Film Strategy

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 ...

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 th...

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...

So there is a benefit to becoming famous on Youtube. Feature-length films starring YouTube stars are getting Hollywood's attention. In their quest to de-risk a film and make a film with a built-in audience and marketing potential at little cost, they have decided to invest in films starring people popular in the digital world. According to THR : There were about a dozen such "film" projects in 2015 alone, and that number could double this year as major entertainment players look to cash in. These digital-focused films follow a similar, and more inexpensive, formula on their way from concept to completed project. According to numerous industry sources, studios will pay between $500,000 and $1.5 million to produce the movie, and the marketing spend is a fraction of the minimum $20 million that a studio normally would shell out.  Instead of going to theaters, studios typically distribute the films through iTunes and Vimeo, where viewers can download them for about $1...

Filmmakers, no, you will not go to jail for bankruptcy. Fraud on the other hand... It is difficult to plan ahead and come up with the perfect budget for a film but the allure of making a film can not be denied. And so, the filmmaker plods ahead come what may to make that film. But for low-budget indie filmmakers all it takes is one misbudgeted item to derail the whole project. So when you gotta make that film even if you lack enough funds then you must be efficient and flexible to make it to the finish line. Here are 3 tips to get there: ATTRACT TALENT WITH PARTNERSHIPS Find the best Writer, Protagonist Actor/Actress, DP, Sound Mixer, Line Producer / Production Manager, Lawyer and Editor you can afford. Develop a professional relationship and friendly rapport with them. Think long term. If you can't afford their fees, put together a compensation package that is more than just credit and deferred compensation. Even low pay is better than nothing. Some other forms of comp...

I know, I know... Test screenings seem like an idea dreamed up by studio executives as a way to squeeze the artistry and creativity out of a director's movie and torment him with data that confirms his movie is "shit." But believe it or not, while there are many films that have been test screened from potential greatness to mediocrity , many films we love today benefitted from the comments after a test screening (Exhibit A and B ). Everything from changing the title to changing the ending is possible after a test screening. While few directors take solace in the brutal feedback a group of strangers may give his baby, the executives want the feedback data to see if the film will have an audience and, as a result, make money. It's easy to deride test screenings and " fucking hate them " but think of it from the investor's point of view for a minute. Every movie is essentially a new business start-up. And new business start-ups don't have a readym...

Economics of the film avant-garde:  networks and strategies in the circulation of films, ideas, and people by  Kathryn Ramey How do experimental filmmakers survive? And not just in tough economic times, but routinely? Can they make a living from their creative work, and if so, how? If not, how do they keep going? What social networks, communities, and institutions do they make or work within to continue their art-making? What ideas do they have about their chosen profession? How do they evolve and change with changing technologies and new opportunities? These are the kind of questions that motivated me to do an ethnographic study of the avant-garde film art world. Here I want to lay out one aspect of that project. Methodology* This essay was originally written as part of a multi-sited ethnography on late 20th century experimental filmmakers in North America focusing primarily on New York and Chicago and their environs in partial completion for a Ph.D....