When the stars are not aligned

[Barry_Green]

Another case in point:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx1X...9F9C2E92B&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=3

Look at the number of views. 73 million people have watched that video.

No actors, but yes an audience familiarity, but...

IT'S A PUPPET SHOW.

If they could get just a penny from each viewer, they'd have made nearly a million dollars. From a puppet show.

Have you seen any ads for it? Any marketing at all? No, but the genius of the content, combined with the familiarity of the property, caused end viewers to tell everyone they know to watch it.

Figure out how to get a dime a view, and that's where the future is at. Forget needing actors and advertising budgets and all that...

 

[Mark Harris]

Okay, to bring it home:

... that's the way things are gonna go. And there's not a lot of reasons why it can't happen today. But what does this mean? It means it's up to YOU, the filmmaker, to get the word out to people so that they want to watch it!

So choose your marketing tool carefully. Actors? That can do it... ads, that can do it... great reviews, that can help, but you still have to make people aware and convince them to go see it or buy the DVD or whatever. They're not gonna just automatically come looking for you, you have to make them aware of what you've got.

Just jumping in for a quick follow-up to this: START EARLY. It's becoming common knowledge through the DIY crowd that indie filmmakers trying to build audiences need to start that process before shooting a frame. We've been working on it for about 4 months so far. We've held focus groups, started planning incentives for people to pre-buy, or even sign up for the mailing list, and we are just now putting the final touches on a 6 month roll-out plan for audience awareness designed to (hopefully) keep people coming back to our sites, and looking at us until the film is here.

 

[Mark Harris]

Another case in point:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx1X...9F9C2E92B&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=3

Look at the number of views. 73 million people have watched that video.

No actors, but yes an audience familiarity, but...

IT'S A PUPPET SHOW.

If they could get just a penny from each viewer, they'd have made nearly a million dollars. From a puppet show.

Have you seen any ads for it? Any marketing at all? No, but the genius of the content, combined with the familiarity of the property, caused end viewers to tell everyone they know to watch it.

Figure out how to get a dime a view, and that's where the future is at. Forget needing actors and advertising budgets and all that...

Yeah, but if they got a penny from every viewer, they would likely get sued out of existence. They are riding on someone else's IP. Which I kind of thought you were against...

 

[Chamber005]

Just jumping in for a quick follow-up to this: START EARLY. It's becoming common knowledge through the DIY crowd that indie filmmakers trying to build audiences need to start that process before shooting a frame. We've been working on it for about 4 months so far. We've held focus groups, started planning incentives for people to pre-buy, or even sign up for the mailing list, and we are just now putting the final touches on a 6 month roll-out plan for audience awareness designed to (hopefully) keep people coming back to our sites, and looking at us until the film is here.

I did this accidentally actually. I was working on a project that I thought aspects of which would work well as webserial material. I started a webseries and got close to three hundred fans following it on Facebook. I've since had to take it down for licensing and investor/corporate structure reasons, but it's still helped to start creating that fanbase for the project, even though the project won't be released for another year.

ARTWORK and POSTERS do wonders. I hired a professional artist and did some stuff myself and although that didn't translate to "facebook fans" it helped generate a lot of buzz around the project over on sites like DeviantArt.

But yeah, getting people excited and having a built-in audience LONG before a critic ever has a chance to utter an opinion is a huge blessing of marketing. Because if someone WANTS to see your film or show that you've gotten them excited about via social networking, etc, no amount of bashing from critics is going to keep them from seeing it.

 

[Barry_Green]

They are riding on someone else's IP

Parody is a protected right under US law.

 

[Chamber005]

Okay, to bring it home:

All marketing has been about getting an audience to spend money to see your film. In the old days, you could throw millions of dollars at an ad campaign, and watch your film sit in the theaters for months raking in the dough. Heck, Titanic was in the theater for a YEAR -- and that was less than 20 years ago.

So why would someone want to see your film? Because it looks great in the trailers, and maybe because it has recognizable actors that they like.

