Filmutopia’s Movie Blog
Year One
by
Clive Davies-Frayne
SMASHWORDS EDITION
Published by:
Filmutopia Ltd
Copyright © 2010 Filmutopia ltd
www.filmutopia.co.uk
www.lonegunmanifesto.com
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Introduction
At the end of May 2009 I had just completed a feature film script called Smoke, which had attached directorial and acting talent. I was also starting to feel the pressure of over twelve years obscurity in the movie making community. Twelve years of writing spec scripts for the industry and making digital movies… none of which had resulted in the career I set out to have. Smoke looked like the project that would probably change that… however, it came about at a time when the independent movie industry was in turmoil over new technology, 2.0 social networking and the evolution of self and hybrid distribution strategies.
The Sunday Morning Movie blog started as a way for me to make sense of my personal journey as a screenwriter and as a movie-maker… whilst I tried to deal with and understand my place in both the mainstream movie industry and also as a radical independent movie maker.
The goal I set out to achieve was to write and deliver an article about the movie industry every single Sunday morning.
One year on, I can say, hand on heart that I have published something every single week. However, what has been remarkable about this journey has been the dialogue and discussion these articles have generated in the screenwriting and movie making community. It has been this connection to a group of people who felt some connection to this journey, which has inspired me to turn out article after article. You guys have been marvelous.
This ebook is a collection of some of the better pieces… often the pieces that gathered the most response and discussion and also a new article about writing micro-budget, which has never been published anywhere before.
I have decided to make this document open source… this means you can use, distribute, give away, alter anything you find in this ebook without needing to seek my permission. Feel free.
In compiling this ebook I have been forced to re-read a year’s worth of articles… an interesting experience. What struck me about that, was how my personal journey and attempts to make sense of the industry accurately reflects some of the pressing discussions in independent movie making about the future of content creation and distribution. We are living in interesting times, with the digital revolution, 2.0 social networking and also uncertain economic stability.
I hope you enjoy what’s been written… viva la revolution!
Clive aka @filmutopia
How to Write Micro-Budget Scripts
Every now and again I'm asked to write articles about micro-budget screenwriting. A couple of weeks ago I was asked to do this and, for whatever reason, the guys who commissioned it never got back to me. So as I'm up to my eyes trying to get 400 Grams ready for production, I thought I'd publish as this week's article... as you can see, the writing style is a little more formal than my usual. Hope you enjoy it.
The Wrong End of The Horse
Three week's ago I cast an actor to play a part in a movie which begins principle photography in August of 2010, the only thing is neither the script or his role exists, yet. He said a resounding, yes! So, now I will write a role specifically for him.
The week before that, I was out selecting and photographing locations… again, for a project that currently is no more than a half page of notes on an A4 pad. If I’m honest, this is my favorite way to work: have an idea, call some people I want to work with to see when they are free, pick some locations that inspire me and then build a movie around those things. Welcome to the world of micro-budget screenwriting, a way of creating movies I think you’ll discover can be more liberating, more challenging and ultimately more rewarding than anything you’ve previously experienced.
Almost all the advice I’ve ever read about writing screenplays was written by and for people who are writing either spec scripts or scripts for the industry. The good news is that some of the core basics of that advice also applies to writing a micro-budget screenplay. Good structure and character development are key to the writing of any good movie script. However, built into the vast majority of the advice about writing for the industry, are a set of assumptions that are very particular to the way the industry works as a business and which have no bearing at all on the process of creating a great piece of cinema. This piece is about looking at movie making in a completely different way. A way I believe has very real benefits for all kinds of screenwriting and not just for micro-budget.
I think the first thing to understand is that the vast majority of rules about story-telling in the TV and movie industry are nothing but a series of conventions. These conventions have evolved along side the industry’s development as both a creative and a business medium. So, for instance, if you look back at the early days of cinema, in Fritz Lang’s M actors were filmed looking directly into the lens. This is completely opposed to the modern convention, where a director will always shoot away from the actor’s eye-line, usually as if the POV is over another actor’s shoulder. That directorial convention is so entrenched in modern movie making and in the minds of modern audiences, that to break it now just looks wrong. It would seem like the director had made an actual mistake, as opposed to a choice. As such, this convention has passed into the fundamental language of film-making and is now pretty inviolate. However, despite this, in reality it is still only a creative choice.
For screenwriters the primary conventions are mainly about knowing our place in the industry’s pecking order. So, we are discouraged from doing the director’s job by choosing shots for particular sequences or by thinking about the look or style of the movie. We’re forbidden from telling the actors how to do their jobs by being overly specific in our writing of direction. At the same time, many of the conventions of narrative structure have been created by the industry in an attempt to codify a template for box-office success. For many screenwriters, learning to write for the industry is largely about learning to conform our creativity to the requirements and norms of the industry. All of which are laudable disciplines for people whose primary ambition is to get paid for writing. However, putting that aside for a moment, 90% of the conventions adopted by writers in the industry are solely designed to create a demarkation of what is the writer’s role and what is someone else’s job. So, you can write the dialogue (providing you understand the director and actors will rework it in production)… you can create the plot (providing it conforms to understood narrative structures)… and, you can even evolve the character’s inner life (providing you don’t tell the actor how to achieve that). On top of that, you must lay out the script in the subscribed professional format, in Final Draft 8, so that other people can effectively use your script to do their jobs of finding locations, creating a look, making wardrobe decisions, creating schedules and the timing of sequences.
