Producing requires
that you look beyond your own projects and looks at how you build it better for
everybody. I frankly don’t have respect for producers who only work on their
projects. I want to know they give back to the community in general. That
does not have much to do with packaging frankly, but it is why I write this
blog.
To that end, I want to
share with you my thoughts on how to package your film in such a way that your
film will gather momentum, get made, and succeed in the marketplace. I
have come up with twenty points. I wanted to know what I forgot, so
I hope you add to the list.
1.
Recognize what you are doing when you package a project. You package a project because you want
to finance or sell your film. You put actors in it not just for the
creative enhancement, but also for the financial benefit. If you fail to
make the movie or to use the actors well, you devalue them in the market place.
That’s a HUGE risk for them. It’s not true that if an actor
attaches herself to the project and it doesn’t get made, no harm is done.
Attaching an actor exposes them to the marketplace — and kind of checks
their value. If a project an actor attaches himself to does not get made,
it appears that buyers are not interested in them (because they presume that
audiences does not value them). By attaching actors to your project, you
are risking their career. Do not even approach them, until you are can
demonstrate to everyone around them that is not the case.
2.
Develop a positive reputation for consistently delivering films
of quality and acclaim. It may sound
like a Catch 22, but if you want to make
movies, you have to make movies (or work with people who do). If you want
to work with the best, you have to demonstrate you are one of them. The
best way to get a script read is to have been associated with other great
scripts. The work you do today is really work you are doing for tomorrow;
it’s all part of the chain. If you develop a positive reputation things
will go better for you than if you develop something to the contrary.
That common sense somehow has not stopped the business from being filled
with jerks and hot air, but if employed (common sense that is), it will pave
the way towards easier packaging.
3.
Respect agents and their time. Don’t harass them. It is an art learning how to get
things done and move things ahead, without annoying people. Actors and
agents have 1000s of submissions. And that’s just every day. You
want to learn how to make everyone want to take your calls. Balance calls with
emails. Recognize that they have staff meetings on Mondays.
Recognize that weekend reads are generally fully decided by Thursday.
Don’t expect top agents to read your script until covering agents and
junior agents have already raved about them. Do you homework.
Prepare. Be ready before you act.
4.
Build relationships. What you do today, helps you tomorrow — even if you do
not know what tomorrow will bring. Strong relationships with agents and
managers – and actors — are the best thing you can do for packaging your
project — even when you don’t yet have the project you are going to be
packaging. You want to make the agents want to work with you.
5.
Finish your script. Get it under 115 pages. Hell, get it under 110.
Or even shorter. 70 is the new 80. Don’t fudge the standard
conventions. Fix the punctuation. Make sure the emotional beats
resonate. Make sure the moments of the characters’ transformation are
clear. Make it a fun and easy read. You get one chance. Don’t
fuck it up. Once you know you are done, you still should cut another 10%.
6.
Enhance your project beyond your script. A good script is not enough. When
you submit a script for consideration, you need to have more than a script
ready. Your director should write a personal letter to the actor in advance.
Ditto on her director’s statement. You should create an image book, mood
reel, or anything that will further enhance the clarity of the creative vision.
Make sure your team makes sense for this project. Know whom your
other cast ideas are. Scout. Budget. Storyboard. Build the
transmedia extensions. Whatever it takes and then do some more.
7.
Build respect & knowledge about your team. This is most crucial about your director
but it can equally hold true about your other collaborators. If your
director is not known, it is your job to get her known. There is no
excuse for not having prior work to show. These days a short can be made
for next to nothing. Why will talent’s gatekeeper let them work with your
director? Demonstrate their talent. Get endorsements from festivals
and other tastemakers. Help your directors build a presence in social media. If
you want an actor to commit to your project, you need to give them as many
reasons as possible.
8.
Have money, or at least make it plausible that you will. No one is going to attach themselves if
they don’t think the movie will get made. Financing is key to this, but
it is not the only thing. Your track record, or your team’s track record
goes a long way. If you don’t have one, attach someone that does before
you approach talent. Don’t claim you are going to make something for more
than seems reasonable for the subject matter and your level of experience —
they won’t believe you will ever get it done. Having sales agency or
talent agency representation can help in this regard, as it shows that proven
entities believe their is business to be had, but this too is sort of a Catch-22
— for them to get behind it, they want to have cast attached, generally
speaking. One of the reason the industry is filled with charlatans, is
that they serve the purpose of standing in the for the money. By claiming
they will back your project, the fakers give you time to find the real money
(if you are so lucky).
9.
Build consensus around the project in advance. Don’t start at the top. Build
support. Package a team. If you are a new filmmaker, bring someone
with experience on early. Submit your project to script labs and other
support mechanisms that lend your project credibility. Find passionate
advocates for your work and use them.