But why would people *not* want to see your film? Ah, here's the social revolution and the key to everything. Years ago, if a film looked great in the ads, people would go. You could spend ten million dollars on ads, and actors, and whatnot, and know for pretty much a surety that you'd get an audience. But the social media revolution has given the people the power to cut that off at the knees! A marketer might put together a campaign that they expected to run for a couple of months, but man, if the film gets slammed in reviews, everyone will know about it instantly, nationwide, and worldwide. And all of a sudden the value of that ad campaign is GONE.

So what you really need to do is make a film that the reviewers and audiences love. And then you have to make sure the audiences know about it.

Anything else -- licensed properties, known actors, etc., that's all gravy. But if you make a film that audiences love, it'll have more and more of a chance for success.

There's something of a revolution going on in film viewing anyway, where audiences can demand what film they want to see. And with digital distribution coming along, it'll be more and more practical. Get a crowd of your friends together on Facebook, maybe get your church group together and make a plan -- "hey, we're all gonna go watch Brandon Rice's "No Greater Love" on the bigscreen Friday, who's in?" Get two hundred people to buy tickets, and then go to the theater and say "hey, get "No Greater Love" for us on Friday at 8pm and we'll buy 200 tickets. Theater owner has a sold-out screening, so he contacts the digital download library and rents the film for a showing, you all come in, watch it, have a great time, etc...

... that's the way things are gonna go. And there's not a lot of reasons why it can't happen today. But what does this mean? It means it's up to YOU, the filmmaker, to get the word out to people so that they want to watch it!

So choose your marketing tool carefully. Actors? That can do it... ads, that can do it... great reviews, that can help, but you still have to make people aware and convince them to go see it or buy the DVD or whatever. They're not gonna just automatically come looking for you, you have to make them aware of what you've got.

And it had better be good. Really, really good. Or you're dead in the water, because everybody goes on IMDB and looks at the rating, everybody goes on rottentomatoes or netflix or yahoo movies and looks at the end-user ratings. And if it doesn't have great ratings, they aren't gonna come.

Unless it's Transylmania, of course.

Well and I think we're mixing apples and oranges when we're talking about Miley Cyrus and super low-budget indie flicks.

If the budget on a movie is under a half million, they probably can't afford anyone who has any sort of film-based following (you mentioned Bruce Campbell and I think he'd even be difficult to land in that price range).

So we're really talking about "name talent" in the terms that it's usually thrown around on forums like these. Name talent would be the types of people you described (Lorenzo, etc). Distributors and producers still do think that having Lorenzo Lamas in your movie will help your movie be saleable, and personally I think it probably hurts your movie's saleability to an audience (regardless of whether or not his performance was amazing).

I'm actually in talks right now with my guys about maybe shelling out a big chunk of change for one of a popular group's more unpopular songs. It stemmed from a creative decision but, I think, could make a difference in the marketing.

Using poor Lorenzo again, if you could get him for 10K* or a song by, say, Gwen Stefani for the same amount, marketing-wise it might actually make more sense to go with the song as you'll then be able to cite a MUCH more famous talent as it relates to your film or project.

"Includes music by: Gwen Stefani, Plain White Tees..." etc.

So my point I guess is not that name talent (today, right now) hurts your film. But low-level name talent very well could, especially since you're having to use a portion of your budget to secure them (instead of, say, using that money on marketing).

The exception to this for me, funny enough, comes once again from The Guild. They went out and got Will Wheaton to star as the big bad in their 3rd season. But because Will Wheaton has a strong sci-fi following from his days on Star Trek The Next Generation, his fanbase translates directly to The Guild's fanbase.

Very shrewd, Miss Day. Very shrewd indeed.

*and yes these figures are just to illustrate my point.

 

[Chamber005]

Parody is a protected right under US law.

Aaaaand, COUNT IT!