What makes writing micro-budget such a challenge for successful industry professionals is exactly that set of conventions. The very things they are discouraged from understanding and controlling when working for a production company, are the very things that are required to understand to write a great micro-budget script. A good micro-budget writer needs to understand not just how the drama works, but enough of the production process to understand what can and can’t be achieved on the available budget.
Writing micro-budget, is largely about understanding the importance of the specific. Any movie budget is made up of a list of all the places, services, contracts, things and people you need to create a movie. The more a writer understands about this how to use this process to their advantage, the easier it is to write micro-budget. Historically, the most famous micro-budget movies have all been developed by people with a phenomenal understanding of production. Robert Rodriguez was able to to write and shot El Mariachi, on film, with a production budget of $7,000, mainly because he spent years honing his talent as an editor. Primer, by Shane Carruth, was written and shot on 35mm film, also for a budget of $7,000, a massive achievement for a first time movie maker, which he achieved by applying a scientific methodology to studying both writing and production. Now, El Mariachi, is an action movie and Primer is science fiction. Both of these highly successful movies confound the widely held views, still held by the vast majority of film-makers, that micro-budget automatically means shooting digitally and also means avoiding writing scripts for what are perceived to be high-cost genres.
The fact that micro-budget is done best by those who understand production, doesn’t mean that writers without that experience shouldn’t attempt to write one. There are ways for a writer to approach micro-budget, even if they have very little production experience or knowledge and I suggest that the starting place is to take on board just one or two guiding principles, which will give any writer a shot at getting their first micro-budget script off in the right direction.
Principle One: Time is Money
The easiest way to increase a movie’s production cost is to increase the number of days it takes to shoot. This is largely because the people who make movies are all freelancers, paid on a day-rate. It’s also true that the vast majority of production equipment is hired in for productions and therefore has a “cost per day” implication. In very simple terms, the easiest way to make a micro-budget movie is to shoot it in as few days as possible. At the same time, if you can the lower the number of shooting days you need to complete, you increase your chances of attaching the kind of actor you really dream of having on the project; an actor who can justify five days on a project of this level, but not six weeks.
In very practical terms, the number of locations that a movie is shot in and the distances those locations are spread apart from each other, directly effects both the number of days shooting and with it, the budget. However, at the same time, nothing betrays the smallness of a budget quite as quickly as poor location choices. For me, the first major creative choice, before considering the plot or the characters, is deciding exactly where your movie is going to be shot… and, more importantly, that it is somewhere visually interesting. A place which will be a major contributor to the look and feel of the movie, whilst at the same time being a location that you can control and easily get permission to shoot at, without incurring phenomenal expenses.
There have actually been a number of movies where people have transcended the location/budget problem, simply by being astoundingly clever. Top of my list for smart uses of location has to be the sc-fi horror movie The Cube. What they did in that movie, was create one studio set of a cube shaped room and then use it multiple times. What’s clever about this, is the whole plot of the movie revolves quite literally, around the simple premise of a group of people trying to negotiate their way out of a maze of interconnected cube shaped rooms, each of which presents its own dangers and challenges. Like all smart low and micro-budget movie making, its execution didn’t just try to hide the lack of budget, it turned a neat budget cutting solution into a genuine benefit. In many respects, the same can be said of Blair Witch (a movie I personally detest). But, again, the production chose a location they could control, which added to the look of the movie and which would cost them next to nothing to shoot at.
Many writers will find this way of working, the picking of a location and writing to that location, completely unnatural. As I said at the start, the industry prefers us to think in terms of the characters and the plot… and not in terms of exactly where a movie will be shot. Other people, I hope, will find the idea of starting the writing from a specific location incredibly liberating. I know I do. These days even when I am writing spec scripts, I work from location photographs and my writing is the better for doing that. One of the things I’ve become very aware of, is that environments impact on human behavior and therefore impact on plots.
Getting a grip on your use of location, is one of the primary skills of micro-budget movie making. Just to recap, the points a writer needs to hit are: the maximum use of as few visually evocative locations as possible; where there are multiple locations, they should be close together and easy to control; and, the more you integrate the location into your plot, the better the movie will be. Do this one thing well and creatively and you can bring a budget down from low to micro-budget, or a micro-budget down to practically nothing.
Principle Two: Money Doesn’t make Movies, People and Resources Do!
The saying guns don’t kill people, people kill people, also applies to money and its relationship to the movie industry, in that, money doesn’t make movies, people do. The second principle of writing micro-budget is largely about understanding that simple premise. It’s about looking at movie making from the wrong end and working backwards.
