POSITIONING YOUR FILM IN THE MARKETPLACE – SPA 2013

For the cynics, this session could have been rebadged ‘Flogging A Dead Horse,’ particularly given the drubbing Australian films are receiving at the box office, with only a few notable exceptions.

Is it pertinent to this discussion that I never heard “The Great Gatsby,” “Goddess” or “Tim Winton’s The Turning” mentioned even once during this conference?

Perhaps Gatsby is currently filling the role previously occupied by Crocodile Dundee (1986), an outstandingly successful Australian release that did huge business both at home and overseas, yet managed to be comprehensively ignored as a model for twenty years.

The speakers at this session were Bec Smith from UTA, Clay Epstein of Arclight Films, Craig Emanuel of Loeb & Loeb, and producer Brian Rosen who ably steered it with incisive questions.

Brian revealed the budget of one of his recent films, Around the Block, which released at Toronto, but I’m not going to mention the figure here, for fear of making a tough job even harder. Rosen added that despite being in English, our films are regarded as being foreign, certainly in the US. His point was that the film was invited to Toronto International Film Festival, which might have generated international sales five years ago, but today that is no longer the automatic case.

The session discussed whether it can be damaging to get into the wrong film festival, or to release a film too early, and whether film festivals can help you to secure a distribution deal.

Craig Emanuel from Loeb & Loeb pointed out that you may get invited to Sundance, where all the buyers will be from North America at least, but if your slot comes towards the end of the festival, all the major players will have returned home.

Someone made the point that if you do get invited to a major festival, it will be worth it to engage a publicist to accompany you, so that you can get reviewed by the key reviewers and have your film at the front of buyers’ awareness.

Bec Smith said that if the goal of a film’s release is to build a director’s career in Hollywood, an invitation to Cannes may not be as ideal as Toronto or Sundance. Cannes is extremely prestigious, and any filmmaker going there with a film will have a ton of fun, but it’s expensive for the producer to be at Cannes, and you can leave Cannes with a hangover and no distribution deal.

The panelists talked about how difficult it can be to get a yes from a distributor, who may prefer to give you a ‘soft pass’, which means they’re not saying no, but they’re not saying yes. They’re waiting to see how the film goes on the festival circuit.

Clay Epstein described a film which got into a small festival, Telluride, which is held in the mountains, and has a secret program which isn’t released until the first day. Some buyers who had given the film a soft pass were corralled into a screening, they saw the audience response and bought the film. “It doesn’t happen all the time, but I fondly remember that moment.”

On the other hand, some festivals like Toronto can give buyers a false impression, since Toronto audiences love movies, and that doesn’t mean that a mainstream audience will agree.

Craig said it’s hard to manufacture a bidding war these days, in part because the distributors all know each other and swap information with each other. If one passes, the others will know immediately. So if there’s a good offer on the table, you have to think seriously about taking it, before it gets withdrawn.

The session demonstrated the complexity of this arena for outsiders; Bec mentioned how she watched Harvey Weinstein spending three and a half hours at a party, ‘something he never does,’ and Harvey and others bailing up the director and producer of a film they wanted. “It was really fun and we sold it for a lot of money,” she volunteered.

On the other hand, you may only get one reaction to a film and it’s a soft offer. So what do you do? You wait, and wait, and if it’s the right distributor, they may take months to commit but eventually they probably will.

Craig said that pay or play offers don’t exist now as the business won’t support that model. Today, you start with a great piece of material in a screenplay, and then you attach a director and cast. “These days there are fewer studio pictures getting made, and actors want to work, so it’s becoming a little easier.”

Clay Epstein suggested that the Chinese mainstream audience was not attuned to success at film festivals, like the US mainstream audience. “The bigger films that go to a film festival are using it as a launching pad, they’ve already got a distribution deal in place.”

Bec Smith said as an Australian she is sympathetic to Aussie projects, and mentioned how she fielded a phone call about The Sapphires, and was able to chip in that Wayne Blair is amazing, Jessica Mauboy is amazing, and so on. “People internationally don’t understand the Australian production system,” said Bec. “So you need to provide as much info as you can about how the film can be made and why people should get involved, beyond the screenplay.”

Emanuel also cautioned against entering a film at a festival before it’s ready. “You only get one chance, and it has to be as good as you can make it,” he told us. “If you show a distributor a rough cut and they pass, you’ve just killed your movie.”

He added that he feels theatrical distribution for independent films will become the exception rather than the rule. “I don’t see that as necessarily a bad thing if it helps get more eyeballs onto your content.” He cited the example of Behind the Candelabra (2013), which was released on HBO, and received great creative freedom as a result. “We have to change the way people view content, and see that kind of release as a positive, not a negative,” he said.