Them boys even have their own line of T-shirts! lol

People argue this, but I still believe that Star Wars Clone Wars started out as a parody. Heck, those guys that do that machinima Halo show DEFINATELY started out as parody and they were even using the graphics from the game and now their show airs on Xbox live and is a huge hit.

However you need to get your audience, so long as it's legal and the audience you're obtaining can translate to your creator-owned stuff, I say all missles fire.

 

[Mark Harris]

Parody is a protected right under US law.

Is it a parody?

Regardless, no one would be watching it if it was not based on something already famous.

But another good example of this is the Ink people(everything comes around to Ink these days it seems). They made a great short that got like 2 mil views.

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I AGREE

 

[David W. Richardson]

A parody wouldn't exist at all if it didn't play off of something else that people are familiar with. So I don't see Barry or any other filmmaker objecting to that concept.

But on the point of the thread...

Think of it like any other business. Say you want to open a restaurant. You have two choices. If you pay top dollar, you can get a prime location with lots of foot or drive-by traffic -- people who will see your restaurant, know where it is, and stop in because it's conveniently on their route. If you don't pay top dollar for location, then you have to pour the money into advertising, in order to tell people where you are and why they should go out of their way to find your restaurant.

If your restaurant is in a prime location, but the food is awful, then it will fail. If it's in a poor location, but the food is awesome -- well, it could still fail, or it could really take off if you spend the dough for advertising.

Take all of that and apply it to making a movie.

Hire the 'name' -- that's like paying for the prime location. It won't guarantee success by itself, but it will give you a leg up. And even with a just-average script and execution, you could still make a profit.

Don't hire a 'name', and you will need two things to have a financially successful movie -- a LOT of advertising, and a truly GREAT script that is well executed.

At least that's my theory.

 

[Barry_Green]

Regardless, no one would be watching it if it was not based on something already famous.

Agreed, which goes back to my major point -- you have to give people a reason as to why to consider your work. Outside validation, a licensed property, a massive advertising campaign, or known actors. Without at least one of those four, your film is DBA (dead before arrival).

For no-budget indies, the only one that's actually approachable is the outside validation, which comes from having such genius content that people cannot help but talk about it and recommend it to everyone.

 

[Chamber005]

A parody wouldn't exist at all if it didn't play off of something else that people are familiar with. So I don't see Barry or any other filmmaker objecting to that concept.

But on the point of the thread...

Think of it like any other business. Say you want to open a restaurant. You have two choices. If you pay top dollar, you can get a prime location with lots of foot or drive-by traffic -- people who will see your restaurant, know where it is, and stop in because it's conveniently on their route. If you don't pay top dollar for location, then you have to pour the money into advertising, in order to tell people where you are and why they should go out of their way to find your restaurant.

If your restaurant is in a prime location, but the food is awful, then it will fail. If it's in a poor location, but the food is awesome -- well, it could still fail, or it could really take off if you spend the dough for advertising.

Take all of that and apply it to making a movie.

Hire the 'name' -- that's like paying for the prime location. It won't guarantee success by itself, but it will give you a leg up. And even with a just-average script and execution, you could still make a profit.

Don't hire a 'name', and you will need two things to have a financially successful movie -- a LOT of advertising, and a truly GREAT script that is well executed.

At least that's my theory.

But again, we're not talking about Johnny Depp or Miley Cyrus (prime locations), we're talking about the kinds of B-actors that can be hired on a sub 1 million dollar project.

Like I said, big movies need big stars and big marketing and (sometimes) good scripts in order to be profitable.

For the sub 1 million folks, script, story and marketing (and especially social marketing) seem to be key. Spending the money on a B-actor (opposed to, say, marketing or locations or really anything at all) seems to me to be a really, really bad business decision.

And, honestly, if you were in a position to make a movie with a budget over 1 million, you probably wouldn't be hanging out on these boards. You've already got it all figured out.

 

[Barry_Green]

Think of it like any other business. Say you want to open a restaurant. You have two choices. If you pay top dollar, you can get a prime location with lots of foot or drive-by traffic -- people who will see your restaurant, know where it is, and stop in because it's conveniently on their route. If you don't pay top dollar for location, then you have to pour the money into advertising, in order to tell people where you are and why they should go out of their way to find your restaurant.

