Notes from IFP’s Independent Filmmaker Conference 2009

Notes from IFP’s Independent Filmmaker Conference 2009
Fashion Institute of Technology
New York, NY

IFP’s annual Independent Filmmaker Conference returned this year to New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, Sept. 19-23. I attended panels on the first two days on Saturday, Sept. 19, and Sunday, Sept. 20. Instead of my mostly usual highlights from the transcripts of these panels, I will be doing one summary of my entire panel experience from these two days. I will focus on some of the most informative points raised by the moderators and panelists. As an aside, I attended two screenings hosted by Rooftop Films. First on Saturday night was Burning in the Sun at Solar One, and second was the IFP Independent Filmmaker Lab Showcase on Sunday night at Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park. Both were very impressive screenings and had great turnouts.

The theme over the weekend was “Making Your First Feature,” something a lot of the attendees could probably relate to, as when the moderators asked who in the audience was a filmmaker, almost everyone raised their hands. Many of the panelists on the stage were established filmmakers or producers, even people in distribution and exhibition, who were more than willing to share their experiences. Topics ranged from exhibiting films online and in alternate venues such as arthouses, to getting your screenplay read and sold, to finding music, and coming up with a plan to build and sustain your career.

While many filmmakers aspire to have their films play theatrically, the topic of the first panel I attended on Saturday was called “Big Ideas for the Small Screen,” which is more or less the web nowadays and not so much an actual television. This was the first of a couple of panels that Mary Jane Skalski (Producer, Next Wednesday) and Jamin O’ Brien (Producer, Worldview Entertainment) moderated. The panel was comprised of people working in or making content for the web including Eric Mortenson (Head of Content - Blip.tv), Craig Parks (Vice President, IFC Digital Media), Jeff Marks (Bright Red Pixels), actor Anslem Richardson (Like So Many Things), and Marc Lieberman (Producer, The Onion News Network).

O’Brien began by asking what drives each of the panelists to develop, create, and produce projects specifically for the web, and Skalski alluded to how there seems to be more people watching web content these days than going to see a theatrical film release. Richardson, who worked on a short film that was eventually turned into a seven-episode series on IFC.com, said the web is a great way for independent filmmakers to get things out there, and suggests honing one’s skills online, because if you fail, at least you didn’t spend a lot of time and money. Lieberman, who works with The Onion News Network, which has been around for three years and stems from The Onion newspaper and is a large brand attracting audience to the web, said what’s changing is that there are now job opportunities for producing web content that weren’t there before. Mortenson said at Blip.tv, they work with several shows that consistently get three million views a month.

O’Brien added to Skalski’s earlier hypothesis by asking if web content is replacing the need for filmmaker to make 35mm films, replacing that idea with a much less expensive and accessible medium and more exposure. Marks, who began his career in Hollywood, said around the time of the digital revolution, he and his production partner could have their own Final Cut or Canon XL1 and start making their own films. And around the time the iPod video came out, they started making web video, which presented an opportunity to take what they’ve made and find an audience for it. Fast-forward to today, and Marks said that a lot of what’s on the web now is a one-trick pony or gag. To him having content on the web is not just about getting viewership, but also cultivating talent and give opportunities to be discovered and find work.

O’Brien asked, what is working on the web, what have the panelists had success with, and what are they looking for or hope to see next? Lieberman said The Onion News Network makes two-minute videos that have more of a story arc, and not just one beat. He cites his DP who is making a short series with his 90-year-old grandmother about Depression-era cooking, which got a book deal. It’s about creating a show about whatever you like to do and creating content around that. Mortenson agreed with Lieberman, saying that was a perfect example because there’s no competition for that show. On Blip.tv, shows like Morning Swim Show and Momversations get a lot of views, because of their unique topics.

Skalski and O’Brien were back to moderate “Script to Screen.” On the panel were Jody Hotchkiss (Producer – Cockeyed), Geoff Betts (Business Agent - Writers Guild of America, East), Darrien Michelle Gipson (National Director, SAG Indie), Robert Siegel (Entertainment Attorney - Cowan DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard LLP), and Joshua Zeman (Producer – Ghost Robot Films).

Skalski began by asking how one can introduce his or her screenplay into the world, what are people looking for, what are some first steps? The first thing that Hotchkiss always looks for is a personal response to a story, such as in a newspaper or magazine article. “Something where you feel, Oh my G-d, that should be a film!” he said. If the feeling isn’t there, it’s hard to go further with it. Zeman said it’s really important to develop your pitch by pitching to your friends first and finding out what people respond to.

Skipping ahead to later in the discussion, Skalski asked Betts how people can register their scripts with the WGAE. Betts said everyone who’s written a script should register it with the Writer’s Guild, which protects your idea and concept. Siegel added that everyone should also submit his or her scripts to the U.S. Copyright Office. And what of obtaining the rights to literary or found material, Skalski asked. Hotchkiss answered that the best way is to first approach the author or journalist of the source material. Strike up a relationship, so there’s sympathy to be free and clear to depict the real person and get a “right to depict” release, which acts as your insurance. Siegel added that it could actually be a little more complicated than that to option or purchase the rights, as sometimes you have to deal with exclusivity.

And to backtrack a little earlier in the discussion, in terms of casting, Skalski turned the table over to Gipson, asking how SAG Indie works. Gipson explained that once you’re ready to cast your film, make sure the people you’re casting are SAG or professional actors to use the website, which is www.sagindie.org, and download the preliminary information form. The site tells you how much your actor will cost you. This lead to Skalski’s next question being, how do you determine your budget? Siegel replied that the first thing to do is get a line producer or production manager to do a real budget.

Now that you have your film completed it’s time to lay down the music and score, but whom do you go to for the rights? This issue was touched on in “Music: The Bastard Child of Post-Production,” moderated by Doreen Ringer Ross (Vice President, Film/TV Relations - BMI), who allowed the audience to jump in with questions, as opposed to waiting toward the end of the moderated section of the panel, which I thought was cool. On the panel were some of the greatest names in film and film music including animator Bill Plympton (Director - Idiots and Angels), Brook Pimot (VP, Creative & Marketing [Film & TV Music] - Cherry Lane Music Publishing, Inc.), composer David Shire (Composer - Zodiac, Norma Rae, The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3, Saturday Night Fever), and music supervisor Randall Poster (Music Supervisor - Away We Go, Jennifer’s Body, Revolutionary Road).

Ringer Ross threw the first question out to Plympton, asking him about making his first feature and the experience in getting the music. Plympton said for his first film, “Your Face,” he knew nothing about music, though it was a musical. In the film, a male character was to sing a song, but he could only get a female singer, because she was free. It was his first usage of music in a film. For future films, he used musicians that he knew personally. In 1990, halfway through production on his film “The Toon,” he ran out of money, so he had to release it in two separate sections. Later on in the discussion, Ringer Ross asked what kind of music Plympton likes to receive. He said he prefers to listen to an entire song, not just a sample MPEG. He prefers acoustic to electronic music, and plays music while he draws. One audience member asked Plympton, what is his etiquette in working with composers? Plympton said he once had a problem with a composer, who kept changing the lyrics, and he’s since then stopped using him, but they have still remained friends.

Ringer Ross asked Poster how he began his career as a music supervisor. Poster said he wrote a script with a friend about the demise of a college radio station, “A Matter of Trees,” which was invited to Sundance. At the time, college radio was transforming into alternative music. They recorded music for the film and made a record deal. His ambition became to work with great filmmakers instead of making his own films every couple of years.

In terms of when a music publisher steps in, Pimont said a music supervisor comes to her for a song to use in the film and negotiates a price to use it. Sometimes it is too low, so she runs the offer by the writers. Some publishers won’t even look at an offer if it is below a certain amount. Ringer Ross asked what’s happening with dollar amounts on licensing fees? Pimont said there is a lot of value in getting a song placed in a film or commercial. Poster stated the example of how Tom Waits does not allow his music to appear in commercials. He is aggressive in asserting his legal rights, but does show support for worthwhile projects. Poster said the artists him or herself is not always completely in control, and warns that all artists should cover their bases, and not rely on a casual approval. Plympton said this happened to him on “Idiots & Angels,” where he had to wait till the last day to finalize his mix. Ringer Ross mentioned that musician Moby gives his film away to independent filmmakers via Moby Gratis. She asked Shire, as a composer, what he thought of artists giving away their music for free, and he jokingly replied that he’d be thrilled to know his music is being used at all. Shire recalled earlier in his career when there was a composer’s strike in Hollywood. The issue was that composers wanted the rights to the cues they had done.

Moving onto Sunday, the first panel of the day I attended was “Arthouse & Alternative Venue Programming” moderated by sales agent Josh Braun (Submarine Entertainment) and Heather Winters (Producer/Partner - Studio On Hudson). On the panel were Ned Hinkle (Creative Director - Brattle Theater, Boston), Mark Elijah Rosenberg (Artistic Director – Rooftop Films), and Josh Green (Vice President, Distribution – Emerging Pictures).