10.
Offer roles actors want. Actors like characters who transform over the course of
the film. They like their characters to influence the action. Actors like
to work with other actors that they admire — it can’t just be their role that
is good.
11.
Make it personal. If you can get to an actor on a personal (i.e.
non-business) all the better. That is, all the better, but know that the
agent is going to hate you and want to destroy you. Why would an agent
ever want their client to do something that they can earn a percentage on AND
has the likelihood of diminishing their value if not ruining their career.
That said, because following the rules takes a considerable amount of
time, I would probably always move to cast another actor’s friends than hold
out for the unlikely dream.
12.
Do your research. Is the actor even available? Do they like, or want
to work with, the other people attached to the project? Will they
be willing to travel where you are shooting? Why would they like to do
the role?
13.
Be prepared to answer all questions, particularly what the deal
is. Take the time to
construct a couple of deals in advance, depending on how the negotiations go.
Know when you want to shoot, for how long, and where. Know what you
can provide the talent in the way of amenities.
14.
Patience.
Stars are busy people. Their agents, managers, lawyers might be
even busier. If you are an indie producer, you are probably the busiest.
You know how you hate to be pushed? Well, think of that when you want to
push. Anyone you have heard of and want will probably take six weeks to
get back to you. On one movie of mine it took the actor a year; we actually
had cast the role once, but the day her agent got back to me was the day the
other actress fell out. Be honest about the time you have with the agent,
and then be prepared to increase it. It is a good sign if they ask for
more time — it means someone’s read it and likes it, so bite your lip and wait
some more.
15.
Urgency. The best thing
you can do is have a start date. Well make that: the best thing you can
do is have a start date eight weeks out from now — if you want to attract high
caliber talent at a reasonable rate. Of course that means you have
already financed your project, so really now you are casting for quality or
enhanced sales. Still, without a start date, how do you create urgency?
Why do you need to create urgency? What is the call to action?
If it is not urgent, how do you get them to focus.
16.
Inevitability. Inevitability is urgency’s cousin. Or sister.
Brother? Whatever it is, create that feeling around your project.
Inevitability, or a feeling something like it, makes things happen, and
happen better. How do you package that feeling around your film?
Most of the points on this list are about making your project feel
inevitable. The fuller something is, the realer it is. You need to
reveal the weapons in your arsenal. Use everything you have to make it
look likely to happen. Have confidence, and instill it in others.
17.
Have something for everyone. You have a series of audiences to engage with:
collaborators, buyers, festivals, journalists, audiences, participants.
The people you bring into create the work with, will bring their own
relationships and sizzle. Many producers stop packaging when they get
their actor who can bring the money. You also need the one that brings
security — often an ancillary deal in a foreign territory; an actor on a
prominent television show can help here. You need actors who will get
stories on different news platforms; rediscoveries (actors who were once stars)
and hot up&comers (younger actors) help a lot in this regard. It helps
to fortify foreign value by casting a foreign star from a difficult or large
territory. Actors from different media can also expand your reach, i.e.
bloggers, comedians, porn stars, youtube stars. Get the picture?
18.
Package in a way that helps others connect the dots. Actors get typecast because audiences
grow accustomed to seeing them in a particular type of film and feel betrayed
when they broaden their range. Marketing gets difficult when you cast a
comedian in a thriller. The same is true for directors that have developed
reputations. If you are thinking outside the box, you need to figure out
a pathway to lead others outside the box. You can get to far ahead of the
parade that the audience forgets you are leading them.
19.
Make it an event. Movies a dime a dozen with no call to action to get the f
up and off the couch. Movies are not rare. We have a grand
abundance of them that we will never catch up to. You need your
film to leap to the top of everyone’s queue. You must make your
film an event. Mickey Rourke playing Mickey Rourke The Wrestler in The
Wrestler was an event. Someone’s return to the screen or their last role
motivates an audience. In direct contradiction to my prior point,
sometimes an actor doing what they haven’t is an event: Adam Sandler in
Punchdrunk Love is an event, but not in Reign Over Me. Transmedia and
other extensions of a story world has the potential to do this. I rushed
to see The Master on 70mm (and was not disappointed). Secret Cinema in
the UK does this well. We think of a lot of this as marketing, but I see
early collaborations with key creatives as packaging too.
20.
Process & strategy. This list is an attempt to help identify all that can be
done to package a movie. Once you have identified everything, you have to
both figure out how and when to do each stage. When I have built my
materials that demonstrate the creative vision of the project, and I feel I
have a firm understanding of the business potential for the project, and I feel
my script is as good as I am going to be able to get it, I alert the agencies
that we will be in town soon. I send it all to them and set meetings.
