Howdy! So I need to crank the wheel on getting pre-production underway, but without:
- Funding
- Producer
- Talent
Given that I seem to need one of those to get the other two, I'm figuring maybe I could raise the funds to hire a producer, 1st AD and casting director for a few weeks, to hopefully put a decent package together to get finance, to get things moving.
Good plan? Bad plan? And the BIG question - what would it cost? For, say, two weeks work for people with respectable credits.
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I am available as a Casting Director when you are ready, smiles.
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why would you need a 1st AD in the planning stage. Just hire a line producer, and add 20% for contigency (screwups/Acts of God on-set).
Guessing you want to make an indie feature. Pay somewhere from $750 to $1500 for a freelance Line Producer to do budget/schedule. Maybe hire a DP to create a look book (assuming you are directing)
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I agree with Dan. Assuming your script is ready to go (or close) LP to do proper line item budget & schedule (could also be higher, maybe $1500-2000). You'll also want to invest time / money in a look book - if you're directing, consider doing the base work and hiring a designer to make it look professional ($1500 at a guess). And experienced Casting Director to consult on a key roles wish list (hard to say - $1-4K DOE??) which will also end up in your look book. If you're micro-micro, then everything changes by necessity, but if you're going after a few hundred grand or more, doing some of this packaging stuff will help you find a producer as its the first step towards turning the words on a page into an actual blueprint for a movie (it becomes a real project, and experienced people are attracted to real projects).
Also - Find an entertainment lawyer and get your ducks in a row with script ownership / partnership agreements BEFORE you attach anyone to your project. It's easy to bring someone ON to a project and hard to get them OFF if things fall apart. Make sure you're protected in the later scenario. There's a lot of great people out there, but it only takes one bad apple to mess things up. This will cost some money, but it's sadly necessary and protects not only you, but the project and its investors down the line.
Titles are less important than who knows their s*** as is ready, willing and able to do the work. It sounds like what you are really looking for is pre-pre production work as you are still trying to put a package together. Casting director is only going to be able to help you with a wish list until you can actually start making some offers. You're going to need someone at some point who can gather accurate crew candidates and numbers for wherever it is your shooting.If you're thinking it's people with respectable credits is going to help you raise the needed money, that's a big "if". I'd be looking to hire the very best people you can find, who ion turn know the very best people, regardless of credits and save as much money as you can for marketable talent and for the actual marketing itself (assuming you have a commercial agenda for your project).
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Jon...the comments on this post are GOLD. Now, my two cents ...where/what is the distribution plan? Personal 2 cents: ...no matter how good the film/story is - if there is not a distribution plan in place pre-production phase with allocated budget, the project can sit in limbo and not have opportunity for the recoupment strategy to work. Chin up. Keep going!
Neal Howard , that's a good point, well taken. How best to find the best people?
Dan MaxXx , I appreciate the frankness. This would be my first project beyond solo, micro work. Not new to film-making but I am to this side of things.
Cherelynn Baker See, this is where I get caught in the Catch 22. From the advice I've had on Stage32 recently (which has been helpful), I need,
Funding = Producer = Cast & Crew = Sales Forecast = Distribution Plan
But also
Distribution Plan = Funding...(etc.)
And also
Producer + Cast & Crew = Funding...(etc.)
Where's the on-ramp? I've worked in corporate circles for years and the film industry seems to have the strategy model of a plate of spaghetti. Am I missing something?
Also, you're right, the comments above have been incredibly helpful. I'm less lost in the fog than I was
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Hey Jon,
You're not wrong. The on ramp is basically in the details.
Some questions so we can try and give more accurate answers:
- What genre is your project?
- I know you still need a budget done, but do you have a rough budget estimate at this stage? <125K, 250K, 1M, 5M, 50M, 150M?
- Are you directing and if so, do you have already something to demonstrate your ability like a short etc?
Budget and genre is everything when you're establishing. If you are directing and it's a 50M drama or war piece, it's going to be almost impossible to get that project off the ground, compared to a < 250K horror/thriller/family film with a dog/faith or Christmas film. It essentially comes down to how risky the team and project is, within this world of incredibly high risk investment (ie any film production).
The models outlined in the above posts are typically for anything in the 650K or above scenario. Once you get anywhere near the 1M mark, it becomes crucial to have proper distribution in place, to be able to make the money back for your investors. The model is probably closer to:
project > development financing > team (CD, Producer, lawyer) > cast > distribution > funding.
The funding is contingent on the investors being able to make their money back. They want to mitigate their risk by having distribution in place already and the distributor won't commit to buy something unless they know they can sell it (ie the cast has appeal in their territories and the team making the film can actually deliver). The cast and key crew don't want to waste time on any of the 99% of projects that won't get made. The answer is development as this sets your project apart by being real tangible. Hence LP (budget & schedule)/look book/casting director/sales estimates + a portion of funds in escrow to prove this is more than a dream.