If your restaurant is in a prime location, but the food is awful, then it will fail. If it's in a poor location, but the food is awesome -- well, it could still fail, or it could really take off if you spend the dough for advertising.

Take all of that and apply it to making a movie.

Hire the 'name' -- that's like paying for the prime location. It won't guarantee success by itself, but it will give you a leg up. And even with a just-average script and execution, you could still make a profit.

Don't hire a 'name', and you will need two things to have a financially successful movie -- a LOT of advertising, and a truly GREAT script that is well executed.

I think that's actually a pretty excellent analogy, especially considering that if there's one business out there that's actually harder to turn a profit in than filmmaking, it's restaurants... yet the same pervasiveness of need applies, people want to eat even more than they crave entertainment!

 

[Barry_Green]

But again, we're not talking about Johnny Depp or Miley Cyrus (prime locations), we're talking about the kinds of B-actors that can be hired on a sub 1 million dollar project.

I still think that's a narrow viewpoint though. If you've got the brilliant script, you can get A- actors at scale (which, at the time, was $560/day). You just need to be Quentin Tarantino, and your script needs to be Pulp Fiction, and the film needs to be good enough to go on to win the Oscar for best screenplay, and nominated for an Oscar for best director, best editing, and best picture. If you've got a package like that, then actors like Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, and Bruce Willis will look at it and say "yeah, this is good for my career, I'll work for scale on this."

I don't know what Charlize Theron was paid for "Monster", but I do know that she got an Oscar, Golden Globe, and SAG best actor awards for it -- and her NEXT TWO films gave her $10,000,000 paychecks... each. She wouldn't have gotten the Oscar, Golden Globe, or SAG awards if she hadn't done "Monster" -- and she wouldn't have gotten that $20 million in salary either. So did she do "Monster" for scale? I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised. The whole budget was only $8m.

Which is still big for what we're talking about, but the point is -- if your content is that good, the actors will work on it for the love of the work and for what it'll do for their career. If your content isn't that good, the only way you'll get the actors is with a paycheck -- and that's the situation you get stuck in with the c-listers, and no, I don't think they do anything for audiences anymore.

For the sub 1 million folks, script, story and marketing (and especially social marketing) seem to be key. Spending the money on a B-actor (opposed to, say, marketing or locations or really anything at all) seems to me to be a really, really bad business decision.

In general I agree. But it all depends on what you mean by "spending the money" -- if you're saying that you're going to make a $500,000 film, and you're going to spend $400,000 on Brian Dennehy as your star, then yeah, that's a terrible marketing decision. You'd be much better off with a no-name, and a $400,000 marketing budget.

But if you've got the content and the script, having recognizable good actors cannot hurt you.

If you're relying on a B-list or C-list actor's reputation to sell your film, then yeah, you're dead before you start.

 

[Ted Spencer]

One thing that needs to be mentioned here in the 'hire a name' versus 'spend the money on promotion' question is the fact that well over 90% of all micro/ultra low budget indies made simply do not turn out to be quality movies, and that's putting it pretty kindly. Ask any festival director or screener. Since history has proven that creating a truly great/highly successful movie as an unknown/first-time filmmaker with an itty-bitty budget is about as close to Holy Grail territory as you'll find in life, mere mortals like most of us would seem very well advised to get a known actor in the picture (in my opinion, and certainly as conventional wisdom has it).

As far as hypothetical viewers, present or future, actually *avoiding* low budget films with name actors and operating on the expectation that non name-cast films of otherwise similar origin will be superior, given the statistic above, I would personally assign that prediction approximately as much weight as a guy at a pub claiming to know the outcome of the next horse race. But that's just me...