The reason movie making costs money is largely because of the workflow and conventions that the industry has created. In that workflow, a writer has an idea for a movie, the movie is set in 1914 England and also in the trenches of Passendale. A producer who likes the script, raises money in order to be able to pay for all the people and resources needed to make that movie. Or, if you cut that process down to basics: first comes the idea, then comes the list of resources needed to make that idea a reality.
A lot of writers like the traditional model, simply because there is a huge ego boost from having a lot of money spent on making something that started off in your head.
OK. For micro-budget, just reverse that process.
That’s right, the smartest way to create a good micro-budget project is to start with a list of resources and then develop the project backwards from that list. The great thing about this kind of movie making is that it doesn’t matter how new you are to the industry or how unconnected you feel from the big players, every single person on the planet has some of the resources you need to make a movie. What takes a while to develop, is the ability to see those resources for what they are… to see the potential that each of us has sitting right in front of us. The irony is, that if you have the right contacts, some technical understanding and imagination, it’s actually possible to make a 1914 period drama, with the scenes set in the trenches, on a micro-budget and without anyone ever realising you did it all on an almost non-existent budget.
Writing for micro-budget then, is largely about changing your mind-set as a writer. It’s about looking at the process of movie making with fresh eyes and thinking about the creative process from different angles. What it most definitely is, is challenging. It asks more of us than working in the industry, simply because it asks us to be more responsible and accountable for what we write. It asks us to let go of the ego boost of having people spend vast amounts of money on our ideas and instead asks us to improvise with the things we have to hand.
At the start of this article I said I had spoken to an actor about working on my new movie. A movie that is not yet written. That actor is a resource. I also said that I had been out scouting locations. Locations are resources. The truth of the matter is that my actual process is vastly more complex than those two facts, but that is only because I have thirteen years of production experience to make it so. However, despite the fact that what I do is more complicated and more radical than I have outlined here, at the heart of it still lies those two core principles of “time is money” and “it’s resources that make movie, not money.” They are a great starting place for any writer who feels the urge to step into a larger, freer and more fascinating world.
Why The UK Movie Industry is Bollocksed
I have this theory about why the UK movie industry is so completely and utterly bollocksed...
It could be utter wank... but I don't think so
Basically, it's this:
The writers, the agents, the directors and producer who currently make movies in the UK learned their skills in the UK TV industry.
These people try to make movies using techniques that are considered inviolate in UK TV... and when they get to make a movie, invariably they create something that looks and actually is, a bit wanky, a bit poor... generally not worth the price of admission.
UK TV Drama, from the soaps right up to the big budget show pieces, only has one basic formula for creating drama and it's this:
Cause inner turmoil for your characters by putting them through constant, relentless conflict... and by exposing them to their worst emotional nightmares, over and over again.
This technique is never, ever questioned in UK TV drama and more importantly it's never discussed why it's such a pivotal technique... and actually the answer is simple, inner emotional turmoil is CHEAP!
Yes, you have to pay the actor the same amount of money whether she has to spend the day hanging from a helicopter or whether she has to spend the day acting her ass off, because of the acute inner emotional turmoil caused by the discovery her father touched inappropriately in the bike shed. However, one requires huge budgets and helicopters and the other involves some crying, a lot of tissues and a menacing cut-away of a bike shed!
Writers, directors and producers in the UK make their day to day living by churning out hours and hours of this formulaic approach to creating drama. The only variable, the degree of crassness or subtleness with which it's applied.
On top of that, pretty much the only delivery method applied in UK TV is the "people talking" technique.
So, people talk in offices... people talk in the street... people talk over the kitchen table... people talk in restaurants... if it's a comedy they talk themselves into humiliating and embarrassing situations... if it's a drama they talk until they uncover each other's secrets and throw each other into inner emotional turmoil.
The truth is, the UK TV industry has become pretty adept at this approach to programme making and every now and again, when they get a project with a budget, like Dr Who or a period drama they throw a light frosting of props, effects and costumes over the whole thing, and it sort of works... on the small screen.
However, these techniques look cheap, tacky and tedious when applied to movies... because movies are bigger than "I'm upset, because I'm afraid Eric will cheat on me with Denise... OMG, what are Denise's knickers doing in his jacket pocket!"
Movies have lots of ways of telling stories... some of them involve car chases and big budgets and some of them involve densely metaphorical cinematography, where it becomes necessary to have runners pick all the daisies out of an entire field, because they're throwing off the colour balance. Cinema looks and feels bigger than TV... except when it becomes hacked down to TV's size by writers, directors and producers who think they understand the medium... but in fact don't.
Over the last twenty years I've sat through literally hundreds of British made movies, that would have done better if they'd been made for TV. Everything from the plotting, the writing style, the casting choices, the shooting style, every single aspect of the movie shouted small screen. Then they wonder why the movie tanked at the box office.
