Question for Producers
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My "sources" have told me HORROR. There is always a market for horror ... there has always been a market for horror ... even BAD horror movies are picked up. People love horror. They'll watched anything in this genre and it's fairly forgiving. This is why OUR next film is a horror.
Write what's in your heart. If the story is good, it'll be bought.
current 'trend'
1. horror/sci-fi/action
2. documentary
3. urban
4. children
5. urban/minority - female
6. golden age type
if you look at these, you would realized it's almost all type of film, so, someone here mentioned before at another post, it's about the niche, find that niche, fill it, and it'll sell. distributors are looking for 'that' niche that can make you $
The late Neil Frederick had shot 10 feature at $5000/each within one year where they are all hispanic films, guessed what, they were all being picked for distribution (hollywood video, blockbuster, etc) did they make $? I don't know but probably did because there was a niche...
1. horror/sci-fi/action
2. documentary
3. urban
4. children
5. urban/minority - female
6. golden age type
if you look at these, you would realized it's almost all type of film, so, someone here mentioned before at another post, it's about the niche, find that niche, fill it, and it'll sell. distributors are looking for 'that' niche that can make you $
The late Neil Frederick had shot 10 feature at $5000/each within one year where they are all hispanic films, guessed what, they were all being picked for distribution (hollywood video, blockbuster, etc) did they make $? I don't know but probably did because there was a niche...
At the moment for me it's HORROR and ACTION/MARTIAL ARTS.
HORROR is always hot and with companies like Brain Damage taking over from peopel like Screenedge there is always places to sell horror.
MARTIAL ARTS/ACTION is always a hot genre but more so now than ever. TRANSPORTER, ONG BAK & HERO have helped relaunch this stagnant genre and it's selling like hot cakes.
URBAN is a real emerging genre and is taking over Blockbuster with a rash of sub 60 min features.
Hope thsi helps
HORROR is always hot and with companies like Brain Damage taking over from peopel like Screenedge there is always places to sell horror.
MARTIAL ARTS/ACTION is always a hot genre but more so now than ever. TRANSPORTER, ONG BAK & HERO have helped relaunch this stagnant genre and it's selling like hot cakes.
URBAN is a real emerging genre and is taking over Blockbuster with a rash of sub 60 min features.
Hope thsi helps
A distibutor that I have some contact with has said that horror was actually a low priority at AFM this year. This is further confirmed by another filmmaker who attended AFM. The distributor said many of the foreign market buyers are looking for family-friendly fare and... Romantic Comedies!!! Another thing to consider is that distributors are having issues with the glut of dv material out there- foreign buyers want it on film apparently- s16 or 35mm preferrably. Could be a "too lazy to change the status quo" issue, but that is what I was told.
Sadly that's not true; if it was right now I'd be halfway through shooting my second feature and I'd still own my own home. Distributors are looking for easy returns and they won't step outside of product types that they know will be easy to place.
I think there is more room to move if you are writing a script with the intention of selling it onto a production company who can afford to attach names, but for anyone thinking of self financing the story you pick needs to have a strong hook.
My current feeling is that anyone who is making a film these days can't afford not to do market research before they start writing the script.
These are the things I would suggest:
1) Get your ideas and then check to ensure that they can be explained easily in one sentence and that one sentence is catchy enough to make you believe that you'd hand over $10 to see it in a cinema.
2) Design a poster/DVD artwork for your film and see whether the idea is strong enough to communicate itself as a DVD cover. (Then send that cover out to fifteen people you trust and ask them for comments - pick people who will be honest with you)
3) Check to see whether there are currently DVD's like your concept for hire or sale in your local stores (note down all the distribution companies that have already sold a film like yours)
4) Spend some time on the net researching similar films, what they were shot on, who bought them and what other kinds of films these companies buy. It's also possible to get box office figures.
5) Get honest about the films that were like yours (If they all had people like Bruce Willis, Nick Cage or other names, your idea is no good to you as a production vehicle - you have to have somehting that will sell without names)
This is the basic deal - if you want to know what you can sell, go to the retail outlets and see what's on the shelves.
Not only that, if your idea is so original that you can't find anything like it on the shelves then you are going to struggle to find distribution.
Genres are important to the business. Distributors are looking for an easy buck, make it easy for them and they'll buy.
Whether format is important, well I don't know; whether horror is played out (I doubt it). The problem with those kinds of question is you'll find contradictory information, if any of us had the perfect sales formula sorted out we'd be sitting by the pool taking calls from the big guns right now. Some people will tell you that only stuff shot on film sells, some will tell you that HD is the new format and plenty of people can provide you with a massive list of sucess films shot on mini-dv.
