Film Finance and Distribution - Keep on keeping on.

Today’s post is going to be something a bit more on the inspirational side rather than being purely technical (and secretly I’m also testing something on the backend…shhh…don’t tell anyone). Nearly any venture, any idea, any product…or anything…works at least some of the time. Specifically, what am I getting at? Fund raising…

I’m sure most of you are trying to raise funds for an independent film, and it seems impossible. It’s just too hard…everyone says no. But indie films get financed every year. What are you doing wrong?

Probably nothing. The secret lies in knowing that everything works…some of the time. So, if you are asking for money to make a film, someone will say yes. It’s about percentages and ratios of success. Lets throw out an arbitrary number, such as 0.5%. Lets say if you ask people who can afford to finance a film to give you money, 0.5% of the time you will succeed. Seems pretty dismal doesn’t it? It’s not.

Robert Kiyosaki, author of the famous Rich Dad Series (a set of books I highly recommend) was once asked, “How can you recommend people start their own business when 9 out of 10 businesses fail”. His response, “If that is true, then I will start 10 businesses.”

So by the same token, if only one out of every 200 people you ask will finance your film …then ask 200 people.

This is much the same logic we use in the world of web promotion. For example, my other website Killer Film has some pretty high server costs, which we pay for through advertising. We get paid when someone clicks on one of our ads. Generally, only about 2% of people actually click on an ad. Do we waste our time trying to make more people click on our ads? No, we can’t control if people want what our advertisers are selling. So instead, we focus on growing our traffic. More people means more clicks.

Those of you who have a film already produced should also take note of this principle. Finding distribution is hard, and its easy to get disheartened if you get turned down the first time you visit a market like AFM. However, I’ve had friends take the same film back to AFM for two years with no luck. Then finally, they take it the third year and sell multiple territories, and completely pay back their investors.

You can’t predict everything that can happen. Maybe your potential investor just lost a ton in the market. Maybe the distributor just filled up their roster for this year five minutes before you walked in. Or maybe you’ll show up at just the perfect time and find an investor who just sold off a huge property and needs to move some money before he’s hit with a huge tax bill. You can’t predict what happens with a single person you speak with…but it averages out such that perseverance eventually breeds success.

On a crazy side note: Bizarre as it might sound, things that seem completely impossible are often possible…just very unlikely. It is entirely possible that you could drop a pencil onto a desk, and have it fall completely through the desk, passing completely through solid matter. In quantum mechanics a phenomena called, “tunneling” has been show to occur where a solid object passes through another solid object. You’d probably have to drop the pencil a few quadrillion times before it happened…but eventually it would happen, probably right after you win the lottery.

Done Moving

Just a quick note to let everyone know I’m done moving. I’ve bought a neat little desk set up, as opposed to the folding table and cardboard boxes I was using. I don’t know what it is, I make a decent living, but I still manage to live a pretty ghetto lifestyle. Most of my stuff is in boxes, and my diet is typically ham sandwiches and Dr. Pepper.

Anyway, all pointless introspection into my personal life aside…there is alot of fun stuff going on in the world of Cinema Advanced. Donny and I are still planning on building the web series. In fact, as soon as the web series gets a little closer to completion, I’m going to release an article about the benefits of producing your own web series, so stay tuned for that.

Also, if you are from the Lafayette area there is a feature film production going on called, “Santero”. It seems like its falling at the exact time as “The Way to You” so I’ll be busy, but for anyone interested they are looking for cast and crew. Here’s the Craiglist post: Santero.

What is your ideal facility?

I’ve recently been in talks with a local non profit agency about a film and media facility they wish to create. The question was posed to me, “What would you need to improve your productions?” I realized that my answer would be incredibly from your average beginner. I have a good access to most of the facilities one would need to produce a short film, and I have my own prejudices about how it should be done. So, I thought maybe it would be better just to ask a few filmmakers just starting out in their ventures into the wild world of media.

So here is the task. Imagine a non-profit facility that can:

• Supply Equipment
• Help you network through meet up groups
• Hold Classes to teach different aspects of film and media

So on to the questions:

• If there were such a place, would you use it
• How much would you be willing to pay for an annual membership
• What sort of classes would you want offered
• What sort of equipment or facilities would you want offered
• What if the center had this requirement: Only you could use your material for commercial profit - but the facility would have rights to use your material for teaching or other non commercial purposes. Would you be ok with that?
• For the centers website: Do you think a website that is essentially just an event calender is good enough, or would you like a large scale, myspace like, website where members would have profiles and be able to display their content

And any other suggestions or comments would be very helpful.

Thanks in Advance

Don’t make this indie movie mistake.

There is a conventional wisdom when it comes to making movies, that is often expressed as “Show, don’t tell”. But that can mean alot of things to different people. I really think its one of those things that, essentially is good advice, but can be so easily misinterpreted, that it actually does more harm than good. Ultimately, it results in a huge mistake that first time directors always seem to make.