Until UK movie producers are sat down and told that the techniques they learned making Casualty and East Enders do not transfer to the big screen, the UK movie industry will remain hopeless and until UK writers learn that TV writing techniques don't apply to movie scripts, then the industry will remain what it currently is... hopeless, parochial and hugely disappointing.
(I still pretty much feel the same about this as an issue and a whole year of dealing with UK agents and agencies has further confirmed my thinking that they are locked into a world-view that is damaging the development of the industry.)
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Be Nice, You Assholes
There are two different movie industries currently pretending to be one industry... the old world industry and the new wave.
Sometimes the people from these two industries work together. Quite often the people from these two industries pretend that there is only one industry and paper over the cracks, but the truth of the matter is this, the old world ways of doing business are increasingly under pressure from the new wave interlopers, because the old world ways don't work as well as they used to and much like the mighty Roman Empire, a lot of the old worlders haven't yet figured out that they're stuffed.
The old world people are easy to spot because their business formula is money + fame = power... and power is something you exercise and demonstrate at every possible opportunity. "Don't you know who I am!" I could write pages and pages about the rudeness and the bad behaviour I've seen and heard by old world movie people, who genuinely believe that fame and money give them the right to act like jackals, but I'm not going to... we all know stories like that and anyway the new wave people are more interesting.
When people talk about the digital revolution, they generally talk about the technology and not about the culture that technology has created. Almost all the people in the new wave movie industry were either directly created by digital production techniques... or have been dabbling with it. And what's really, really interesting is what defines the new wave people isn't the technology they use, it's that co-operation is at the core of their thinking.
There is a reason why people who have adopted digital production techniques tend to me more cooperative than people who only make movies the old way. It's because almost everyone who learned digital in the early days, did it because at some point in their lives, their ass was hanging out of their jeans and it was the only way they could make movies and if you're making movies with no money, then goodwill is the largest part of your production budget.... and, guess what, nice people with interesting projects survive better in that world than assholes. On top of that, the new wave movie makers are all about sharing skills and information. On a low budget production team, if your DOP is also an editor, that's a good thing. The guys who pass on their skills and their intel to the people they work with, are the ones that survive, because each person they taught is now a buddy.
This new wave cultural evolution is the opposite of the forces that shaped the old world movie industry, where behaving like a jackal is how you rose to the top. The old world movie maker mentality is: don't tell anyone anything, don't cooperate, build weasel clauses into every contract so you can bail and, any problem can be solved if you throw enough money at it.
Rising up through the industry at the moment is a huge group of people who value good manners, are cooperative by nature, who hate egotistical assholes, who can multitask into any part of the production process (all your DOP's can edit, direct, do post production audio, art direct, etc) and who strongly suspect that people who throw their weight about don't have the talent to back it up. Not only that, these people are all networking, all of the time and are starting to pull some fairly major projects together.
Even though they don't know it, yet, the old world movie industry is in decline. It's floundering about because economic forces are putting the old worlders under pressures they don't understand. Production budgets are being cut right across the business... and ironically, the people who don't find that concept even slightly daunting are the new wavers... because new wavers always have a workaround.
The truth of the matter is the old world movie industry always has looked flaky to anyone who understood business. The people who defined their importance by the size of their production budget, who weighed up everyone they met to see if they're were worth talking too, who only trusted their lawyers and who held their customers in contempt... those guys have always looked wrong to the outside world. However, the big change in the industry over the last ten years, is that more and more they're starting to look wrong to the people on the inside as well.
(Again, one year on, I still hold this world-view. If anything my experiences at Cannes Film Festival have shown me how the new-wave movie makers are starting to have a growing degree of influence.)
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Why Fame = Money
There's been a lot of heat online this week about James Cameron's trailer for Avatar. I've yet to read anything positive about it. I watched it and was frankly underwhelmed. Let's face it, has been a lot of hype about the movie, about how it will herald in an age of 3D movie making... and yet, when the trailer came out, my first instinct was "I can't be arsed to watch that movie" There is a general impression out there in cyber-land that the production team got so excited by the technology, they forgot to make a movie. Of course, it may just be the magic doesn't translate to a 2D trailer. I doubt it, because a compelling story doesn't disappear in the cracks between 2D and 3D.
"Tech-glamour" is a common failing in the movie industry and it happens at all levels. My take is, the second you start to believe that either a particular camera format or editing system or effects package is going to be the making of your movie, then you're stuffed. The things that make a movie are the way it's written, the way it's cast and the way the team works together to tell the story in an interesting way... the camera format ought to be the least important thing on the set.
This week on Smoke casting has been the primary issue. We already have one of the two male leads cast... a great name actor and we were massively excited when he agreed to attach to the movie. This week I may have found the other male lead... or rather, I have found an actor I really like, what I don't know is whether I can persuade investors and distributors he's the right guy for the job. He's done some good work in supporting roles, but in the language of the industry "he's got zero box-office," which basically means having his name on the poster won't bring money through the door. In a sane world that shouldn't be a problem, in the real world, it is.