Braun asked the exhibitors about their venues differ from one another. Green said Emerging Pictures shows movies from traditional distributors. They wait to see how a movie opens in New York. It’s really an affiliate network with a program based on individual audiences and geography. They also play one-night only special event films where they might have live/interactive Q&As, and sometimes two days later, the film comes out on DVD. Emerging Pictures does not acquire any rights to the films. They’re just an exhibitor. As for the Brattle Theater, Hinkle said they are a repertory or “calendar” house, which literally means they print a calendar with films that only play for one or two weeks. The theater has a reputation of programming quality films, and targeting a film-savvy audience. Rosenberg said Rooftop Films accepts submissions of films from November through March, and they sometimes even look at rough cuts. Their model is to make each screening an event that is unique by matching the film with a venue and neighborhood. For example, they screened “Trouble the Water” last year in Harlem. For “No Impact Man,” they had an eco-carnival before the screening.

Winters asked each how they support filmmakers, in terms of promoting their films through marketing and publicity? Green said Emerging Pictures has very little marketing costs because each local cinema has their own publicist who works on site. Rosenberg said Rooftop Films handles each film on a personal, hand-on case-by-case basis. Their ability is to help filmmakers. They even recommend films to other festivals and will put filmmakers in touch with distributors. Hinkle said that filmmakers need to be an accessory to their own marketing force. They should put time and money aside to go on tour with their films, which could help them ultimately get a larger run. Rosenberg added that filmmakers need to work on their Q&A skills. There’s nothing worse than an awkward Q&A. Filmmakers are representing their films and should be interesting and fun about it, instead of awkward and shy.

So you’ve got a couple of film under your belt, but you’re looking to get to the next step in your career. How do you keep making a living as a filmmaker in this tough economy and how can you plan for your future? This question was addressed in “Paying the Bills: Sustaining Your Film Career” moderated by Esther Robinson (Filmmaker/Journalist - Filmmaker Magazine, Thatgrl Media - A Walk Into the Sea: Danny Williams and The Warhol Factory), who has been writing a series of articles for Filmmaker Magazine about sustaining one’s career. On the panel was Rose Troche (Writer/Director - Go Fish, The Safety of Objects), Thatgrl Media (Writer/Director - The Complications - Children of Invention) , Jesse Epstein (Filmmaker - New Day Films - Wet Dreams and False Images) and Reva Goldberg (Communications and Fellowships Manager - Cinereach).

Robinson began by saying that there is a level of economics that happens behind the scenes of filmmaking, but filmmakers don’t necessarily have access to it, but organizations such as IFP are helping out. Robinson asked each panelist for a one-word description on how they are all making it work. Their answers: Goldberg – “relationship-building”; Epstein – “Tapas” or “Dim-Sum”; Chun – “Compartmentalization”; and Troche – “TV”.

Robinson asked all what it was like starting out in the business, and what they thought their lives would be. Troche said her first job directing in television was on “Six Feet Under.” She said more people probably watched that one episode than all three of her films combined. There’s a lot of compromise that goes along with working in TV. When she started, she didn’t know anything, but she wanted to be challenged. Chun said in the early 1990s, there was a renaissance for independent films. He didn’t want to go to grad school. Instead he made a schedule to direct no-budget short films every six months, and took short-term work in between films such as painting portraits. Epstein said she started working on films in the art department and taught documentary filmmaking to young people. She took two years off to attend NYU, which led her to shoot her first in a series of three short documentary films, which she distributes through New Day Films.

Goldberg added an extra word to Robinson’s earlier “one-word” description saying “patience” and “be nice.” Troche seemed to disagree with the “be nice” part saying she thinks it’s about ambition and tenacity. Troche also advised not to get into a job that takes up all your time if you want to make your own film, because it’s a “selfish business.” [***Personal note: I agree to a point. It’s certainly not easy to work a full-time job and make a living as a filmmaker at the same time, but if you’re struggling financially, how do you make money to pay the bills without having some sort of job? Not everyone is a trust-fund baby, not to imply that this is what Troche was saying, because she certainly didn’t, but I know a lot of filmmakers who have full-time jobs that while they’re not at the level of Troche, are able to make their films, maybe not as fast as they’d like, but at least they’re making them.]

A question from the audience was if they have a five-year plan. Robinson said she plans everything in five-year increments. She tries to be clear about what is good for her films, tries to stay solvent and not go into debt. She also wants to have health insurance. Troche said it would be nice to not think about money constantly. Robinson concluded that filmmaking is a life-long practice and you do have to have a long-term plan.

Go Up On the Roof This September During Independent Film Week

I wanted to alert you to two new documentaries that will be screening at Rooftop Films in September during IFP's Independent Film Week in New York. First on Sept. 12 is David Teague's Intifada NYC, and second on Sept. 19 is Cambria Matlow's and Morgan Robinson's Burning in the Sun. I have been eagerly awaiting to see both of these films for some time now.

In February, I had the pleasure of moderating the Docuclub Q&A for David's film Our House, which he co-directed with Greg King. David told me about his film there, and he has since then screened it to a sold out crowd at DCTV.

And at Independent Film Week in 2008, I met Ronen Landa, the composer of Burning in the Sun. Since then, I've been working with Ronen on promoting his debut CD, Picturebooks, which is now available on iTunes, Amazon.com, and CDBaby.com.

About Intifada NYC:
The opening of the United States’ first Arabic language public school provoked a firestorm of allegations that the school would teach radical Islam or even produce terrorists. As critics and the mainstream media stoked the flames in the climate of post-9/11 America, the controversy forced the school’s Arab-American Muslim principal from her job. “Intifada NYC” follows the principal’s struggle to get her job back, the outcry against the school, and the debate provoked about tolerance and freedom of speech. The film combines exclusive interviews and vérité with graphic novel-style drawings, while the original score mixes classical, jazz, and Middle Eastern styles.

See Intifada NYC at ROOFTOP FILMS
When: Saturday, September 12, 8pm
Venue: On the roof of the Old American Can Factory
Address: 232 3rd St. @ 3rd Ave. (Gowanus/ Park Slope, Brooklyn)
Directions: F/G to Carroll St. or M/R to Union Ave.
Rain: In the event of rain the show will be held indoors at the same location
8:00PM: Doors open
8:30PM: Sound Fix presents live music
9:00PM: Films
11:00PM–12:30AM: Reception in courtyard including free sangria courtesy of Carlo Rossi sangria
Tickets: $9-$25 at the door or online

About Burning in the Sun:
26-year-old charmer Daniel Dembele is equal parts West African and European, and looking to make his mark on the world. A chance encounter while managing a café in Europe convinces him to return to his homeland in Mali and start a local business building solar panels—the first of its kind in the sun drenched nation. Daniel's goal is to electrify the households of rural communities, 99% of which live without power. Burning in the Sun tells the story of Daniel’s journey growing the shaky startup into a viable company, and of the business’ impact on Daniel’s first customers in the tiny village of Banko. Taking controversial stances on climate change, poverty, and African self-sufficiency, the film explores what it means to grow up as a man, and what it takes to prosper as a nation.

See Burning in the Sun at ROOFTOP FILMS
Venue: on the pier at Solar One
Address: 23rd Street @ the East River (Kips Bay, Manhattan)
Directions: R/6 to 23rd St., walk all the way east.
Rain: In the event of rain the show will be held under tents at the same location. Bring an umbrella, too.
8:00PM: Doors open
8:30PM: Sound Fix presents live music
9:00PM: Films
11:00PM–12:30AM: Reception including free Radeberger Pilsner
Admission: No charge

Independent Film Week - Case Study: Documentary Marketing - "Beautiful Losers" & "I.O.U.S.A." - Sept. 18, 2008

Independent Film Week
Case Study: Documentary Marketing – Beautiful Losers & I.O.U.S.A.
September 18, 2008

This panel was about how to consider the marketing dimensions of a film. To think through how to secure fan, organizational and subject support. Every film is unique and marketing is expression of film’s core values.

Case Study: Beautiful Losers
The film’s subjects were urban misfits, skateboarders and underground artists. It initially started as traditional documentary on small groups of artists influencing pop culture. The built in, core audience graffiti heads and skateboarders, and as a result, the film turned out to be a cinematic essay.

Twenty years ago this scene was just starting out. Now the artists are older and present in the mainstream. But the marketing campaign for film had to be DIY and grassroots in order to speak to audience. A lot of the filmmakers’ peers were creative directors at Nike, Boost Mobile, and the like… and they wanted to approach this marketing plan differently. The idea was that the core audience was so big, the reach out was going to be non-traditional outside of 30 second spots. The producers got a deal with Nike by also going to Vans, so Nike preemptively got involved because they already have foothold with this niche.

