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Showing posts with the label case studies

CASE STUDY: How Script Coverage Helped Get Name Talent Aboard My Feature Film

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Today's case study is written by Brian O'Malley from https://www.screenplayreaders.com on how the use of script reading services like his can make your script more enticing and intriguing to A-list actors. As we all know, one of the best strategies for getting your film financed and made is having top-notch name brands starring and guest-starring in your film. Hope you enjoy. ~~ Danny Image credit: Rafael Leonardo Re via Flickr Creative Commons Script coverage. We all know that for agents and producers, it's a great tool because a script reader can wade through a pile of scripts and find the good writers and good stories, then write up a brief script coverage and let her boss know, in a page or two, what's worth reading, and what's not. And it's a great tool for screenwriters as well. A well-written script coverage can help pinpoint how to improve story and character, plot and conflict, and so many other categories, making it a lot easier for th

CASE STUDY: When To Say No To a Film Festival

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This Film Collaborative article offers a great look into the thought process that goes into deciding whether to screen your film at a particular film festival or not. Oftentimes, filmmakers make it to the film festival stage with no clear strategy or long-term vision. This article sheds some light on what filmmakers should do in that situation. -------*------- originally published by The Film Collaborative blog on 10.27.16 I love film festivals by-in-large and they have done great things for many of our films. In fact, we have multiple films this year that have generated over $50K in revenue on the festival circuit. Many companies cling to the myth that playing festivals hurts distribution deals and revenue, yet most of our top festival performers still received six figure distribution deals while continuing to generate revenue, awards and exposure on the circuit. While The Film Collaborative is perhaps best known for monetizing the film festival universe, we provide just

CASE STUDY: TB'S Studio Series - An Analysis of the Major Movie Studios in 2016

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For entertainment industry junkies who see the value in understanding the major movie studios, Neil Turitz has done us a big favor by writing a great series at the Tracking Board called "The Studio Series."  With the Studio Series, Turitz analyzes each major movie studio in 2016 to assess their strategies as well as what they are doing right and wrong.  Whether you're just a movie fan who likes digging deep into the industry that makes the film he loves or a filmmaker trying to figure out where to pitch her next film, the analysis below will be sure to inform. STX Entertainment and Studio 8 To break into the film distribution business on the higher budget side seems like a fools errand. But if you’re Robert Simonds and Adam Fogelson at STX Entertainment, and Jeff Robinov at Studio 8, then you’re not thinking in exactly those terms. On the contrary, you’re thinking you can take on the system and win. A24, Open Road and Roadside Attractions A look at three

CASE STUDY: Why are there so many sequels in movie theaters?

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The overabundance of sequels is nothing new. But why are they in theaters instead of in the secondary markets of Direct-to-DVD or VOD? Nico Lang from Salon attempts an answer: Part of that is due to a studio system that’s grown more cautious in recent years, banking on pre-existing properties that seem like safe bets in an uncertain film market. “We have projects at six studios, and ninety per cent of their attention goes to the ones that are superhero or obviously franchisable,” director Shawn Levy (“Night at the Museum”) told the  New Yorker . “And every single first meeting I have on a movie, in the past two years, is not about the movie itself but about the franchise it would be starting.” The other reason, though, that so many theatrical sequels are being greenlit is because of the erosion of the home video market. With the disappearance of video stores, the rapid decline in DVD sales, and sluggish VOD numbers, movies are being pushed into theaters that have no busines

CASE STUDY: Product Placement Works Better in 3D Movies than in 2D Movies

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Original Title:  Highly prominent product placements tend to benefit from 3D movies, while placements with low prominence lose out   The results, recently published in the journal  Media Psychology , are based on two studies, which investigated product placements in two Hollywood movies. Volunteers watched the Hollywood movies as either a 2D, a 3D, or a 4D version (the 3D movie with added scent). Researchers subsequently recorded the extent to which the volunteers were able to recall and recognize the brands placed in the movies. In doing so, they distinguished between products placed in a prominent and those placed in a subtle manner. Ralf Terlutter (Department of Marketing and International Management at the Alpen-Adria-Universität, AAU), who conducted the studies together with his AAU colleagues Sandra Diehl und Isabell Koinig (Department of Media and Communications Science), as well as Martin K.J. Waiguny (IMC Krems), elaborates: "Our results indicate that those comp

CASE STUDY: The Lionsgate-Starz Merger: Changing the Landscape or Just Another Blip?

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In a nutshell, "this [Lionsgate-Starz merger] deal is about increasing content and distribution." And mainly to the benefit of Lionsgate because it has and creates tons of content and now has a TV distribution outlet for all of that content at its control. It is (regrettably?) another step in the corporate consolidation of the media landscape and another sign of how difficult it is to make money while competing with other studios and other forms of entertainment. Many are saying this is changing the landscape  (since it will help compete against the streaming networks) and maybe it is, but I can't help just see this as just another step in a landscape that has already been changing since the DVD stopped making money as Netflix and YouTube started making money. For the business and legal heads out there, here's an in-depth analysis of the Liongsgate-Starz merger from the Market Realist .

CASE STUDY: The Outliers Of 2015 - Small Movies With Biggest Profits (+ MY TAKEAWAYS)

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A snapshot of what these 2015 low-budget films did to make a profit. Deadline just published a good article with breakdowns of the numbers of 5 "small" films (by Hollywood standards) that had big profits . I was curious to probe a bit more into why these films were able to make a profit and came across a couple of recurring themes which I elaborate on in the FILM STRATEGY TAKEAWAY : their use of the horror genre, that the films are based on a well-known novel or sequel, their exploitation of production incentives, their release on a day with no competition and more. Check it out: +++++++ Each year when Deadline runs its film profitability countdown , readers understandably ask about wildly profitable films, usually genre pictures, that don’t merit inclusion on the basis of highest domestic gross. But that doesn’t mean these films don’t tell compelling stories in their own right. So this time, we included snapshots of five overachieving pictures. The final four film