The only thing I know for sure is that making a good picture doesn't guarantee distribution, neither does spending a lot of money on it, neither does the quality of either the script or the acting. In this business the idea is the key, get a strong enough idea and all the rest is possible, get that wrong and nothing can save your project.
On format... the one thing I do know is that whilst selling a DV movie isn't impossible it certainly is hard to get high numbers for it.
The main issue is the more easy the technology gets the more product and therefore the less people will pay.
It's tough times out there. That much IS for sure with no easy solutions.
The main issue is the more easy the technology gets the more product and therefore the less people will pay.
It's tough times out there. That much IS for sure with no easy solutions.
The technology is irrelevant to this premise. If you ask anyone in the buying side of the business they all say the same thing ... the problem is finding good product, regardless of format. The industry is dying to see great films, there are so very few made.
The problem isn't that there are too many films out there to choose from, the reason distributors are nervous about dv films is films shot on dv are almost universally dreadful. If someone shoots on film the buyers know that it's been made by someone with at least have a basic technical knowledge and that somebody believed enough in the product to invest in some film stock.
This is the reason that before they ask anything else buyers and sales agents ask the same two questions
1) What was the budget?
2) What was it shot on?
In reality they don't really care about either, it's just a way for them to gauge whether they are talking to a film maker or some kid with a camcorder. The distributors are using these questions in order to avoid wasting time watching thousands of truely hopeless movies. They know that 99.8% of mini-dv features are going to be a complete waste of time: poor scripts, laughably bad acting, dreadful cinematography, unacceptably poor audio. Piss poor all round.
One of the reason this is true is because in most cases the actual product hasn't been challenged at any point in the process. The concept's never been market tested; the script hasn't be seen by a professional script editor or gone through any rewrites; the actors have been miscast, are talentless and have been given no direction; the audio hasn't been recorded or mixed professionally and the whole thing has been cut on someone's PC without input from a either professional editor or colourist.
The whole point about pulling together larger budgets is it forces you to constantly test, evolve and challenge your intital idea. Other people's input, far from compromising the end product, actually make it stronger.
If people are serious about the business they'd give up their obsession with technology and concentrate on learning to write properly, learning to work with actors, learning how to generate ideas that the public actually will pay money to see. Get those right and you could shoot the final product on polaroids, put it together as flicker book and still make a sale. Format is irrelevant, cameras are irrelevant; story telling, good acting, understanding the market and good audio are all that matter.
Whilst I agree about writing etc, my point was simply now its getting harder and harder to get good price for product as the market is over saturated. I guess that means that you have to do something that really stands out.
I guess I was a bit vague.. should have said, "if the story is good.. it will eventually be bought." Of course, the definition of 'good' is the wild variable there.. depends on who's reading it, and such I guess.
I don't mean to imply that yours is not good Clive.. That would be unjust, as I've never read it.
I don't mean to imply that yours is not good Clive.. That would be unjust, as I've never read it.
I didn't think for a second that you did. Just sharing my experience is all. I know I made a good film; I also made a film that is going to be very, very hard to sell. Without strong festival coverage for it, it's never going to sell.
And I guess my point is that the market isn't over saturated ... good films are in short supply. The price always relates to potential return for the distributor ... the key is in making a good film that fits the sales profile of the distributor.
The one place where dv is pushing down the production budget to silly levels is TV. I was asked to pitch a series for a new TV channel recently, they were looking for an hour long, ready to broadcast programme with a budget of £4000 per show. I would have laughed in the guy's face if it wasn't so deeply disturbing.
clive said:
Funny one of our collegues went to AFm and most of teh money men were saying just the oposite. There is far too much product now, with everyone picthing a DV movie or selling a DV/HDV film. The days of large cheques being written for both sales and production are going, if not gone. If we hadn't have made a DV feature for under £10k we'd probably stand a better chance - we keep hearing 'well you made that for £10k and it's made money, why do you need £140k?"
Left For Dead has done brilliantly on sales even without publcity and festivals but I guess that's because we went the easy route and made a genre film where there will always be a market.
I'm going to make a broad generalization here; there are obviously a hundred reasons why this is not always the case, but I'm gonna say it anyway.
I think there's a chasm between good films and easy films, and that chasm is where MOST filmmakers' films lie.