The filmmakers decided to premiere at SXSW because it was outside of major market festivals. They ultimately needed to excite the base to offer revenue streams when showing film out there. And in the mean time, the filmmakers wanted to inspire people to go out and paint, draw—do something.

In the end, some of the marketing initiatives are built around activities that were art projects in their own right. They offered something positive to the communities and relied on PR and word of mouth. The director wanted to do workshops with the artists in NY and San Francisco. Zine making. Sign making. And then do them around release dates of film. It overlapped with underground music and SXSW was a great platform for that aspect of the film. They hired a “scenester” publicist as opposed to traditional publicist for the film circuit. They wanted to save the real one for the national campaign. They started with AIGA, Art Centers and Universities to get the film out to their lists while also hitting up stores for promotions. The film’s website had an art-share aspect for artists and fans to upload their own work. The marketers wanted to speak to audience that wouldn’t necessarily respond to box office ads. A lot of times, they were reeling in kids (around 12 years old) who wouldn’t spend cash on film at the movie theater that they couldn’t get to. Then those kids would mention to their friends, etc and it became cool to go see the movie.

The goal was to get people out to make something. Most people are compelled to make stuff and the filmmakers wanted to encourage that. The emotional core of film is that you can do what the subjects in film can do.

Case Study: I.O.U.S.A.
The filmmaker started with noting that you should market for festivals first—this is critically important. You can sell your film if it plays well. Then there’s separate kind of marketing for theatrical release. They are two different things and you can do the latter without doing well at festivals.

When he was at Sundance with his first film, Wordplay, they came up with idea to make a handout with a crossword puzzle, all the clues and a pencil. It was the best $5,000 ever spent to print these. They handed them out every where. There were tons of lines for other screenings, so that was a good time to hit people with a time-passing piece of marketing. IFC said that was smartest piece of marketing they’ve ever seen at festivals. People in line were board and wanted the puzzles. They got 7 offers and sold it for a million bucks. A film is big investment of time and money. You need to go to festivals with a plan. Connect to audience. IOUSA was eventually bought after Sundance.

The subject matter was the national debt. It is a timely, Feel Good Movie of the Summer.

When they started production, people thought that this was silly idea for a subject. Things were fine a year ago. But 8-9 months into shooting, the sub-prime crisis happened. And so they scratched the film and started over because its prophecies ended up rearing their ugly heads. During this time, the producers found a lack of understanding of their subject and found purpose in that.

A non-profit bought the movie for one million and set aside another million to promote it. Roadside Attractions partnered with the film and said there are a couple thousand of theaters in country that are wired to digitally distribute film. The nonprofit organized a town hall meeting with Warren Buffet and president of AARP. They settled in Omaha and Becky Quick of CNBC moderated it. They had huge event premiering film where they fed the film to 430 theatres and showed it live. Taxi to Darkside sold 30,000 tickets total over its run and I.O.U.S.A. sold 45,000 tickets in one night. They got people there because the subject of film is on every cover of every magazine. Also, Buffet is a superstar, and everyone wants to know what he thinks.

They shopped around to all the business channels to get the moderator and event. The channel they went with promoted the event the entire week before the screening. National CineMedia has consortium of theatres, so for a month ahead they ran commercials for opening night. And the filmmakers didn’t pay for any of it. It all boils down to you really need to understand your film and understand why someone is going to go pay 10 bucks in theater.

All told, television, Netflix and the Internet are great and all, but theatrical distribution is at the top of the pyramid. People write reviews when it’s in the theatre and it activates people more than anything. If it opens in New York (for at least a week), the Times will review it. Every filmmaker needs and wants that.

--amp

No Borders Case Study with John Hadity - Sept. 17, 2008

No Borders Case Study with John Hadity
Independent Film Week
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
FIT – Katie Murphy Amphitheater – New York, NY

Last Wednesday at Independent Film Week, No Borders International Co-Production Market presented a Case Study on Single Picture Financing with John Hadity, President and CEO of Hadity & Associates, Inc., a consultancy firm that specializes in risk management and production finance for film and television. I have included the main outline of that presentation below with highlights of the transcription of Hadity's discussion. I found the discussion and presentation to be very informative. While a lot of information to ingest, this seems to be a very handy “how to” resource for producers looking for multiple ways to finance their films.

Before Hadity began his presentation, he said, “I thought it would be important to have a conversation with you about what’s happening right now out there in the finance world. With all the news last week, everything is in the toilet. I’m going to give you a bit of an overview so you understand when you are talking to finance people, you understand what’s in their head and what they don’t want to hear and what they do want to hear. I would say 99% of the time, you’re going to hear ‘no.’ It’s important that you understand why they’re saying things like that and how maybe you can mitigate your own risk before you go into these meetings. The second part is a break down of a case study of an alternative way of financing the film.”

Part 1 – Industry Overview

Health of the Industry
* These numbers are for 2006. Hadity noted that he has not yet seen all the numbers for 2007

“Box office is fairly in the same place. Theater admission down, although the number of releases have certainly gone up. This year, there were over 5,000 entries to Sundance. 10 years ago there were 500. There were a lot of movies being made and fighting to get on screen and fighting to stay on screen for over two weeks. There’s a lot of competition out there. But still, this is a very healthy industry. This is an industry an industry that’s not correlated to any asset class. When the economy is in the toilet and people don’t have money, they still go to the movies. It’s because they can’t afford a new car. They can’t afford a new house, but they can take their families to the movies."

Studio Concerns

“To give you a snapshot of what was happening in 2004/2005…what happened back then had a severe effect on independent producers and production companies that tried to finance their films. Studio movies cost about $100M. Studios were very concerned about these escalating costs. All of these studios have other businesses that they’re involved with and to tie up $100M at the time in cash, it was really crippled. They still needed to feed the distribution pipeline that was in fact the lifeblood. But they did see that all of these revenue streams would change them. In Variety or The Hollywood Reporter, you’d see how long or short a period of time films are actually on the screen, unless they are absolute break out successes. There’s an incredible amount of energy put into finding other revenue streams or enhancing other revenue streams in pictures. By far the priority is to downsize any kind of risk."

- Escalating film costs
- Cash Management
- Need to continue to feed distribution pipeline
- Revenue Streams are changing

*Pay TV deals are diminishing

*Windows are getting shorter
- Increase in piracy
- Manage downside risk

In the Financing World

“At the same time in the financing world, there was a huge growth in private capital. Hedge funds, most of the time, really didn’t hedge anything. Since 1990-2005, there’s been about a 20% growth in private wealth. There was...a year ago, almost one and half trillion dollars under management. Basically what was happening in the hedge fund world…the private capital world…is people needed a lot of cash. We have to take a very small part of our patch and invest it into something that is high risk/high reward. Let’s say 5%. There is no magic number. But most mandates were probably around 5%. Take that and put it into a high-risk category business…film got chosen. Why…first of all it’s sexy. The first thing whenever I’ve gone and stayed in a room with people with private capital that were interested in investing in a slate of movies or with studio slate deal were like, how many tickets can I get to the premiere? There are hedge funds, private capital, and banks that are comfortable with what’s called the Monte Carlo method…literally a software program that enables a financial analyst to role the dice how ever many times you want. How many times can you role the dice and lose? The Monte Carlo method is actually used to evaluate a number of slate deals that are trying to get financed by studios, specialty labels and production companies.”

- Influx of Capital
*Private Equity Growth since 2003 = $580 billion

* 20% hedge fund growth since 1990

* $1.4 trillion under management today
- Portfolio Diversification
*New asset classes
*High risk/high reward
*Comfort with statistical analyses (Monte Carlo method)
*Gap and Super Gap opportunities
*Sexy business

Recent Transactions (Recently Completed Film Deals) – 1st Page

“The first deal was August of 2004 with Paramount…a $300M deal to finance 26 films over a 5-7 year period. The arrangement on these deals, every single major investment bank is involved. If they’re not the arrangers, even the Weinstein Company deal with Goldman Sachs was a billion dollars. You have to understand that Goldman Sachs did not underwrite a billion dollars. There’s an equity component to these deals and there’s a debt component to these deals. Typically the debt in these deals is syndicated out to a number of banks. I promise you, every single bank that you’ve ever heard of has participated in…at this point it was $10.6 billion.”

Recent Transactions (Recently Completed Film Deals) – 2nd Page

“It’s over $15 billion now that has been invested into our world. And I heard someone say at dinner recently that they thought it’s more like $24-$26 billion. These deals started back in 2004, and the post-mortem is actually just starting on these deals. A lot of people that participated in these deals, especially on the debt side, are less than pleased with the results they’re seeing. The numbers that they were talking about and throwing around to each other around board rooms and conference room tables were more like 14%/16%/18%/22% returns. I think the first numbers that were actually publicly released was 4%. So people are not very happy with the performance of these deals so they are actually re-negotiating some of these deals or scrambling for a way to refinance them. Couple that with the credit crisis that’s happening right now and one thing you really need to be aware of is a banker or a hedge fund manager or investment arranger is that you’re talking to sales people. These people are in charge of bringing deals in…they’re called originators…their job is to bring in investment opportunities to financial institutions. They are not the people who are going to approve the deal. They’re going to sit and listen to your deal and tell you that it has a lot of potential, but at the end of the day, the person who’s going to make a decision is going to be a credit desk. The person behind that credit desk is going to be looking at this investment from a risk management perspective asking...What if these movies don’t perform?”