MY FILM IS GREAT, SO WHY IS NO-ONE INTERESTED? POSITIONING YOUR FILM FOR THE MARKETPLACE.

For the cynics, this session could have been rebadged ‘Flogging A Dead Horse,’ particularly given the drubbing Australian films are receiving at the box office, with only a few notable exceptions.

Is it pertinent to this discussion that I never heard “The Great Gatsby,” “Goddess” or “Tim Winton’s The Turning” mentioned even once during this conference?

Perhaps Gatsby is currently filling the role previously occupied by Crocodile Dundee (1986), an outstandingly successful Australian release that did huge business both at home and overseas, yet managed to be comprehensively ignored as a model for twenty years.

The speakers at this session were Bec Smith from UTA, Clay Epstein of Arclight Films, Craig Emanuel of Loeb & Loeb, and producer Brian Rosen who ably steered it with incisive questions.

Brian revealed the budget of one of his recent films, Around the Block, which released at Toronto, but I’m not going to mention the figure here, for fear of making a tough job even harder. Rosen added that despite being in English, our films are regarded as being foreign, certainly in the US. His point was that the film was invited to Toronto International Film Festival, which might have generated international sales five years ago, but today that is no longer the automatic case.

The session discussed whether it can be damaging to get into the wrong film festival, or to release a film too early, and whether film festivals can help you to secure a distribution deal.

Craig Emanuel from Loeb & Loeb pointed out that you may get invited to Sundance, where all the buyers will be from North America at least, but if your slot comes towards the end of the festival, all the major players will have returned home.

Someone made the point that if you do get invited to a major festival, it will be worth it to engage a publicist to accompany you, so that you can get reviewed by the key reviewers and have your film at the front of buyers’ awareness.

Bec Smith said that if the goal of a film’s release is to build a director’s career in Hollywood, an invitation to Cannes may not be as ideal as Toronto or Sundance. Cannes is extremely prestigious, and any filmmaker going there with a film will have a ton of fun, but it’s expensive for the producer to be at Cannes, and you can leave Cannes with a hangover and no distribution deal.

The panelists talked about how difficult it can be to get a yes from a distributor, who may prefer to give you a ‘soft pass’, which means they’re not saying no, but they’re not saying yes. They’re waiting to see how the film goes on the festival circuit.

Clay Epstein described a film which got into a small festival, Telluride, which is held in the mountains, and has a secret program which isn’t released until the first day. Some buyers who had given the film a soft pass were corralled into a screening, they saw the audience response and bought the film. “It doesn’t happen all the time, but I fondly remember that moment.”

On the other hand, some festivals like Toronto can give buyers a false impression, since Toronto audiences love movies, and that doesn’t mean that a mainstream audience will agree.

Craig said it’s hard to manufacture a bidding war these days, in part because the distributors all know each other and swap information with each other. If one passes, the others will know immediately. So if there’s a good offer on the table, you have to think seriously about taking it, before it gets withdrawn.

The session demonstrated the complexity of this arena for outsiders; Bec mentioned how she watched Harvey Weinstein spending three and a half hours at a party, ‘something he never does,’ and Harvey and others bailing up the director and producer of a film they wanted. “It was really fun and we sold it for a lot of money,” she volunteered.

On the other hand, you may only get one reaction to a film and it’s a soft offer. So what do you do? You wait, and wait, and if it’s the right distributor, they may take months to commit but eventually they probably will.

Craig said that pay or play offers don’t exist now as the business won’t support that model. Today, you start with a great piece of material in a screenplay, and then you attach a director and cast. “These days there are fewer studio pictures getting made, and actors want to work, so it’s becoming a little easier.”

Clay Epstein suggested that the Chinese mainstream audience was not attuned to success at film festivals, like the US mainstream audience. “The bigger films that go to a film festival are using it as a launching pad, they’ve already got a distribution deal in place.”

Bec Smith said as an Australian she is sympathetic to Aussie projects, and mentioned how she fielded a phone call about The Sapphires, and was able to chip in that Wayne Blair is amazing, Jessica Mauboy is amazing, and so on. “People internationally don’t understand the Australian production system,” said Bec. “So you need to provide as much info as you can about how the film can be made and why people should get involved, beyond the screenplay.”

Emanuel also cautioned against entering a film at a festival before it’s ready. “You only get one chance, and it has to be as good as you can make it,” he told us. “If you show a distributor a rough cut and they pass, you’ve just killed your movie.”

He added that he feels theatrical distribution for independent films will become the exception rather than the rule. “I don’t see that as necessarily a bad thing if it helps get more eyeballs onto your content.” He cited the example of Behind the Candelabra (2013), which was released on HBO, and received great creative freedom as a result. “We have to change the way people view content, and see that kind of release as a positive, not a negative,” he said.

MARK POOLE

Leave a Reply