This weekend I saw the movie No Country For Old Men. First off, I must say the movie is amazing. But more importantly, it got me thinking about the above mentioned ‘conventional wisdom’. Is it really necessary to show everything? Is it possibly better to leave the audience guessing a little? After watching No Country For Old Men, I certainly think so.

At the very beginning of the movie, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) stumbles upon what appears to be the aftermath of a horrific shootout. The movie approaches this scene very slowly, as he examines each detail…the parked cars, the bodies lying everywhere, the shells casings scattered around, and the truck bed full of drugs. It is very clear to the audience just what has happened, despite the fact that up to this point hardly even a word has been spoken.

The movie continues very much in this same vein. Rather than showing someone get shot, it will instead show a hitman walking out of there home, then checking his shoes (making you assume he’s checking for blood). You don’t actually see the killing…and in some ways you aren’t even sure if it really happened.

Are they violating the rule? Did the fail to “show”, and instead “tell” you what happened? No…not exactly…and its that misunderstanding that is a huge mistake for indie directors.

What is the mistake?

The mistake is believing that because you have to “show not tell”, that that means that you have to show something beyond your means or budget. In No Country for Old Men, the first scene is essentially a common scene for most mobster or cop movies. A drug deal goes bad. However, you never see the actual gun fight, but you can still tell just how serious it is from the aftermath. For the budget conscious indie filmmaker, there is an enormous savings in simply showing the aftermath of a gun battle, rather than showing the shootout itself.

And doing so doesn’t really violate our “rule”. You are still showing the audience what happened, you’re just doing it from a different point of view. Telling would be if you did something like have a scene at a bar where two cops say, “Did you hear about that shoot out?”. That is certainly not as good as showing the aftermath, but is still far better than a poorly executed shoot out.

In the realm of indie filmmakers, we need a new rule. That rule is:

Show what you can, tell what you can’t.

You have to know your limitations. If something is dangerous, expensive, or difficult then you really have to ask how important it is to your story that it actually be shown. If you do it poorly, then its far worse than if you didn’t do it at all. For example, lets say the bad guy blows up the good guys car. You don’t have the budget for insurance, a licensed blaster, fire marshals, etc. Now, you could do a really cheesy after effects explosion and cut away really fast. I’ve seen it done in some DV movies before…and it looks stupid.

Perhaps you could do it differently. Instead, it would be far better to spend your time looking through the junk yards for a duplicate of the car. Have the actors talking inside of a bar, when they hear a sudden explosion (offscreen) outside. They rush outside to see the junk car on fire. Such a scene might cost you only $200 more than your after effects version. But it costs you $15,000 less than actually blowing the car up….and as far as the audience is concerned the effect is much closer to really blowing up the car. The audience will never think, “Oh..they were too cheap to blow up the car”…because they see a burning car. The audience is far more willing to suspend its belief based on the sound of an explosion, than it is based on actually seeing a really fake looking explosion.

Ultimately, you are trying to show concepts, not absolute realism. The blood circling down the drain in Psycho tells you everything you need to know, while allowing your own imagination to make up the rest of the scene. That is the beauty of movie magic.

Moving, upcoming features, film finance, and other such nonsense

No film tips here. Just a little note to say I’m going to be moving over the next few weeks. Not far…down the road actually. But needless to say updates may be a little sporadic. However, I can tell you about what I’m currently working on:

• Video tutorials - I’ve been really lazy on this one. I have three video tutorials about 2/3rds finished. They are pretty unique, and hopefully they will knock your socks off. So make sure to have socks on while watching them to avoid any serious injury.
• Film Finance - I honestly may have stumbled across the most brilliant film finance method ever conceived. How’s that for hyperbole? Seriously though, I have a pretty interesting idea on how I can help you finance your own short films, or equipment purchases of up to $25,000, while at the same time helping to finance my own projects. I’ll keep you posted.
• The Way To You - My friend Donny at Big Foot Productions just gave me a call. The Way To You is officially green lit, though not as originally planned. Instead of being a 90 minute feature comedy, it will now be an online web series of 12, ten minute episodes. Haven’t signed any contracts yet, but I’ll probably be production manager, technical adviser, and possibly second camera on this one. It’s a pretty exciting project, and as it progresses I’ll try and throw some behind the scenes footage up here.
• My Job - There is a strong possibility I may be changing occupations soon. Shhh….don’t tell anyone. Honestly though, I’d highly doubt anyone where I work now even knows or cares my blog exists. And if by some bizarre chance someone does find this post, then I’ll just turn it into a big press release “Blogger gets fired over blog post”…the media loves that crap. But anyways, I’ve got two offers going right now…one as a full time media integration specialist for an extremely technologically advanced super computer 3d visualization center, the other as a media specialist for a public access TV station. Both of them should free my time substantially to produce more films, and write more for this website….so pretty exciting either way.

So stay tuned…