Producer Driven Financing Transactions

“There were a number of very high-brow independents that were successful in getting their slates financed. That still happens. We’re still reading about that, but from a credit desk perspective…somebody at a bank isn’t going to want to hear you have 10 really good stories. Somebody at a bank is going to want to have proof that you have a revenue stream somewhere behind you that can support the kind of money that you want to borrow from a bank. The larger independents are pretty much well taken care of. The real challenge here is to get the thousands of independent producers out there that are trying to get their movies financed on a one-off basis typically to get them their financing.”

Indy Film (“One-Off Financing)

Studio Financed
- Advantages – Money already there; Negotiating Muscle; Guaranteed Distribution; Worldwide Exposure
- Disadvantages – Lose Creative Control; Inflated Budget; Pushed Participation; Gun for Hire

Independently Financed
- Advantages – Maintain Creative Control; Controlled Costs; Better Odds for Participation; You are your own boss
- Disadvantages – Need to fundraise; Weak negotiating position; Guaranteed Distribution unlikely; Exposure Uncertain

“When I crossed over to the light side…I remember my first experience in financing a one-off picture…it was around $60M. The studio that had intended to distribute it actually budgeted the movie at $130M. The producer of mine loves to tell the story…the visual effects house that we would have used…was about 19x cheaper than using the studio’s VFX house…the studio said it’s okay, it’s soft money.”

Financing Vehicles

“Soft money is probably the number one way to finance a portion of your movie. It is absolutely irresponsible to make a movie today in a territory or in a state or in a city that does not offer an incentive, unless it’s your money. If it’s your money, you can do whatever you want. If you’re using someone else’s money to make a movie, you should not be filming in California. You should not be filming in states that do not offer incentives. This is free money. They’re incentivizing for you to come and spend money there. They’re rewarding you for dumping money into their infrastructure. You’re creating jobs. You are helping their economic development. This is free money you should take advantage of. I personally will not help people finance a movie that’s not being filmed in an area without incentives.”

Soft Money (“Incentives”) – 1st Page

“It’s really important to understand the nature of the incentive you’re chasing, because you don’t want to go there…spend a lot of money and then be left at the alter. There are a lot of people out there who know how to navigate through these incentives. It’s the film commissioner’s responsibility as well to be able to guide you through all of these resources…Any economic development person will take a meeting with you if you say the words, ‘I will create jobs.’”

- Refundable
- Transferable
- Rebates/Grants
- Up Front/Backend Production Funding

Soft Money (“Incentives”) – 2nd Page

- Best Practices

Soft Money (“Incentives”) – 3rd Page

- Web Access Tools

Production Incentives
- Domestic & International – http://www.productiontaxincentives.com/
- Canada – www.canadafilmcapital.com/taxcredit/index.html

Film Commissions
- Worldwide – http://www.afci.org/

Co-Financing Partners

“Understand that whatever percentage of the budget they’re going to put up, they’re going to want that percentage of everything that happens on the back end coming back to them. Partnerships are not about free money…now it really is about finding a partner who wants to share in your reward.”

- Studios
- Distributors
- Post Facilities
- Production Companies
- Passive Equity Investors
- Film or Media Funds
- Integrated Marketeers
- Brand/Rights Sharers
- Etc.

- Typical pro rate Scenario: % Financing = % Ownership

Production Loans

“This has a direct effect to all of those $15-$24 million worth of deals. There are still banks out there that will deduct the money, but their capacity for risk is substantially less than it used to be. You used to be able to walk into a bank telling your story and creating a very good picture about the potential profitability of your movie, and the bank would…once they felt comfortable…the bank would probably take risks that they just cannot make today. All of these loans are collateralized…now more than ever, self-bonding is not an option. You will have to get a completion bond on your film.”

Foreign Pre-Sales

“You can find co-financing partners in foreign sales agents, foreign sales companies and in distributors of the foreign territories. You don’t make a decision to make a movie without talking to foreign sales people. You shouldn’t go out there and make a movie without having a conversation with somebody somewhere that’s an expert in foreign sales…what kind of currency does this film have in the rest of the world outside of the United States? They can certainly tell you that American comedies are very challenged to travel abroad. Because of that, it’s going to help you to cast a movie with somebody that does have currency in a foreign market to minimize the risk that your comedy isn’t going to travel well abroad.”

Negative Pick-Up

“Negative pick-ups are pretty hard to come by unless you have somebody pretty extraordinary attached to the budget or it’s just a great story that a distributor wants his hand on. The deal is really simple…the money comes from a bank. You’ve got a producer and a distributor. The bank agrees to provide a loan to the production, the production agrees to make the movie and deliver it to the distributor. And the distributor is going to pay off the bank loan. A letter of intent nowadays means absolutely nothing. It is really a lovely thing to have…never take a letter of intent into a financial institution because it really carries no weight.”

Gap, Mezzanine, and Private Equity Financing

“When you look at investments in movies, equity is cash. It’s the riskiest money out there. People who make an equity investment in your film are entitled to a much better reward. They sit behind everybody else back with you, but they’re going to get a higher return. They’re paid last, but they hold a higher reward than the lender will get.”

- GAP – Last in, first out. Secured against foreign sales. (est. ROI 12-14%)
- MEZZ – Sits behind GAP. Secured against some part of the revenue stream. (est. ROI 18-22%)
- EQUITY – Sits behind Mezz. First in, last out; Entirely performance driven. (est. ROI mid-20s to mid-30s %)

Integrated Marketing

“Integrated marketing has become an incredible buzz word…it’s what we used to call product placement, but it’s much bigger. These deals are incredibly difficult to put together and to use as cash. More often than not, these integrated marketing deals are marketing support for the movie. They’re not going to give you cash up front to use to cover your production. They’re very rare and often involve conversations at a corporate level that you will not be able to have. I would always recommend that you first look at the kind of marketing support that you can get for the release of the film and that might actually help you go and raise the P&A money. With a lot of these integrated marketing deals, you don’t really get the majority of the cash until your partner can look at the movie.”

Part 2 – Financing a Single Picture

Hypothetical

- Assumptions: $5M budget, UK Production, Bollywood actors, post in UK, American producer/director/writer/

$5M (100%) Budget
-1.25 (25%) UK Tax Incentives
-1.5M (30%) UK Tax Incentives
-200K (4%) UK Post & VFX (equity co-producer)
-800K (16%) UK rights (presale)
-200K (4%) India/Pakistan/Sri Lanka rights (presale)
-1.05M (21%) Equity/GAP
$0 (0%)

UK Tax Incentive

- UK Spend = $5M
- UK Tax Incentive = 25% of UK spend
- UK Benefit is $5M x 25% = $1.25M

Equity Co-Producer

- Post-Production budget = $1.5M
- Offer post facility co-producer credit & 30% revenue stream for $1.5M
- Benefits to co-producer: Increased visibility, workflow, revenue stream
- Will co-producer cashflow the UK tax incentive for a fee?

UK Film Council

- Grant Application eligibility due to UK content
- Usually capped, but each project is treated individually
- Benefits to Film Council: Increased visibility, supports inward investment and economic development, creates local jobs

Foreign Presales

- Presale of territories
- Need foreign sales agent
- Need foreign sales estimates

Equity/Gap/Mezz

- Leverage foreign sales estimated for unsold territories as collateral
- Only use bank-approved foreign sales agents
- Angel investors are the hardest thing to find

Other Considerations

“Any piece can fall out at any given time.”

- Script
- Chain-of-title
- Reasonable budget expectation
- Corporate set-up and compliance
- Letters of intent
- Completion bond
- Production Insurance
- Payroll
- Banking
- Financing reporting
- Delivery
- Distribution/Sales

Independent Film Week - State of the Industry - Sept. 16, 2008

The State of the Industry
Independent Film Week
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
FIT – Haft Auditorium – New York, NY

Last Tuesday at the Independent Filmmaker Conference, Variety’s Anne Thompson moderated a discussion with indie film distribution stalwart Bob Berney, who lead Warner Bros.’ specialty division Picturehouse, which was recently relinquished into the larger fabric of the company. A few years back, Berney brought to mainstream attention such indie film hits as My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Y Tu Mama Tambien, and Mel Gibson’s controversial The Passion of the Christ. Berney talked with Thompson about his work in distribution and the current and state of the industry and where it seems to be heading. Below are some selected moments from that discussion.

