Film Strategy

The  68th annual  Cannes Film Festival  was held from 13 to 24 May 2015.   Joel  and  Ethan Coen  were announced as the Presidents of the Jury for the main competition.  It was the first time that two people chaired the jury.   Since the Coen brothers each received a separate vote, they were joined by seven other jurors to form the customary nine-juror panel.  The  Palme d'Or  was awarded to the French film  Dheepan  directed by  Jacques Audiard .  French film director  Agnès Varda  was presented with the honorary Palme d'Or at the festival's closing ceremony. She is also the first female filmmaker to ever receive the award. THE CATEGORIES Main Competition The selections for the jury were the following: English title Original title Director(s) Production country Dheepan   Dheepan Jacques Audiard France The Measure of a Man La Loi du marché Stéphane Brizé France Marguerite & Julien Marguerite et Julien Valérie Donzelli France Chronic Chronic Michel Franco

I recently wrote an article about why it is a good thing for certain filmmakers making certain films to share the wealth with profit participation instead of deferred compensation. A caveat: that has a limited use. However, I wanted to revisit that idea and clarify what that means for a filmmaker looking to adopt a profit participation strategy to paying their cast and crew. The truth is that while paying your cast and crew with profit participation instead of deferred compensation can lower a producer's and investor's out-of-pocket production and postproduction costs and improve morale/motivation, it has limits. Here's why: A producer makes multiple contracts throughout the life of a film starting with the writer and ending with the distributor. Along the way, she decides to offer back end participation (or net/gross profits or profit participation) to the cast and crew and signs a contract with them promising to do so. When the producer meets with the distributor