They need to have a face to face with your director if they are going to
endorse the project. I know the whole packaging process is going to be a
long haul. I try to figure out things I can do along the way to keep it
fresh, reinvent it. Once something gets stale, you must transform it.
Great list. One thing to add: don’t forget
music as a packaging element. Or for that matter animation, if your film has
that, or any other creative elements that a third party brings to the film. If
you have a connection to a band or musician that people get excited about, that
gives a great new angle for marketing and provides an at-a-glance way to 1)
convey the tone of the film 2) offer event opportunities or maybe even make the
film feel like an event 3) reach and create interest for a secondary audience
that might not be interested in the story, subject etc. And don’t forget the
cool factor – actors (and many others) care about that – if you are connected
to cool people, that coolness transfers to you, and then to them. People want
to be involved with hip projects and hip people. And there’s nothing wrong with
that. It may seem like an intangible, but it also opens doors to a more
personal connection. It’s much easier to connect for instance, over a shared
love of a band, then over deal points. And every creative aspect of a film
carries the same potential. But music hits home in a way that few other things
can match. Oh – and it’s usually super expensive if attempted after the fact,
so best to make music and other audience-expanding and potentially bankable
creative elements part of the plan going in. That’s 2 cents right there.
Thanks Audrey. You are 1000% right on!
3.
Martin
Donovan /
Sep 26 at 8:15am
Great point Audrey but it’s important to know
that if the musical artist’s profile is high (a good thing) his or her (their)
management may not be amenable to you using the music to promote your project.
Even a close personal relationship with the artist may not make a difference
with some high profile management companies repping high profile artists. In
the end what counts is working with people whose work you respect – your
project will be better for it no matter what.
4.
Adam
Cohen /
Sep 26 at 8:15am
Thank you for this great list. Well thought
out and very thorough.
I would also add that you should start
building your audience now. You can never have too many people interested in
your project and start early in a way that keeps your audience engaged. This of
course adds value to your project to those that may want to get involved.
Crowd sourcing is one way but just having a
measurable audience prior to the films completion is equally important.
5.
@milesmaker / Sep 26 at 8:15am
I would simply add that a high profile
musician or band or one with a fanbase similar to your film’s fanbase is a big
plus–so to avoid the management issues above, I would seek music that speaks to
your film’s themes and value statements that have not yet been published; the
songs the labels didn’t select for the album; the songs the Artist maintains
sole control of. Announcing a score/soundtrack featuring previously unreleased
material is newsworthy too.
6.
@milesmaker / Sep 26 at 8:15am
Timing is everything, and every project needs
careful consideration in this regard. Having said this, exactly WHEN to begin
is an important decision in the Best interest of your IP–to avoid a negative
perception if your project doesn’t tout noteworthy momentum with an air of
inevitability over time. That’s like a screenplay collecting dust the studios
don’t wanna read anymore because it isn’t hot, it’s just not. For this reason I
prefer to share my development process with soft impressions in my own social
feed(s) and won’t establish a standalone presence for the project until the
likelihood of it being made is significant. Nothing is for certain, but false
starts can damage a brand.
True about managers, Martin. My film partner
Aaron Aites and I come from a music-oriented background, we used to run a
label, he’s in a current band that records and tours, and our first film
together was a music doc, so we have as many if not more connections (actually,
friends) in that world as we have in film. Music is a core building blocks of
our films, and we give it a higher priority than seems common. But yes,
managers are a force to be reckoned with once you’re talking about a band at a
certain level of mainstream appeal. Another option is to work with a label and
use tracks from several artists. For instance, Drag City has gotten involved in
several recent films, Trash Humpers and Dragonslayer, so there’s another possibility
there in involving labels from the word go (who presumably can help on the
publishing side if using pre-released tracks). it only works for some films of
course, but it’s another tool to have in the kit.
(We met, by the way, at your Collaborator screening
at Goldcrest – congrats on your and Ted’s success in getting that out.)
Definitely agree. On Until The Light Takes Us
(music doc), we used pre-existing tracks for much of the film, but also asked
our friend Jay Lesser of LSR/Matmos to score some sections – and one of the
first questions we ever got at a festival Q & A was how we managed to get
new music from Jay in the film. It’s all just about working with music and
musicians that fit the film, but then also recognizing the different upsides.
Especially as musicians are having a hell of a time actually making money form
their work. A good friend in a high profile band tours 10 out of 12 months. And
it’s not because he loves it so much. He’s rather see his daughter more, you
know? So I think there’s a lot of upside for everone in working with musicians
as part of the core team.
9.
Jeff
Kramer /
Sep 26 at 8:15am
Stephen… All on the list… 1 through 20 are
necessary and professional components. I would add that unwavering commitment,
also known as persistence are omnipotent. Very well done!
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