From the filmmaker's perspective, if the cold, hard facts say that your film will start life with overwhelming odds of it turning out to be...um...not so well received, why not add value by at least giving yourself a chance at a pro-level acting performance or two in it? Needless to say, you absolutely, positively believe with all your heart that your film is not going to wind up part of that sad 90% statistic. But so do all 100% of the other aspirants.

From the viewer's perspective (and that is where your film will ultimately live or die regardless of what you spent on advertising or whoever is or isn't in it), if *you* had to choose, what would you rather watch - a so-so movie that was heavily advertised or a so-so movie with a couple of interesting performances by actors you like?

 

[Chamber005]

One thing that needs to be mentioned here in the 'hire a name' versus 'spend the money on promotion' question is the fact that well over 90% of all micro/ultra low budget indies made simply do not turn out to be quality movies, and that's putting it pretty kindly. Ask any festival director or screener. Since history has proven that creating a truly great/highly successful movie as an unknown/first-time filmmaker with an itty-bitty budget is about as close to Holy Grail territory as you'll find in life, mere mortals like most of us would seem very well advised to get a known actor in the picture (in my opinion, and certainly as conventional wisdom has it).

As far as hypothetical viewers, present or future, actually *avoiding* low budget films with name actors and operating on the expectation that non name-cast films of otherwise similar origin will be superior, given the statistic above, I would personally assign that prediction approximately as much weight as a guy at a pub claiming to know the outcome of the next horse race. But that's just me...

From the filmmaker's perspective, if the cold, hard facts say that your film will start life with overwhelming odds of it turning out to be...um...not so well received, why not add value by at least giving yourself a chance at a pro-level acting performance or two in it?

From the viewer's perspective (and that is where your film will ultimately live or die regardless of what you spent on advertising or whoever is or isn't in it), if *you* had to choose, what would you rather watch - a bad movie that was heavily advertised or a bad movie with a couple of interesting performances by actors you like?

Yeah, but I still think that's straying too far from the point, which is: Actor or Advertising/manufactured word of mouth?

So the question should be a GREAT movie with GOOD advertising or GREAT movie with a GOOD name.

IMO the GREAT movie with the GOOD name could very well do worse than the GREAT movie with the GOOD advertising as the stigma of the GOOD name (e.g. C/B list) could very well not only harm the perception of the piece (e.g. gimmick) but could most definitely also harm the integrity of the piece (e.g. the deciding factor of hiring one actor over another was based solely on name and you are making it more difficult for your audience to invest in the story and ignore the Celebrity).

Unless you have an extremely gifted actor in your Celebrity, I think it nearly impossible for that Celebrity's involvement to not hurt the integrity of the story and an audience's ability to suspend disbelief.

To think that Celebrity isn't something that has to be OVERCOME by an actor who is also a Celebrity just doesn't make sense. As I've stated, with a lot of Celebrities, the movies they're in are fast becoming a side note to the story that is their Celebrity.

For instance the movie Wanted should have marked the beginning of a franchise, but it's dead in the water primarily because Jolie was more important than the movie or the franchise. That's why Star Wars and Harry Potter and Star Trek and Buffy the Vampire Slayer can exist as they do, because the story is what was marketed, and that story is never marginalized by the Celebrities who are in them.

That's why Minority Report fails where Blade Runner succeeds. Two stories written by the same writer, both with accomplished directors and actors. But Minority Report was an aside to the Celebrity of Tom Cruise and, to a point, Stephen Spielberg (but moreso the combination of the two). They sold Minority Report based on the people who made the film, not the film itself.

This is why I feel Celebrity will continue to harm film and could eventually start to be seen as a negative when applied to more serious and most certainly franchised works. Of course the greatest actors of our time will be able to conquer Celebrity and succeed at not diminishing the integrity of the film, but, again, look at Angelina Jolie, probably one of our best American actresses -- and yet a film can't be done that is more important to the public than is her personal ongoing story of Celebrity.

Actors like Johnny Depp, Samuel L Jackson and Matt Damon make a huge effort to not have a Celebrity storyline, because if they do they become ineffectual as actors, they become something that hurts story.