Thompson: Why are the studios losing faith in the independent specialty division sectors? Why were Picturehouse and Warner Independent both put out to pasture?

Berney: We’re really caught up in a lot of things. I think that for Warners and Time Warner having duplicate distribution systems. Obviously Warners and New Line became very similar doing the same tent-pole releases. When they closed New Line, I think they forgot about us. I thought there could have been a merger with Warner Independent and Picturehouse. They felt they only were going to make tent-pole movies like The Dark Knight. They didn’t want to have the over head. There wasn’t enough profit for their huge overhead and corporation to do independent films. If they had one, they would do it through the Warner system. At the same time in the marketplace, you saw Paramount Vantage change. It’s not quite as bad as with Warner Independent and Picturehouse, but it radically downsized. We’ll see what kind of films it will do now.

Thompson: What is it that you were able to do to build audiences for foreign language films?

Berney: Over the years for foreign language films, distribution became touch because ancillary markets behind the theatrical just didn’t perform. You go from being a niche studio where you announced you’re going to buy a foreign language films. Foreign language is just the code word for zero. I tried to pick films over the years that go beyond the language. Pan’s Labyrinth…Guillermo told the story so beautifully.

Thompson: With Mel Gibson, that was an unusual situation where you took his movie against all odds onto 5,000 screens.

Berney: It was amazing operationally as distributors to do that movie. It really changed the business because we had 23 people at the time at New Market. We opened on the level of 5,000 runs and we grossed $360 million. We couldn’t believe we could actually get the prints to theaters. They (the studios) had 500-600 people doing the same thing. It was rough dealing with all the fire with Mel, but mainly we were just focused on the exhibitors. You have to go as wide as you can because it’s not a review film. At that time, he was on his best behavior. I wasn’t caught in any of the controversy of him. At the time, as an independent, we really went big. As an independent distributor, theater chains…you’re not going to get as good a deal as you do if you’re with a studio. They really tried to screw us on that.

Thompson: What has happened with the exhibition community and the health of independent film? Why is it so bad?

Berney: I think it’s a lot of things. There’s been a lot of discussion…that panel that Mark Gill did…his theory was that all films are bad. The part that’s true is there were all of these hedge fund investors that would invest in…and part of this is my fault…in the P&A. They’d get it out there and it didn’t work. Part of it is the pressure especially in the studio divisions to do bigger films and wider releases. A lot of the studios go…it has to be Juno. It has to be that kind of level of hit. That’s a lot of pressure. DVD is falling, although there are a ton of exceptions. VOD has been coming along really strong.

Thompson: Are you going to play around with the whole digital arena?

Berney: I think one of the biggest changes recently is the announcement…I don’t know if it’s going to happen…there was an announcement about six months ago that MGM, Lionsgate and Paramount are going to start a new digital VOD service. It’s very hard as an independent to get a pay deal with HBO, Showtime or Starz, because they’re doing more original programming. This could be an interesting change that helps independent distributors maybe.

Independent Film Week - Kevin Smith - Sept. 14, 2008

A Conversation with Kevin Smith
Independent Film Week
Sunday, September 14, 2008
FIT – Haft Auditorium – New York, NY

Filmmaker Kevin Smith, whose new film Zack and Miri Make a Porno opens in theaters this Halloween, came to the Independent Filmmaker Conference to talk about his new film, his career, his upcoming politically-driven film Red State, and to shoot the shit with the audience during a fun and F-bomb-filled Q&A. It was 15 years ago that his debut independent feature Clerks was shown at the IFFM, or what’s currently called Independent Film Week. Below are selected highlights from the Q&A. (This Q&A is rated NC-17 by The Film Panel Notetaker Association of America.)

Audience Question: Can you talk about Zach and Miri?

Smith: I said raise your fucking hand! Some people seem to think it’s funny. I was trying to make an insightful exploration of the Holocaust. It turned into this other fucking thing. There’s this whole other thing about it turning from an NC-17 to an R rating. I’m kind of nervous about that. I remember last time with Clerks when it got an NC-17. Miramax hired Alan Dershowitz to defend the film. We did get the NC-17, but it’s not censorship. I’m kind of hoping this time it would be a little quiet. Sure enough, people on the Internet said, it’s a publicity grab. It’s so not. That’s the last thing we want. We just screened at Toronto. It went really well for us. We got some really great reviews.

Audience Question: After making Clerks, you made Mallrats? Did you have any problems going from independent work going to a studio?

Smith: I made one independent film in my life and that was Clerks. Mallrats was made by Universal through Gramercy. Chasing Amy was made for $250, 000 with Harvey’s (Weinstein) money. Every other flick was financed by a studio. Harvey’s pretty much paid for every movie accept for Mallrats. Mallrats was made for $6M and grossed $2M, and I felt shitty after that. I lost someone $4M. The next one I’m going to do, Red State…it’s the first time in 15 years I have to look for money. Every time someone says ‘no,’ maybe I’m on the right track here.

Audience Question: What got you thinking about making Red State?

Smith: I’m not a political person by nature. I don’t go out and campaign for the candidates. I’m the dick and fart joke movie guy. Basically, I’m thinking about the climate of the country right now. It’s fucked up, there’s no one to root for in the movie. It’s a series of horrible, bad, selfish immoral students paid by a bunch of unlikable characters. Wouldn’t you pay to see that? It’s weird. It’s not a movie that should be made, but I got to do it.

Audience Question: How important are film festivals, for example with Red State?

Smith: Red State is totally a festival film. Geoff Gilmore introduced us at Sundance in ’94. It’s the film festival story that people love to read...about a fucking guy from Jersey who works at a convenience store who made a movie. It kind of worked out for us. Film festivals hold a place in my heart, because without them, I would not be standing here talking to you. I’d still be working at that fucking convenience store.

Audience Question: There’s been a lot of changes going on in the independent film industry such as the closing down of specialty divisions. Do you care about those changes? Does it affect you?

Smith: No, I don’t think so. Obviously I was affected when Harvey and Bob left Miramax and created the Weinstein Company. Do I stay or do I go? I felt like they gave me my break. The closing down of specialty divisions, it’s kind of sad more than anything else. I’ve seen that happen so often. Now I’m kind of used to it. I think everything goes cyclical. In 10-15 years, a bunch of specialty divisions will open up again because somebody else is going to make a movie that makes $100 million and it looks like shit, and it will be viable again and open up a bunch of places.

Independent Film Week - Working with Doc Subjects - Sept. 18, 2008

Independent Film Week
Working with Doc Subjects
September 18, 2008

Again, this panel was composed of all Femmes who each provided clips exhibiting their wonderful films. In each, it was clear that they had to make their subjects a part of the film to accomplish it. Ethics is in the bloodstream of a filmmaker.

Most of Nina Davenport’s previous films have been personal. She wanted to make her latest, Operation: Filmmaker, universal, so she approached it with an eagerness to be on the outside. She did shoot some scenes with her providing her subject with filmmaking advice, and was especially compelled to let him know when he was alienating people. Then she shot the scenes with her not in them. But over time, when he needed visa, money, credit for directing the film, etc. she grew tired of his manipulation and keep their interactions in the film. It then ended up being about their relationship.

Tia Lessin, co-director of Trouble the Water, says it’s not entirely possible to be objective. Filmmakers inevitably inject passion, outrage, anger, hope, and ultimately a point of view. She aimed to not make her film about victims or criminals, but the survivors of Katrina. The subjects were residents of New Orleans, who shot a lot of the original footage that inspired the film. These residents couldn’t gain access back unless they were attached to media, so it comes across that there was aggression on the ground against the people. The footage from the subjects painted the film.

Lucia Small is also of personal documentary background. For The Axe in the Attic, she conducted hundreds of interviews. She narrowed the bunch down to 32 and struggled a bit with structure due to the many characters. She strived to get a variety of people: white, black etc. The filmmakers flagged people along the way who were more than eager to tell their stories, but they also were avoided as they appeared to be carpetbaggers. Characters in her film were generous, but trust was a serious issue, especially in the context of New Orleans at the time. A filmmaker can never be totally objective despite efforts to abide by a journalist code. The camera is a link for the filmmaker to witness a story. In the case of Lucia’s film, the challenge was to gain their trust, sometimes in mere.

Cynthia Wade wanted to carve out narrative arc in theme which came naturally in Freeheld, which had a subject who had limited lifespan and had particular goal. Her physical condition was visibly different from one shoot to the next. In this case, the story dictated that it had to be chronological. Also, because it was a short film, it was liberating to not push for coverage that a feature requires. There was pressure in interviewing the main character. Cynthia had to rack her brain for every little idea and question because there was no way to go back. She gave her subject cameras because it alleviated her guilt to be in their house and in their face doing it herself. It was a sentimental and emotional thing to shoot.