If I'm honest, this is the part of movie making which drives most people insane. The easy part is casting the movie, if you don't care about either ever making it or seeing it in a cinema... because let's face it there are loads of talented actors out there. I could cast this entire movie in an afternoon, if the quality of acting was my only concern. The hard part is explaining to the the investors and distributors why someone who has done incredible work as a character actor, is the right person to take one of the lead roles, despite his lack of box office.
It's not like I don't understand the economics of the movie industry. Getting production finance is linked to what an investor believes will be the return on US theatrical distribution. A British movie is doing well if it does $1.5M in the US at box office, therefore, if you need $10M worth of production finance, you've got to persuade people your product can perform phenomenally at the box office. Guessing box office returns is far from scientific and one of few factors you can actually put a figure against is what your lead actors have achieved at box office... if you've never explored Box Office Mojo do so, it's an education. If you're going to argue against that kind of maths, then you've got to have something else to put in place of it, which is equally compelling. Again, those kinds of arguments aren't impossible and I do have some ideas.
What I also know is any attempt to rewrite this script down to a $2M production budget, will mean cutting all the stuff that makes this movie a movie and this is why the vast majority of UK movies are so bloody awful, because when you write your movie to hit a particular budget, then you end up cutting out the very things that make it cinematic you end up with expensive TV, rather than cheap cinema. A mistake I see happen all too often in the UK, where we have an inflated idea of how important our home grown talent is to the rest of the world and where people are still trying to make movies in the £1M-£2M price range. In my opinion, that is not enough money to make a movie.
(Actually, it now looks as though making Smoke in the £1M to £2M budget range is going to be the best shot at getting it produced. What I hadn’t figured into my early thinking was the need for the project’s writer and producer to have worked their way up through the ranks. It’s going to be a few years before anyone could put £5M into one of my movies… so, you live, you learn)
I think this is why Richard Curtis who wrote "Four Weddings and a Funeral" has been so successful. He picked a good, high profit genre, wrote bloody excellent scripts, in a genre where previously they'd been a lot of bad ones... but more than that, he made sure the movies stayed cinematic. And, he also made the right casting choices to secure the budgets he needed. In his early films there was always one US female box office name and she was generally the love interest. That's smart producing.
I actually met Richard Curtis a few years back at the Edinburgh Film Festival. He was standing in a crowded bar with a little semi-circle of "fame space" around him. (fame space is the distance the British put between themselves and a celebrity in crowded social situations). I just stepped up, introduced myself and chatted with him for about half an hour, mainly about the writing process. I found out that Blackadder was rewritten about 24 times before it got commissioned and that he writes an entire series when he's pitching a new TV project, he doesn't just write the first episode and hope it'll be enough to make the sale. He knows the writing always needs a lot of work to make the sale.
In reality the same is true on Smoke. The team knows what it needs to do in order to make the movie fantastic. My job as producer is to defend their right choices and then make sure they make good financial sense for everyone. If I can show the investors how to turn a profit on a movie that hasn't been compromised in either writing, production or casting, that will be quite an achievement.
Bottom line is... I've got a lot to think about.
(The main change in my thinking since I wrote this, is a clearer understanding of how the UK Film industry in particular revolves around who know whom… and also the resume of the person involved. I rather naively thought one good script could open any door. About that I was wrong. It helps but it’s not the whole process)
Why You’ll Always be an Unknown Movie Maker
It's been a tough week. I got a phone call at the start of the week to tell me the development funding application for Smoke had been removed from the selection process. For both the movie and me personally, this is a major set back. It's a set back for the movie because it means I can't afford to bring my team together to complete the budget, which in turn puts back any conversations with investors. Personally, it means more time living without an income... I can't even start to explain what that means. I can reapply, but it's going probably going to be at least three months before I can do that. Effectively, if I stay with the same game plan, this means putting the movie back three months.
The truth of the matter is I made a stupid mistake on the funding application. I didn't re-read the funding criteria as I was rushing to hit the deadline and because of that, I presented the information they needed in the wrong way. I forgot the golden rule of applying for grants, which is: if you don't tick all the boxes, your application will never get in front of the panel.
Making the presentation mistake isn't the only problem... the other problem is larger. The other problem is the one that keeps me up at nights.
The biggest problem an unknown producer faces is the issue of credibility.
People in the industry have an natural distrust of anyone unknown... the assumption is, if you're unknown then you must be a wanker. It's not an unreasonable assumption because the vast majority of unknowns you meet at film festivals and industry events are wankers. There are a lot of wannabes out there who make it tough for everyone else, by being a horrible combination of hopeless, arrogant and insane, all at the same time. People in the industry try to avoid talking to those people at all costs... something they achieve by only talking to people they already know. You can see this on twitter, celebrities and media types largely follow the people who they consider the insiders, the safe people... people they know. In other words, other celebrities. In the real world, in the movie business, the same rules apply.
