale of Michael Tully’s Sundance At Midnight hit, SEPTIEN. Today’s post concludes the dissection.
I had been to Sundance before with Midnight films and know it can be difficult to get good buzz. Sundance audiences are not reflective of real audiences. It is a mixture of film nerds, rich party people, and earnest do gooders seeking some culture. I’ve found most people want to see the buzzed about stereotypical Sundance films—The Are All Right, Winter’s Bone. These tickets are hard to come by. However, midnight screening tickets are easier to come by and thus people get stuck with them. They come in hoping for some culture and get blood and guts and farts.
I’ve seen packed houses at Midnight screenings pretty empty by the time the lights came up. Because Michael’s film, SEPTIEN, is so different, I felt a good number of the audience and some critics would dismiss it outright because it did not fit their expectation of what a Sundance film should be. It sort of reminds me of a friend of mine who hates Wes Anderson movies because he expects Bill Murray to always play the Bill Murray of Ghostbusters.
Those who stayed, who bought in, would be massively rewarded by SEPTIEN, but there would be some naysayers. So my feeling was Sundance was going to be a wildcard, with champions and detractors.
Today’s guest post is from attorney and sales rep George Rush. It is part one of two. George handled the sale of Michael Tully’s Septian to IFC’s Sundance Selects.
I have worked as a lawyer or a producer’s rep on hundreds of films over the years, and this experience has made me quite skeptical about the business model for independent producers. The business is worse than it has been historically, but it is still the same very basic model. You produce a film, a distributor exploits those rights. You are good at creating content, they are good at marketing. Hopefully those two things come together to benefit both parties.
I’m a hyper skeptic of producers essentially acting as their own distributors because generally they aren’t strong in both skill sets, and thus something usually suffers. So I usually assume a producer is good at producing, and try to leave it at that.
Most of what I work on is low budget films with few if any stars. Ten years ago, I considered a low budget film under two million dollars. Today, I consider it under $500,000 and believe if you do something for a larger budget without a truly bankable cast, you are being reckless with your budget.
The distribution business has become tougher and they are paying less for content, and thus budgets go down correspondingly. So how can you make something quality for under $500K—most people fail at this effort and there is a glut of so so films that just can’t compete with larger budgeted film—they are clearly inferior. Indeed, most festival films in this budget range will never see the light of day beyond the festivals. However, I don’t know how, but some people do. It takes an extremely resourceful producer and director who is willing to take some chances to pull it off.
Enter Michael Tully’s Septien.