The entire panel felt that subjects should not necessarily be compensated. It is exploitative although in the case of Tia’s film, they expanded their relationship by licensing the footage from her subject. Geraldo seemed to have ruined that mantra for journalists. It all seemed to change with his coup of subjects getting compensated, but in the field you worry about that truth in depicting story. It does get complicated in this economy and with the exchange rate in third world, but the consensus was, do not put money between the filmmaker and the subject.

--amp

Independent Film Week - A Conversation with Robert Greenwald - Sept. 18, 2008

A Conversation with Robert Greenwald
Independent Film Week
Thursday, September 18, 2008
11:30am - 12:30pm
FIT – Haft Auditorium – New York, NY

Robert Greenwald, Brave New Films
Iraq for Sale
WALMART: The High Cost of Low Price
OutFoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism

Robert Greenwald is a prolific genius. I’ve seen several of his documentaries and they’ve all been smart, humane, and compelling—though very liberal in nature. The panel discussion was vaguely unique, however. Not to dis it; I just think it was the nature of a get-to-know-the-filmmaker set up.

He seems like an accessible guy in his behind-the-scenes stuff on the DVDs. He even has a facebook page. I’d suggest you get to know him by indulging on his YouTube videos that garner thousands of subscribers and millions of views.

Now, the Qs in the Q&As often try my patience. Perhaps I’m a snob. In this case, I simply disliked the parts where people were giving him suggestions and ideas for videos. I felt like the audience could have been more constructive with a guy who has done a lot of good work. Then again, I’m in the back typing notes so who am I to talk. Do you think he gets threats on his life? That’s all I wanted to know.

Independent Film Week - Funding Blueprints for Docs - Sept. 18, 2008

Funding Blueprints for Docs
Independent Film Week
Thursday, September 18, 2008
10:00am - 11:00am
FIT – Haft Auditorium – New York, NY

I'm currently unable to post the names and companies of the panelists because they ran out of little books and the website version of panel descriptions is difficult.

My first impression of this panel was that it was 100% women. According to research on the Celluloid Ceiling, only small percentage (6% in 2007) of women are helming narrative films and three (1 American, Sofia Coppola) have ever been nominated for Oscars in directing. Women make up a little more than half the human population.

However, in my experience there are tons of women producing behind the scenes or making documentaries. In fact, part of my plan is to eventually parley my docs into a place where I’m also directing my scripts. That direction seems to be most productive path for me to follow my passion for commenting on culture and build my directorial portfolio. I’m not saying that’s for everyone, but I was burning to make NO Cross, NO Crown and from that, my obsession with American counter-cultures was defined.

In the panel discussion, I gleaned these lessons:

• Funding is always a patchwork of sources; never expect a windfall or perfect timing.
• It’s easier said than done, but try to line up international distribution. With the dollar being so low, you may actually have a shot at good money.
• The US doesn’t have many options for re-sale. Consider co-producing internationally with funds who only grant funds to non-US filmmakers.
• Read a lot and watch trends. Play on the cultural zeitgeist your film belongs in.
• Do development. Spend the time, spend the money. Do research. Know your stuff.
• Passion for the subject is infectious. Have it and don’t hesitate to show it.
• There are different funds for development, production and finishing. Some offer different services: equipment, facilities, mentors programs, etc.
• For As for fund raising: Ask, Ask for a specific amount and Ask Again.
• Follow up on leads constantly. Be persistent. Demonstrate endless perseverance. There’s no other way.
• Watch credits of films on your subject and scour them for resources.
• Sales agents have increasingly come to aid filmmakers without producing the films.

-amp

Independent Film Week - State of Film Festivals - Sept. 15, 2008

State of Film Festivals
Independent Film Week
Monday, September 15, 2008
5:30-7pm
FIT – Haft Auditorium – New York, NY

Monday at Independent Film Week, IFP Executive Director Michelle Byrd moderated the State of Film Festivals discussion with Christian Gaines and Geoff Gilmore. Below is an edited transcript of the main points brought out in the discussion.

Moderator:
Michelle Byrd, IFP

Panelists:
Christian Gaines, Sundance Film Festival
Geoff Gilmore, withoutabox

Byrd: Can you talk about the different sections in Sundance and the process for acceptance into the festival?

Gilmore: The Sundance Film Festival has three different arenas. The competitions are four of them: two international and two domestic and documentary and dramatic. The American dramatic competition has to be a world premiere. We picked 16 films in each of those two sections out of somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,500 dramatic submissions and somewhere around 1,000 documentary submissions. The international competition needs to be a U.S. premiere. It started four years ago. In addition, we have a premiere section which tends to be that section of the festival which has higher visibility in terms of the fact that there’s more prominent directors, sometimes some that already have distribution. We have a section that’s kind of a catch all section called Spectrum where films that have not already had world premieres play internationally or domestic. There’s an enormous mythology about how festivals choose programs. A number of people have told me that a sales agent has told a filmmaker that they met Geoff Gilmore and it could get into Sundance…all I can do is role my eyes and say sure and come back and say that’s fine…what the real truth is basically it’s submitted and we look at it. We have an honestly intelligent staff who works their asses off looking at every single film that gets submitted to the film festival. We debate what gets into the festival. We debate what should be in different sections. Ultimately the choice if it gets into the Sundance Film Festival is made by one person, which is me for features. The shorts are chosen by Trevor Groth?? and a group of people. The questions that people have so often in what we’re looking for…that’s why it’s so difficult to talk about the process, because we’re not looking for simple things. There’s maybe 20 different reasons why a film plays at Sundance. It may be a question of its content. It may be a question of its originality. It may be a question of its distinction as a genre film. It may be an experimental work. There’s a lot of different kinds of films. All I can really say to you is don’t make a decision as to what you think we’re looking for. Don’t make your decision as to what you think a Sundance film is because it’s quite a spectrum. The idea that we actually have a certain kind of an agenda is the opposite. If I’m an agenda, I’m not going to pick up on the films that are coming from you guys, because that’s my agenda to pick movies as opposed to literally what comes right to me. In order for us to respond to the range of work that’s been given to us, I want my staff to be as open as possible. I’m not trying to pick films that are commercial. I’m not trying to pick films that get sold.

Byrd: You recently left AFI. Can you talk about the various festivals under the AFI banner and their festival selection processes?

Gaines: The submission process for larger festivals in the U.S. and around the world are fairly similar with some modifications. Their job is to methodically go through these films and to have the cream rise to the surface. Obviously incredibly to do with thousands of submissions, but methodically speaking, many programmers that work on the process, they look at films, they grade them, they review them, they comment on them. They urge other festival programmers to look at them. Sometimes to specific festival programmers that respond to this kind of work. It’s a constant narrowing process. It’s also worth mentioning there’s a certain general misconception that there’s huge pile of films and putting all the good ones on one side and the bad ones on another side. It’s not as simple as that. There are sections are different sections and criteria. It’s worth knowing what festival submission criteria are. It’s worth knowing that Toronto doesn’t show shorts outside of Canadian shorts, for example. Pay attention to those kinds of criteria. Pay attention to the process.

Gilmore: I can’t tell you how many times someone’s walked up and say, do you watch all the movies? It’s confusing to me. How do you think we select them? Do you watch them the whole way through. In most of the cases, yes. It’s our job to look at your work and be open job. It’s not our job to sit on high and anointed. It doesn’t work that way.

Byrd: How do you make decision about which one is best? What’s the role of the film festival?

Gilmore: I make the distinction of festivals that are markets and festivals that aren’t. There are festivals with formal markets like Cannes. There’s festivals like Sundance that are an informal market. A lot that goes on at Cannes is not about the buying new feature films. It’s pre-buying films at the script stage. The pre-buying market at Cannes is far more important than the issue of buying the film out of the competition. The other festivals, each of them have their own roles. One has to unfortunately has to make these decisions not by yourself hopefully but with some real advice on the best places to go. I just came from Toronto. One of the great film festivals in the world, but it pisses me off because they show 300+ pictures. Essentially what that means is 150 films that go to Toronto are disappearing year. It’s bad for anybody who’s trying to pay attention to all the films in the program. Toronto is a very difficult festival to sell, because it’s more of a launch festival than a sale festival. It’s one of the best public festivals in the world. The people who go to Toronto are real people. I think what you want to do is get your film in front of real people and get buyers at that screening.

Gaines: There’s a big difference a guy or a gal who has a film and puts their next film out there and suddenly thinks of themselves as filmmaker in the long run. I would just really dissuade that notion. There’s so much to be learned from establishing relationships with people…just people who are of your community. Film festivals are places where you can develop and deepen your pool of comrades, colleagues. You can’t underestimate that. The treasured treat of having your film seen in front of people that aren’t your family and friends and having your film be reacted to who aren’t you or like you is a real pleasure and growing experience. Being able to get press and publicity in all kinds of places other than huge media environments. All these things are part of the things that are going to deepen your understand of the industry and put you in a much better position if an agent comes along.