What this means for the someone like me, is the biggest problem I face pulling the movie together, is dealing with the industry's equivalent of the "tick boxes.” In the same way that funding organisations need you to present information in the right way, people in the industry need some evidence that the project is "viable.” Viable is just another word for a project not run by wankers. In other words, a well established name can take any piece of shit to people and they'll listen... an unknown can turn up with the best project in the world and the industry will fail to listen, because chances are it'll be a waste of time.
At the moment, it's not unusual for me to be on the phone to a gate keeper (the people they put between you and the people you need to talk to) and for that person to say "Well, we've never heard of you."
So, right now, the biggest hold up on this movie is having me as the producer. I don't have the right profile for a project of this size. Again, this isn't because I don't have the skills to make this movie... I do. In fact, I have a phenomenal understanding of what this movie needs to get made and to do good business... what I don't have is the right level of access to make this movie easily. Like I said, it's about credibility.
So, this week I've spent a lot of time considering whether to carry on with my original game plan, to produce this movie myself, or whether to make the process easier by shopping around for a co-producer with sufficient credibility to open the doors I need opening.
(This is actually the decision I eventually took. Having no money and no established reputation in the industry proved to be too big a handicap to allow me to make this movie on my own terms)
Bringing in a co-producer is a mixed blessing. Right now I'm able to protect the project from stupid decisions. The second I bring in another producer, I lose the ability to do that. It also means that my company comes away with a much smaller piece of the pie.
I haven't made any decisions yet. Push on by myself and or put time and effort to finding the right co-producer. It's not an easy decision to make. The irony of all this, is had the development funding come through it's a decision I could have held off for at least another couple of months.
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What Disney Taught Me
Like a lot of people my age, Disney was my introduction to cinema. In fact, the first movie I ever saw was the original animated "101 Dalmations." (Yes, I am that old!) It was at the Savoy, Kettering in Northants. The main thing I remember about that day, was the Savoy had a little coffee bar down one side of the entrance, where you could drink milk shakes. The stools were real Americana, chrome poles that supported glamorous red leather bar seats. This was the first time I'd ever been to the cinema by myself, I must have been about eight or nine years old. It's hard to explain to people who've grown up with huge colour TVs, home cinema and HiDef computer screens, just how huge the visual and audio chasm was between home entertainment and cinema in the 1960's. Going to the cinema was literally mind blowing. To this day I still prefer to see movies in cinemas or at the very least, projected. Something I don't think will ever change.
As a producer it's hard not to find Disney inspirational. He reinvented animation and took it from being B movie, pre-feature short, kiddie entertainment and transformed it into a highly profitable, story and art driven industry. He did the one thing that all movie makers strive for, he made marvelous movies and profits at the same time. Not only that, he did it the arena of family entertainment, an area where all too often the output was trite, mediocre and patronising. A trait that is often still true today. I personally would love to slap the back of the head of anyone who believes children's programmes and movies can be handed by second rate writers and directors (dolts!).
These days what I really take from Walt Disney are a set of core values I apply to movie making (not the family entertainment thing, er, I'm not best suited for that. I think swearing is funny, grown up and clever), but rather a set of core values I can distill down to one simple bench mark:
What can we do to make this movie phenomenal?
The irony of this core value, is that what I see in the lot of the movie makers and producers around me is a shorter and much less satisfactory version of that core value, it seems to me that often their core value is simply:
What can we do to make this movie?
The difference, in terms of how a movie is produced, between "How can we make this movie?" and "How can we make this movie phenonemal?" is vast. It is a completely different mindset.
What I'm doing at the moment is building a team of actors and crew who want to bring their own particular skills and passion for the project and give them the opportunity to work together to create something phenomenal. To each of them I'm saying, not "How can we get this movie made?" but "How can we make this movie, stunning, phenomenal, wonderful?" Of course, what's interesting about this process is that by concentrating on how to make the movie "phenomenal" we are greatly increasing the chances of it actually getting made... simply because it's easier to sell a phenomenal movie than it is one that is merely, good. Something Walt Disney understood all too well.
What's amazing about this process, is I'm discovering how rare it is for people in the industry to be asked to do the things they are passionate about. How sad is that? The good news is that every time I put the script in front of a movie professional I want to work with, I get the same response "This is great, let's make it." To which I respond "Thanks, but let's make it phenomenal."
The Changing Face of Movie Producing
This blog really only exists because friends on Twitter asked me to write about what I do as a media hobo and producer. So, this week, rather than just rambling on about whatever was in my head, I thought I'd ask the folks on Twitter what they'd like me to write about. By far the most popular request was "what producing skills should writers have?"
First up, I'm not sure that I'm the best template to use if anyone is looking for success in the movie industry. Despite the fact that every script I've ever written has either been produced/optioned or has had significant industry interest, in terms of actually making a living, financially I would have been better spending the last twelve years delivering pizza. Seriously, I would have earned more money, had less personal grief, been through fewer divorces (probably), kept more houses... and, best of all I would have eaten a lot more pizza. So, in a lot of respects, pretty much everything I write here, is what I learned from the litany of mistakes I've made.
