LA Film Fest Financial Workshop

First of all, I wanted to blog from the fundraising workshop but there was no wireless Internet access. Second of all, I don’t know if I could have, even if I wanted to. The sessions were so jam packed with rich information that between recording the speakers and taking notes, we were in overload by the end of the day. Here, I try to give some nuggets from the sessions.

Through out the day, we wondered how the experts would address piracy. We know someone who claims they can download anything (any movie) online. Some people seemed to be on the defensive about this topic, and others seemed really naïve – “piracy only happens with stars.” That isn’t true. However the conclusion might be that if there is a low cost online model, even an opportunity to donate to the filmmaker after viewing a good story, most viewers would rather contribute or watch ad content than steal.

The first speaker, James Stern (pictured), the CEO of End Game Entertainment, was excellent. Full text at IndieWire.com.

• In 2-3 years the masses will be streaming movies.
• There were 9293 submissions to Sundance (218 were selected) and 3 were released
• High Def. Version 7 is a new way to see movies and he thinks people, like families will pay as much as $50.00 to access this and show a new film at home to a group in the future.
His three rules are
1. Make smarter movies
2. Respect the money as you do the talent
3. Before rolling cameras, think market

• He spoke of the App Store Effect, as David Pogue of the New York Times coined it. This is the phenomenon where iPhone applications developers are seeing success by giving applications away for free or simply charging a dollar. The numbers are staggering: iPhone/iPod Touch fans downloaded 1 billion apps within 9 months.
• Stars are really important to financing.
• Short form is at a premium. There may be something to dividing up a movie into small parts so viewers can watch on their cell phones etc.

The next session was a panel called The World as We know it: is it over? Moderated by Anne Thompson, (Thompson on Hollywood.)
Some takeaways:
• Landmark Theaters are one of few chains letting filmmakers have a VOD option when their film is showing at the theater.

• They spoke of combining festivals and non-traditional means of distribution to make money.

• The new consumer habit of consuming film is still emerging.
• There’s an opportunity for indie filmmakers to cast bigger stars now as less projects are being made.
• Most indie distributors are going out of business.
• If you do get financing and distribution, they think you have a “lottery ticket.”
• There will be more of a drought in six months to a year for films.
• They think critics are going away, and it’s not a good thing. Online reviews don’t tend to result in bigger numbers at the theater, but traditional reviews do.
• Regarding piracy, the lag time between theatrical windows needs to go away.
• The movie business needs a low cost online model.
• Consider doing VOD while at a film festival. For example you could offer 1,000 free streams and consider that 1,000 virtual seats in addition to the seats at the festival.
• Laura Bickford (Che) said there’s still lots of money wanting to invest.
• You can’t finance a movie without soft money, that is the money back from tax incentives.
• When you get a Foreign sales company involved, they can give you low, medium and high estimates but no meaningful pre-sales.
• Ask yourself, who is my audience, what is their reach and how much money do I expect from them?

The next session was a packaging workshop where local filmmakers pitched their projects and we all learned from the feedback.
• The first film pitched was called See you on the Dark Side. One of the writers from The L Word was involved.
• The second film was called Learning Uncle Vernon. They mentioned the issues with casting underage actors, especially if there’s some time between making your choice and shooting since kids grow so fast. They also discussed ways to eliminate issues like trying to find an older actor who looks young, or better yet, rewriting the part for an older person.
The next session included case studies like Anvil, Good Dick and Bomb It.
• They shared ideas like include a live component with your screening, like Anvil’s band played after the movie in some cases.
• There’s a new book coming out called The Complete Guide To Film Distribution in the Digital Era by John Reiss (Bomb It) that will be out 9/15.
• I’ll try to get hold of a copy and review it.
• They discussed planning a college tour for your film.

• It was suggested that in a negotiation with distributors, filmmakers say we’re not interested in a royalty deal for distribution. We want a fee deal, you get 25% expenses back, and we get the rest.
• Deal with DVD distribution. Get access to materials they create with foreign deals you don’t get it
• If you are vested in promoting it will help the distributor sell more units.
• You can watermark DVDs with personal names at colleges to combat piracy.
• Pirating is flattery said one.
• There was a recent article on piracy and bit torrenting in FilmMaker Magazine.


The last panel was on digital distribution. The moderator, Scott Kirsner has a book out called Friends, Fans and Followers, which I plan to review very soon. You can also follow him on his blog.

• Movie titles are more important than ever, so your title comes up in online searches.
• Another piracy comment was that piracy happens to movies with big stars, it’s a sign of flattery for indies.