Byrd: Do you have any idea how many festivals there are in the U.S.?

Gaines: 700 million.

Gilmore: Not far along. There’s a difference between the top tier festivals that are maybe 7 or 8 in the world, and another set of really important regional festivals which are one step down. The strategy of how you to decide which to go to is one of the most important that you make.

Gaines: You can’t throw a rock without hitting a film festival in the U.S. It’s up to a filmmaker to do their due diligence and have a buyer beware approach. There’s nothing wrong with a lot of film festivals. In fact, it’s a very good thing in part because film festivals become an ad hoc distribution outlet for films that will otherwise never be seen. The revenue model that exists behind it is still uncertain. It’s true that festivals still have this U.S./World Premiere competitiveness. My general feeling about that is that so many films are unattainable to most festivals because great films that aren’t being considered by U.S. distributors coming out of Cannes, a lot of those films will never see the light of day in an American film festival, which is a real shame. Right after Cannes, it’s not unusual for a sales agent to get three or four hundred invitations from festivals from around the world saying we want to share that film. Something’s got to change in terms of how they can be seen.

Byrd: What do you think Sundance will be like 10 years from and thinking about the climate for independent film? Everybody’s been reading all the press about ‘The Sky is Falling.’ What can you imagine the festival becoming?

Gilmore: Two years ago Sundance had about $15 million worth of films. Last year, that number was a quarter. The theatrical marketplace for independent features is not at it’s best moment. Why? I don’t know. I have lots of answers. Maybe it’s ultimately the movies. Maybe it’s what drives specialized films is changing. Coen Bros. film lead the weekend. Some people don’t even consider that to be independent anymore. More films got distributed theatrically last year than any time since the 1950s. It’s my standard joke, and it’s not so funny that the issue of finding visibility and distribution for work has become the function of film festivals, which I think is bad. I think the cultural and aesthetic function of festivals, the showcasing and experimentation, the work that festivals do cannot be reduced by this kind of business. We have to figure out what the distribution mechanisms will become. I do believe that technology at festivals is going to evolve. I do believe that the generation of filmmakers growing up now have a much better way of dealing with alternative distribution. Whether or not festivals have cyber space sections. Whether or not that cyber space section helps market a film or gives it visibility. Those are really good questions right now. On-the-ground events and cyber space events have to work together.

Byrd: The film “Sugar” that played at Sundance, if you were to see it on a third screen in cyber space, what would it take for Sundance to take that leap?

Gilmore: If don’t just put it on the net and say let’s watch it. You make it a special event. We’re going to work these things out, because it’s not been done. The bad news with what’s going on with festivals right now, festivals are too long, too crowded, their overwhelmed by people who want their faces to be photographed. They’re overwhelmed by agents who want to showcase their work. There’s too much mediocrity at festivals. What used to be exciting about festivals was, ‘that was a fucking great film,’ not ‘how much do you think it’s going to make?’ The question of how much is a film going to make cannot be what drives film festivals over the next decade.

Gaines: I’d like to add on to what Geoff was saying about why film festivals suck. There are so many different constituents now who converge onto film festivals who desire a different experience. All of those different people are essential for the survival of the festivals. Corporate sponsors and the media. So many festivals start now for reasons that are outreach projects for larger cultural institutions. They’re the film commission’s baby. All these different institutions desire different outcomes. It ultimately takes away the treasured dignity of having your film seen in the best possible picture and sound, best possible environment in an enhanced way. As far as the future of film festivals, I always have this image of a rock t-shirt, but instead of the rock band in front, it’s the name of the film and on the back, it’s a list of all the films it played at and that’s it’s theatrical distribution and each one of the places there was an economic model that worked.

Byrd: Can you talk about withoutabox?

Gaines: Withoutabox was founded in 2000. Designed to provide self-distribution tools for filmmakers. It’s the ability for filmmakers to submit to many film festivals in a simple and intuitive way to track the submissions and make sense of the submission process. In January, the company was bought by IMDB. Through IMDB and its parent company Amazon’s various online and DVD distribution devices, will be over the course of the next few years, developing the ability to offer WAB filmmakers to be able to distribute their film either online as a pay-per-view format or a streaming format on IMDB. WAB is a huge aggregated mass of right holders. We’re trying to offer non-exclusive opportunities, so watch this space for future developments.

Independent Film Week - "Medicine for Melancholy" - Sept. 15, 2008

Medicine For Melancholy – Opening Night Film
Independent Film Week
Monday, September 15, 2008
Clearview Chelsea Cinemas – New York, NY

(Medicine for Melancholy actor Wyatt Cenac and director Barry Jenkins)

Photo by A.M. Peters

Before the screening of Independent Film Week’s opening night film Medicine for Melancholy, New York State Governor’s Office For Motion Picture and Television Development Commissioner Pat Kaufman announced the winner of I Love New York’s New York City Regional competition, “Love in New York.”

Filmmaker Magazine editor-in-chief Scott Macauley introduced Medicine for Melancholy and its director Barry Jenkins, one of the magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film (which by the way is celebrating its 10th anniversary. A party was held later in the evening at Strata for the commemoration).

Macauley said he first saw Medicine for Melancholy at SXSW at its premiere screening and thought it was fantastic with “a real visual imagination” and is also “really smart about politics.” Macauley said of the middle sequence in the film that “a lot of other people would have maybe not been bold enough to include this sequence. It’s a little digressive from the main story, but for me it’s one of the things that really made the film.”

The following are some highlights of the post-screening Q&A with Jenkins and one half of the film’s stars, Wyatt Cenac who plays Micah (Tracey Heggins who plays Jo was not there). By the way, the Q&A was done almost entirely in the dark, as the house lights had yet to come on, which made for a rather fun discussion.

Q: What camera did you shoot on?

Jenkins: Panasonic HVX.

Q: What was the budget of the film?

Jenkins: We can’t really talk about the budget. If you drove a car here tonight, the car you drive probably cost more than the total budget of this film.

Q: What was your inspiration?

Jenkins: I moved to San Francisco after living in L.A. I met a woman in San Francisco. She broke up with me. I need to prove myself as a filmmaker, so I’m going to make a movie. I channeled all the energy from the break up and living in San Francisco. I wrote the script really quick in about three weeks. I wrote it to be shootable for myself and five friends. Once the script was together, I raised enough money to do this.

Cenac: There’s no greater motivator than hate. That’s a lesson you should all take out. Hate something enough.

Q: What was your casting process? Did you have Wyatt in mind?

Jenkins: I had no idea who he was. We wrote the movie and tried to cast in San Francisco, but San Francisco was 7% African-American. 1% of San Francisco is actors. If you take 1% of 7%, we couldn’t find anybody in San Francisco, so we went to L.A. Tracey was the first one we saw. We saw other women, because I’m a director, and I can’t make up my mind. And then we saw 50 guys. None of them were working. A friend of ours happened to know Wyatt. Justin, our producer, sent me a clip on YouTube called “My Best Black Friend.” It was a weird pilot that Wyatt was in about a white guy who has a reality show with a best black friend.

Cenac: Not just his best black friend, his only black friend.

Jenkins: Months later we were casting and Justin said, what about that one guy? So we called Wyatt.

Cenac: You didn’t call me. I got a Myspace message.

Q: Can you explain your choices of music?

Jenkins: Everything in this movie is kind of designed to be doable. We need to get the rights to these songs. I had a playlist from iTunes. 80% of the music in the movie is from that playlist. The rest of the music was pulled together by Greg O’Bryant. It was important to have music I thought reflected the fact that this black guy living in this quote-on-quote un-black world. Also being able to make the movie really fast, we wanted to music know ahead of time what the scenes were going to be cut to.

Cenac: This is on a complete side not, but there’s a woman in the third row who’s either completely passed out or dead. (Huge LOL from the audience)

Q: How much rehearsal time did you have?

Jenkins: None. Wyatt and Tracey were both SAG ultra, ultra low budget actors, but we still had to pay them for every day they worked on the movie. We couldn’t afford to pay them any money, so we couldn’t bring them out to San Francisco for rehearsal. So they got there literally 12 hours before we shot the first shot. But we shot it in sequence, so it worked. We got two people who don’t really know each other. As we were making the film, they kind of got to know one another.

Q: How much of it was improvised?

Jenkins: Really not much of it was improv’d. There’s certain jokes in the film where I would write a joke and Wyatt would take the liberty of extending it. The only completely improv’d scene was the Bill Cosby scene.

Q: How long did it take you to shoot film?

Jenkins: We shot 15 days in November (of 2007). And we had the rough cut by New Year’s Day, and we mixed in February (2008). It was a really quick process.

Q: Can you talk about your style. A lot of your sequences seemed like a hybrid of experimental and documentary.