If I've anything original or worth saying about producing movies, I guess, for me, the one thing I really believe is that in the new digital world "pigeon holing yourself" is bad for producers.
One of the things I see, every single day, at all levels of the movie industry, are people who make a decision about where they fit in the industry and then mentally box themselves into that slot. At the bottom end, there are the independent film makers who decide the only way they'll ever make a movie is to buy a camcorder and do it all themselves; at the top end, is the Studio Executive Producer who won't look at a project which has a budget of less than $25M. In both cases, before the new project is even written, each of these producers has decided on the budget range and the distribution method for the film. In the case of the indie it's "no budget" and "on the net." In the case of the Executive Producer, the budget is "$25M+" and distribution is "A global theatrical release, followed by DVD and TV sales, mainly pegged to sales in the USA." What's funny about this, is if you gave them both the same script, the indie would make it on a camcorder with his mates and the Studio Exec would attach the big bankable names of the moment and make it for $32.6M. What's even funnier, is chances are, both of them will probably make a bloody awful movie.
I genuinely believe one of the hardest things a writer/producer needs to be able to do, is to look at their script and see realistically where it slots into the industry. Is this a movie I need to make myself on camcorders? Is this a movie I make with professionals, but on a micro-budget? Is this a "Made for TV" movie, I pitch to a producer who specialises in that kind of material? Or, is this a massive Hollywood Studio, $25M+ starfest, where I'll need lots and lots of help? The hardest part of that equation isn't the script itself, but our own personal comfort zones, because, just in the same way that an indie with a camcorder is often too scared to put a script in front of the majors, major name directors and producers are too terrified to put their professional reputation on the line by turning out a camcorder movie with friends. (I do actually believe we'll see this change soon... I even have some ideas about who will lead the way)
My personal take is that knowing where the script will best fit, is the number one skill a producer needs to have, that and having the confidence to work at every level. In terms of how you get to that point, the only way to do it, is to do it. It's a lot like rollerblading, you have to be prepared to dive in and make a dick of yourself, over and over again, until you reach the point it all just feels automatic and natural.
Over the past year, I've started to see a new class of producer emerge. People who, like me, are experimenting with a more flexible approach to the industry and they are making some remarkable choices. Of these, Robert Llwellyn is one of my current heroes. Best know, internationally, for playing the OCD android "Kryten" in the BBC series "Red Dwarf," (@bobbyllew on twitter) currently produces one of the best DIY online shows in the world "Carpool," a show where he interviews interesting folk, whilst giving them a lift in his much loved Toyota Prius. It's a great show and I've watched it evolve from its rather shaky roots, where, to be honest the sound quality was sometimes a little below par, to its current, all singing version.
As a producer, what I like about Carpool is that it's a concept Bobby could easily have slotted into regular broadcast TV, a world where he's an established name and where he has the right level of connections. Instead, he's made what I believe to be a better decision, he's created a successful online fanbase for the show, done everything for himself and now, having proved its worth as a concept, he can either sell it on as an established format or, look at other ways of getting a return on his investment. Personally, although I'd love to see it on TV, I kind of hope he's got other plans for it.
In lots of respects, as a producer I am the mirror image of Bobby. He's an established and much loved TV star, who is discovering the how's and why's of self production and distribution, whereas, I am the guy who can make a $750,000 feature film with just $60,000 in cash and a shit load of good will, who is learning that just because I can do it that way, it doesn't mean that for every project, it is the best way to go. For me, this is what makes the current movie and TV industry so exciting. For the first time ever, it isn't just one thing. In a very real sense, it is whatever we can make work and whatever excites us most, both as creatives and as business people.
For the screenwriter who wants to be a writer/producer my main advice would be, don't pin your whole career on one script. Take an honest look at each script you write and then slot it into the sector of the industry where it fits best. With some projects this may mean sitting on a script until you've got the right contacts to create an opening for it. The other thing I would definitely do, is take at least one script and make it for next to nothing... nothing teaches you about writing or producing better than actually making a movie and seeing from the end result, where you screwed the pooch.
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Who is the Audience for this Movie?
One of the things I've understood for years, and one of the reasons I believe I can make a living as a movie producer in the current economic climate, is that the movie industry doesn't seem to take marketing and advertising seriously. In the current economic climate, my take is that a professional marketing strategy for a movie is more important than the cast we attach in terms of securing finance and also ensuring the success of the movie. The days of "it'll make money providing X is in it," are over.
Historically, the industry has a limited number of techniques which work brilliantly when they work, but that have an appalling failure rate. I've spent decades in this industry shaking my head as both Hollywood and independents fail time and time again to apply any kind of creativity to what is essentially the launch of a new brand or product. Whilst at the same time, both the industry and independents also get overly hung up on the means of delivery, rather than on the content of the message. Or, in other words... the answer isn't "the internet," is what you do with it. The same applies to any other advertising or marketing medium... the answer isn't posters, it's what you do with them... etc etc
The good news is that the core principles of understanding a movie as a product are pretty simple.