 

[Barry_Green]

So -- are you equating "Celebrity" with "gossip"? Is that where your concern lies, that those who end up on the tabloids will hurt the film because they become gimmicks?

 

[Richard J. Johnson]

One thing that needs to be mentioned here in the 'hire a name' versus 'spend the money on promotion' question is the fact that well over 90% of all micro/ultra low budget indies made simply do not turn out to be quality movies, and that's putting it pretty kindly. Ask any festival director or screener. Since history has proven that creating a truly great/highly successful movie as an unknown/first-time filmmaker with an itty-bitty budget is about as close to Holy Grail territory as you'll find in life, mere mortals like most of us would seem very well advised to get a known actor in the picture (in my opinion, and certainly as conventional wisdom has it).

I agree. I have done 3 feature length films and 1 is decent, 1 is unwatchable and the new one is almost good. But we just secured 30k for our next one and to me that is a ton of money considering we shot the first 3 for under a grand each. In reality I do realize that 30k is nothing to do a feature, but it's a start and we got that based on "Torn" and "Razorblade City". And with that 30k, 5 thousand is going to a B List actor friend of mine (waiting to exhale, Soul Food, True Romance, ER, Third Watch, Red Dawn Remake) who will shoot his parts for SAG minimum. I can't afford to pay him lead money but he said he would look out by doing a small part and allowing his name and face to be on the Cover. I think it's a win-win for me in this situation. I'm going out LA in a few weeks to hang out...I mean negotiate.

 

[Chamber005]

So -- are you equating "Celebrity" with "gossip"? Is that where your concern lies, that those who end up on the tabloids will hurt the film because they become gimmicks?

Celebrity is the gimmick that is being used in the marketing of the film.

It's just one of a lot of gimmicks. The problem is that the gimmick of Celebrity (on the low budget side of things) is beginning to operate more as a bait and switch. So if film marketing follows every other kind of marketing in business (which it should), the continued bait and switch technique will eventually lead to people having a Pavlovian response to the bait (e.g. seeing the picture of a Celebrity on the box of a low budget movie).

 

[Zblock]

Talent and quality always seem to win when coupled with determination. You could make a shitty movie and put a big actor in and and by next year, no one gives a Sh$t. However, I you make a dang good movie... one that has to be watched to the end, and keep showing it, sooner or later the right person will see it and it will get know. This happens all the time with Music so I'm sure its the same with films. That OR it will open those door for you to make your NEXT movie.

Examples... BOONDOCK SAINTS, yes I know William Dafoe but the film wins on quality not the actors.
El Mariachi,

Wow I just ran out of steam to think about other but add just about every non-pop, first generation, musical act.

Talent wins over. And ideally makes those unknown actors into stars.

 

[Chamber005]

Talent and quality always seem to win when coupled with determination. You could make a shi*ty movie and put a big actor in and and by next year, no one gives a Sh$t. However, I you make a dang good movie... one that has to be watched to the end, and keep showing it, sooner or later the right person will see it and it will get know. This happens all the time with Music so I'm sure its the same with films. That OR it will open those door for you to make your NEXT movie.

Examples... BOONDOCK SAINTS, yes I know William Dafoe but the film wins on quality not the actors.
El Mariachi,

Wow I just ran out of steam to think about other but add just about every non-pop, first generation, musical act.

Talent wins over. And ideally makes those unknown actors into stars.

Exactly. The point is that no writer/filmmaker should ever feel they should sit on the sidelines for any financial reasons. If you don't have a movie that you can't do for the amount of money you can raise, write a cheaper movie!!

There is no reason why a writer/filmmaker can't make an amazing film with 30-50K (which pretty much anyone should be able to raise with enough time and effort put into it). Heck, I believe it's possible on 20K. And now with things like Createspace and Facebook you don't even have to fiddle with start-up costs for distribution and marketing. You just write, cast, film, edit and distribute, that's it.

That wasn't the point of the thread, I guess, but it's a good point nonetheless.