"Good" films tend to be more about passion and less about niche or genre. They're eventually are picked up by someone if they're good enough to play one of the top 5 market festivals: Sundance, Toronto, Berlin, Cannes or Venice. If your film doesn't get in to one of these, it could be political, or, more likely, it means it's not the best thing they'vbe ever seen. Competition is fierce and there are only a few movies going theatrical considering the number of films made every year. (Sorry.)
"Easy" films are typically created as commodity, and therefore tend to follow a certain market trend in order to get the highest number of viewers, and therefore the biggest deal with distributors. Easy films are not necessarily good, but they ARE marketable.
The sales agents, distributors and exhibitors with great taste or with savvy business sense stay on the esdges with the good, easy or good and easy films. The rest of us fall into the chasm, forced to choose from the least evil of the sales agents and distributors. And oh boy is THAT process fun!
Unfortunately, I've found the best way to learn how to make films is to create easy films, rather than good films. I am not confident as to my ability to make a truly good film yet, so I'm going to try to make another easy film and hope that it is also good. Then I'll switch over.
My 2 cents.
-Jim
I think there's a chasm between good films and easy films, and that chasm is where MOST filmmakers' films lie.
"Good" films tend to be more about passion and less about niche or genre. They're eventually are picked up by someone if they're good enough to play one of the top 5 market festivals: Sundance, Toronto, Berlin, Cannes or Venice. If your film doesn't get in to one of these, it could be political, or, more likely, it means it's not the best thing they'vbe ever seen. Competition is fierce and there are only a few movies going theatrical considering the number of films made every year. (Sorry.)
"Easy" films are typically created as commodity, and therefore tend to follow a certain market trend in order to get the highest number of viewers, and therefore the biggest deal with distributors. Easy films are not necessarily good, but they ARE marketable.
The sales agents, distributors and exhibitors with great taste or with savvy business sense stay on the esdges with the good, easy or good and easy films. The rest of us fall into the chasm, forced to choose from the least evil of the sales agents and distributors. And oh boy is THAT process fun!
Unfortunately, I've found the best way to learn how to make films is to create easy films, rather than good films. I am not confident as to my ability to make a truly good film yet, so I'm going to try to make another easy film and hope that it is also good. Then I'll switch over.
My 2 cents.
-Jim
Thanks to several people I've talked to recently, I got to understand how 'distribution' work in respect to marketable/sellable perspective. Because of that, now I realized, that for making a movie, you can do it for the love of 'art' or the 'story'
but
you should go backwards in asking yourself this: what is my end goal for this film? for distribution? or for festival route? or whatever?
That would really re-shape your thinking how you want to approach your 'art' or 'money' film.
In the reality of things, marketable films would get more people to watch, might not, in cases, give you a lot of profit back, but with careful planning and with NO celebrities tie-ins, you can still make some decent income, probably not enough to quit your job, but you see a return... It does changes the 'game' plan you would want to do. I've also noticed that many 'music video' directors get picked on to do features, probably because of their talent, or perhaps because of they have a marketable video that everyone 'loves' and hence they just said "I want him to direct this feature film!" mentality, I don' t know the answer, but I do know though, that for me to be able to self-sustain myself in movie making, I should think about marketable/sellable perspective than for art sake.
So, these films would bring me more interest, more people who might invest more money or perhaps there is a small return that can help me upgrade or enough to make another slasher movie.
but
you should go backwards in asking yourself this: what is my end goal for this film? for distribution? or for festival route? or whatever?
That would really re-shape your thinking how you want to approach your 'art' or 'money' film.
In the reality of things, marketable films would get more people to watch, might not, in cases, give you a lot of profit back, but with careful planning and with NO celebrities tie-ins, you can still make some decent income, probably not enough to quit your job, but you see a return... It does changes the 'game' plan you would want to do. I've also noticed that many 'music video' directors get picked on to do features, probably because of their talent, or perhaps because of they have a marketable video that everyone 'loves' and hence they just said "I want him to direct this feature film!" mentality, I don' t know the answer, but I do know though, that for me to be able to self-sustain myself in movie making, I should think about marketable/sellable perspective than for art sake.
So, these films would bring me more interest, more people who might invest more money or perhaps there is a small return that can help me upgrade or enough to make another slasher movie.
I work in acquisitions for a worldwide distributor. I can tell you for a fact that our top selling genre, is Horror, Action, and Sci-Fi. We're big on distributing Urban Action. Urban Action was a new and emerging Genre a few years ago, but not its flooded and oversaturated. I would stick to horror as it still has worldwide appeal, then action, and sci-fi. We've seen the opportunities in the family genre and this year we have now begun accepting features in the family, romance, and indy/art house genre.