When I first got a job as a copywriter in radio, I was taught how to write commercials by a team with a very simple philosophy. That you could approach any advertising problem by answering three simple questions:
1) Who are we talking to? (defined by a specific desire or problem)
2) What do you want them to do? (buy stuff)
and
3) Why should they do it? (a compelling reason which addressed the desire or problem)
This may seem simplistic, but by using it professionally for thirteen years I discovered it's actually a very sophisticated way of approaching marketing and advertising problems. In particular, it's about the dance between the "who" question and the "why" question... or, in other words, the way the why of why people should go to see your movie, is linked to an understanding of who your core audience is and what they want.
What's really, really important, is to grasp that "Who" is defined by a specific desire, rather than in the normal marketing speak of most "marketers." So, for instance, "17 to 25 year old cinema goers" is not a "Who," it's a piss poor generalisation which tries to predict movie going trends based on the assumption that all 17 to 25 year olds want the same thing from movies. A better who might be: "a person who enjoyed 'Withnail and I'" ... or "a person who thinks some graffiti is brilliant urban art"
For Smoke I've a huge list of "whos" all of which are matched to the strengths of the movie, which in turn become linked to the "Whys." Some of those "whys" are about the genre of the movie (comedy)... what kind of comedy it is (is it more appealing to the kind of people who like 'Spaced' than it is to those who like 'Friends')... and some of those "whos" are directly related to the type of characters in the movie, the kind of world they inhabit, the cultural references in the movie. In total I've identified about sixty specific groups of people (defined by what they like) who will naturally find "Smoke" their kind of movie... that is, they will if any of them ever find out that it exists. This means that part of Smoke's marketing strategy is about finding ways to isolate specific groups of people (whos) and then let them know about the movie's existence and why it's for them.
In some respects Hollywood has always used a crude version of this formula, but only to the extent that "who are we talking to?... someone who likes Brad Pitt... why should they see this movie?... because Brad Pitt is in it"
or "who are we talking to? ... people who loved 'The Matrix'... why should they watch this movie?... because it's 'The Matrix IV - in which Neo and Trinity's child battles the Architect's plan to redecorate the matrix in Hello Kitty merchandise'" (sorry about that one... I had a moment... but, you do know it's only a matter of time, don't you?).
The easiest part of this equation is always the "what," because it's very simple... "what do you want them to do... buy the movie and tell their friends to see it."
What I'm trying to do with the business plan for "Smoke" is to define my market pretty clearly in the early stages of the movie's development. A process I started when the script was being written and one I intend to formalise into a marketing strategy before I approach investors... This isn't something I want to be doing when the movie is completed. I'm doing it now because one of the strongest assets any movie has is the script and it's easier to adapt the script to conform to the needs of the market, than it is to adapt the market to the needs of the script. Of course, the major players do this all the time. The problem is, often the changes made to make a script conform to the market, are applied without any real understanding of what the market actually is... or in many cases what the script is really about and who it really appeals to.
For Smoke this has meant a rewrite of the original script to alter some of the language, so that it would be broadcast safe on mainstream TV... the tricky part was achieving that without compromising the piece. My baseline is that every alteration has to make the movie better, not just more mainstream. Doing both is and was possible. It's never about compromise... that's important... and also where many market driven rewrites go wrong.
The bottom line is... I understand Smoke both as a script and also I understand it as a product. For me, that's the key to getting all this to work.. and this also is the big change I really want to see happen in the independent movie sector. Let's be grown ups and recognise that our movies have to perform as products... but at the same time, let's make a commercial virtue out of our understanding of what makes a great movie. Those two factors don't have to be contradictory... but, and this is a big but... in order to do that we have to stop the belief that niche marketing can be achieved by throwing up a website, designing a poster, attending a few film festivals and hoping for the best. The marketing strategy needs to be targeted, specific to that movie and built like a brand launch. If the movie is costing multiple of millions of pounds, the marketing of the movie needs to reflect that. Even if the movie is costing nothing, the marketing needs to reflect the commercial potential... and by the way, no movie costs nothing, by the time you factor in crew and cast time investment, they're all expensive products.
This is the reason I sometimes despair of current trends in independent movie making, where business strategies are being formulated on the baseline belief that audiences can't be built through conventional business strategies. When, what I see is a failure to treat each movie as a distinct product and to develop marketing strategies designed to talk to and nurture a desire to see, in each movie's natural set of Whos. Every movie has an audience, you just need to know who they are and then talk to them! What's exciting about the new media developments is that that is now possible, but like I said earlier... new media/new distribution isn't the answer, it's what you do with them. It's all about content, for both the product and the marketing of that product.
Mood Swings, Rejection and Life in the Industry
@stephenfry is an institution on twitter, one of the central figures. A man whose contribution to spreading information and rallying the good people of the world to worthy causes, is legendary. He is also a great wit, a talented writer, a phenomenal actor and a rather wonderful human being and yet, he's also a man who is prone to what Churchill called "The Black Dog," or mood swings... manic depression.
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