The development money could be personally financed or raised through crowd sourcing etc, but this money is the highest risk investment of all, so it's typically put in (or found) by the producer in the beginning. The money is then used to hire the initial team and get those elements outlined in the above posts etc. There's obviously zero value for any of this work if the project doesn't get made though, hence the high risk.
My take: Is it a chicken and the egg scenario? Yes, pretty much.
However... if a chicken costs a million dollars, the egg costs 25K.
The model is to buy the egg and do whatever you can to help it hatch and get your chicken.
Hopefully this isn't too depressing. Alrighty let's go down in budget.
The other, more indie / low budget model is this:
1. Find an easily sellable, genre screenplay: (horror/thriller/family film with a dog/faith or Christmas film)
2. Make sure it's actually good!
3. Get a line producer to help you back into a budget of under 250K (or whatever you think you can raise)
4. Find the money through crowd sourcing (RB has a great book on this) through friends/family/dentists/that guy who has a business making boilers in your home town, but really REALLY wants a piece of Hollywood + some personal financing (do NOT mortgage your house unless retirement sounds terrible to you) and make your film.
In this scenario - you will most likely not have name cast or high profile crew (though it does happen)
and therefore, distribution will come AFTER you have the chicken. This scenario is much higher risk since there is no guarantee it will ever be sold, but that is why you want to have a distribution plan from the beginning. Note I said distribution 'plan' not 'agreement'. For this, I would read 'Rise of the Filmtrepreneur' by Alex Ferrari. Also, check out his podcast (Indie Film Hustle). He has a lot of guests who talk about how they got their first films made.
A parting thought:
Film schools put out the idea that you write a script, get financing, hire the best in town and then go and make your masterpiece for 15M dollars, but nobody in their right mind will finance that scenario with an unknown / unproven director or producer.
If this was property investing, the above scenario would be like going to a bank and asking for a loan to buy a chunk of land in Manhattan and build a 12-plex of apartments on it. It's not gonna happen unless you have a serious track record.
Instead, you get a small deposit (your egg) and buy a 2 bed apartment, renovate it and it's worth a chunk of money (chicken). You sell it and now you have a bigger deposit (premium egg) to buy a 4 bedroom house... (premium chicken) then eventually, the 12 plex of apartments etc.
Depending on your answers to my questions at the beginning on budget/genre, your best bet is likely to be to crowd source and raise development funding, or if the project is too big, put it aside (temporarily) and make a much smaller project first.
Hope some of this helps!
Ant
Ant J. Fallon Oh good grief! That may be the best, most informative, most helpful reply I've ever had on any subject, on any platform, ever! Thank you so much!! You should charge for this level of advice - I would pay!
To your questions;
- Grounded SciFi (The Martian meets The West Wing).
- If I did run & gun, "rounding corners" (never cutting them, ofc.) I think I could deliver it for around £50k. Doing everything more formally (properly) maybe closer to £100k. However that's with no starring talent. So I guess if I could inflate to £10M for an A-lister I'd be more likely to make a profit than cheaping out with no stars. I guess finding the compromise between those extremes is the challenge.
- I'd prefer to direct, but would co-direct with someone more experienced if it was a deal-breaker. I have about 100 shorts, a few festival nods from the last one (the first I submitted to any festivals) (no big name festivals yet), which is essentially a proof-of-concept zero-budget primer for the feature in question:
https://www.thelegacyuniverse.com/thelegacyfiles
(Please don't judge too harshly. Made during lockdown with no crew and amateur actors).
You mention, "LP (budget & schedule)/look book/casting director/sales estimates". How do I get sales estimates? In the past I've been told that comes after finance is in place. Is that something I can get done in the development stage?
From the sounds of it, I'd guess option A would work best (name talent & pre-sales)
PS. You're an absolute gent for putting so much effort into helping me. Thank you again.
Haha, glad it helped. Well it's a bit of a crap shoot but first you'll need to know who you want your cast to be and that's based on your conversations with the casting director and putting a list of options together. Buffalo8 do offer "sales estimates" of some sort, though i have no experience with them to report on. I recently asked the same question here and got a variety of responses that were definitely helpful and well meaning, but essentially pointed to "it's not possible". Whilst that may be true, I believe it’s necessary, so I am digging deeper. The AFM is virtual again this year, so for a few hundred dollars and some planning ahead, getting a meeting with the right people is probably the way, though expect to pay them for their time running the numbers, since you won't be signing an agreement at this stage and therefore, there's no benefit to them to offer their services etc.
Based on your genre and what seems to be a fairly contained premise (correct me if I'm wrong), you could seriously consider doing this for 50K and then you'd have a feature under your belt. If you use time and crazy levels of preparation to your advantage (what big budget films don't have - don't get me started), then you should be able to stretch the budget a long way, and if it's good, a lot of doors will be open on your next film. At 50K, that's money you could easily sink into legals/development and potentially not get the film made. Just food for thought!