Jenkins: James (Laxton, director of photography) and I lived together in film school. We shot designed about half of the film. As an exercise, we wanted to kind of figure out ways to shoot it. As far as the color, we decided really early on that we wanted reflect the title, Medicine for Melancholy. We wanted that melancholy reflected in the actual image. We knew we were going to de-saturate the colors palates. We super saturated in production, and de-saturated in post to kind of protect their skin tones. There’s certain places in the movie where the characters just react with one another and all these issues with race, and at those moments, it’s the most color. Karina Longworth of Spout.com wrote one of the first reviews of the film. She said the film is 93% saturated and it’s reflective of San Francisco’s 7% African-American. If you look at our color files, the film is 93% saturated. We didn’t do that intentionally. We really tried to reflect what was the emotional connection with the characters.

Independent Film Week - Show & Sell: Positioning for Festivals

Sunday was the first day of Independent Film Week 2008. At the Filmmaker Conference, I attended a panel on positioning for festivals that addressed once you've finished your film, what do you do next? How do you manage your expectations for film festivals? Below are some highlights of that discussion.

Show & Sell: Positioning for Festivals
Independent Film Week
Sunday, September 14, 2008
4-5pm
FIT – Haft Auditorium – New York, NY

Moderators:
Howard Gertler, Producer – Process Media
Susan Stover, Producer – Laurel Canyon

Panelists:
Courtney Hunt, Director – Frozen River
Ryan Kampe, Partner, International Sales – Visit Films
Jarod Neece, Programmer – SXSW
Tom Quinn, SVP Acquisitions – Magnolia Pictures
Reid Rosefelt, Marketing Consulting and Publicity

Gertler: When did you submit Frozen River to Sundance?

Hunt: I submitted the film by deadline in September. We did not have a finished score. By and large, the movie was cut. In that instance, we felt we were ready. It was a real serious rush to get it done.

Gertler: What condition was the film in when you brought it to premiere at Sundance? What was your experience like?

Hunt: When we got into the festival, it was done. We brought in two composers. Once we were in, we were really quite serious about getting the score. We really couldn’t use the temp score. Once we got it to Sundance, it was already done. We had titles. We just hadn’t seen it in front of a crowd. In terms of positioning it, what happened in my case was, and I’m not sure how this happened, but I don’t think it’s a secret, the big agencies, William Morris, etc., learned about the film and started calling up and saying they wanted to get a sales agent to see it. That was tricky. We didn’t know if we were in Sundance or not. That seemed like a lot of trust. Do we show it? What if we don’t get in afterward? We did end up showing it…having no idea if anyone would buy the film. For me, the whole experience was about connecting to an audience. Did the film work? Were people getting it? William Morris would report that so and so saw it today. I think it sold on the fourth day before it won the Grand Jury Prize. I went into this little house and met Tom Bernard and Michael Barker from Sony Pictures Classics. It was really kind of mom and pop in that sense.

Stover: At any time when you were editing, when you’re finishing your film and get it into a festival, do you show it to an acquisitions person before it screens at the festival? Is it a pro or con doing that?

Hunt: We didn’t have any acquisitions people asking to see it. I don’t think I would have done that. Here’s the thing…it’s not like they helped me fund the film, so I felt like they could wait to see it. If you’re coming in with post money, that’s one thing.

Gertler: If you’re first-time filmmaker, how do you help to manage their expectations when submitting to your festival?

Neece: If they’ve already been accepted, it’s just a matter of getting calls from agents and sometimes acquisitions folks. You have to ask yourself the questions…are you going to get a publicist? A sales agent? I think publicists are worth the money, especially for the press. If you get press, that may in turn may get distributors to want to see the film. I don’t know about sales agents. It just depends on what you want. What are you looking for? Are you looking for exposure of people to just look at your film?

Stover: What’s the game plan for publicity at festivals?

Rosefelt: I can speak to what you might be doing as a filmmaker to take your film to a festival. Not all of you are going to be able to afford a publicist. The first thing when you’re creating your materials is you want to keep them really short, because you’re making this thing for a critic or a journalist who is seeing three or four films a day and doing interviews, going to parties. In general, reviews from festivals are very small paragraphs. When creating your materials, think about the person who’ll actually be using this. Keep it very economical. If you feel like you have to give them this long essay about your film, put it on your website because they’ll get that written piece of material when they go to the screening or at the press office. If it’s too long, they’re just going to give cast and credits. The other thing that’s really important is stills. You really want to have a picture that makes your film like something you want to see. It indicated what kind of movie it is. Let’s say your film has erotic content, whenever you shoot a scene, where the actors are naked, you usually ask the still photographer to leave the room so that at the end of the movie, you don’t have anything that looks like what the movie is actually about, because you never took anything. You can set up photos while you’re shooting. It’s commonly done. Francis Coppola does it. You just come in and pose everybody. You can talk to the producer and director and discuss what stills you would like to have. Just make sure you get them. If you get to the end of the movie and you don’t have a still, stage one. If you get into Sundance, they’re going to call and ask you to send them a still. That doesn’t mean send us a still next week, it means send us a still right now. You’ve got to think about that. You’re trying to get something that will make people want to see your film. You always have to create some kind of short synopsis. I suggest a book called I Wake Up Screening by Laura Kim and John Adamson. It’s really the best book I know of about preparing for festivals.

Gertler: How do you prepare for a festival?

Kampe: Primarily we’re doing international sales. We come in on two different scenarios. First is the easy scenario – Cannes, Toronto or Berlin. We would come on board after we see an announcement. What we want to do is come on board as early as possible because we need to put our marketing and PR people behind the film. There’s so many titles that are out for sale, we want to start to differentiate them. As soon as the announcement comes out, we ask for screeners. The second scenario is that we want to get on as early as possible to start selling the international options. If we’re on at the script or shooting stage, what that allows us to do is look at it and see which festivals might take it. As a first-time filmmaker, you probably don’t have the connections with Sundance, Toronto or Berlin. As a company, we place the films with the right programmers.

Quinn: We’re a little different then some of our competitors because we deal with a wide range of films. This month, we just distributed “What Just Happened?” “Man on Wire,” a small Chilean film starring a martial arts star. It’s a pretty wide palate. We travel to every single festival that we deem half important from Sundance to Cannes to Toronto, but we also travel to Austin twice a year to SXSW and Fantastic Film Fest. We basically track the crap out of these movies. At Toronto, there were 140 films. It’s a constant filtering process. The way we do that is look at the sign posts along the way, which are reviews, art work, trailers. How do we get to the point where we deem these films to be priority films. It’s a very long-winded process. My personal preference is seeing movies at 3am in my own house. I know it’s important for filmmakers to send their films to the right festivals, but by the same token, I have to say that we’re one of the few companies that buys a lot of blind submissions.

Stover: What’s the issue of showing your film to an acquisitions person before anyone else sees it?

Quinn: It’s a bad idea. It’s a constant barter of information. What is this other company screening? What do they think? It’s a very small circle. I call it a circus of acquisition execs who throughout the world really know each other well. That’s a bad way to launch your film. It’s very important for you to pick a company you trust and will not discuss your film with anyone else. Whether you want to sign a non-disclosure agreement, we’re happy to do that. There are other companies that are sort of like the mafia and work behind closed doors in not letting other people know about what they see. It’s a risk.

Gertler: When preparing for Sundance, what did you discuss with your agents about goals?

Hunt: It was more like, this is who we know. This is who may be interested in it. It depends on what kind of film you’re making. If you’re making a very experimental film, you have to be really careful about showing it to the wrong acquisitions person. On the other hand, if you have confidence in the work, there probably is a good argument for showing it. We didn’t really talk about strategy so much. We really talked about how the film impacted the audience.

Gertler: How many films do you see a year?

Quinn: I did a study in January looking at how people do in the marketplace, especially films I care about. $5 million and under grossing films. They’re independent films that are usually released on 600 prints or under. In the last eight years, that number has doubled and yet that audience hasn’t grown theatrically. Specialty, performance-driven films like Tell No One, Frozen River, and Man on Wire. I think there were fewer films in the marketplace, at least for that particular audience in the middle of the summer. I think “The Sky is Falling” and all that stuff going on around us, there’s going to be less films on the acquisitions side and would be distributed in the marketplace potentially. I would love to see less films. I would love to see festivals like Toronto decrease in size. I would like to see more quality over quantity in terms of premiere status.

Gertler: What’s the relationship between acquisitions and film festivals?

Neece: Premiere status is pretty important these days. You have to play the game. You have to do research. It’s competitive. SXSW gets 3,500 submissions and plays over 200 films and 90 shorts.

Quinn: We go to SXSW and Fantastic Fest to find an overlooked nugget, but also to see what’s really a healthy theatrical audience. My favorite theater chain is there, The Alamo Drafthouse. We bought films at both festivals last year. It worked really well for us. Same thing for the Woodstock Film Festival.