Movies get made
not because they should get made, but because they can get made. On my last
trip to Hollywood I found myself stuck in Santa Monica’s Holiday Inn re-writing
a script so that it could be passed on to Russel Crowe’s agent and not be
immediately turned down because there was no obvious Russel Crowe role. What an
obvious Russel Crowe role is, I’m not sure, which might be why we’re still
looking for a bankable cast.
You should also
understand that the business model for low budget productions usually takes
into account raising funds from Government backed film funds. And those usually
have various regional requirements concerning cast, crew, and location.
If there are no
government funds available, then you are looking entirely for private investors
with small amounts of money. To hook them you have to have a plan for recouping
their investment or they will lose their money and thus, you will not make
another movie with those guys.
If you want to
write Hollywood scripts then write big, write Transformers Three, and get to
the Studios pitching and displaying your samples so that you can get a chance
of being commissioned to work on the big franchises. If you start moving away
from that idea, then TV writing is a good option, and getting into the TV
business with all the trimmings is your goal. If none of these options grab
you, or are available to you, which is the case if you are confined to Hong
Kong, and triply so if you only think in terms of English language material,
then you are writing for the so called independent film world.
And that means,
since Independent Producers never have any money and rarely pay for scripts, you
have to be a producer, whether you like it or not. Ignore this and you will
write scripts that can never be made or you will
be trapped writing and re-writing for people who will never pay you.
Most business
plans I see are full of nothing more than wishful thinking, irrelevant
information, and doctored statistics. They don’t fool anyone.
So outline a
distribution plan and a realistic method of recouping costs. If your low budget
movie can get into some decent festivals and have good critical response then
various art house circuits will take it. So, if your script is capable of being
art house material then say what festivals you are going for and what sort of
returns such movies make.
What makes an
art house movie? Hard to say. Certainly good photography helps so you need a
good cinematographer involved in the project. Is there one? If so, that’s
relevant to the business plan. Other factors might be a director with a good
portfolio of student work, advertising work, short movies or even feature work.
Or of course, it might be you. And you are probably the weak link in the whole project.
In which case, surround yourself with strong assistance. You
might need to give out shares in the ownership of the movie to lock them in. Or
maybe this is all friends and favours. They will be friends until they start
work on the project and then it will be all business. Get written contracts. If your assistants are as un-bankable as you however, then maybe you need Plan B.
Before we go onto that let's just mention that not all films
are art house. Low budget comedies and crime movies, both capable of being
lucrative, usually depend upon recognizable local actors and local cinema
distribution before recouping funds through TV and DVD sales. Very low budget
variants with first time directors and three men crews, if miraculously high
enough in production values, scripts and performance, can fit in with the Art
Entertainment arena and do deals with Art house circuits. And then through that
exposure they can get TV and DVD deals. This is the area you and your camcorder can reasonably dream of fitting in with.
What are your
options in Hong Kong? They are a lot better if you are dealing with a Chinese
language movie. Though that limits your overseas sales. But this is not an area
traditionally connected with English language movies, so unless you have some
special connection to an overseas market beyond merely the language, you are
running into trouble.
Analyze your
situation and come up not just with the A Plan, where everything goes right,
but also the B-Plan, where you can at least recoup costs. This could be a
straight to DVD option. So how are
you going to handle that sort of distribution? Who are the distributers that
you will deal with and what kind of deals do they do? What sort of publicity
are you going to do? You need to do some homework here and get to know all this.
Another revenue
source can be on-line downloads but these are not known for doing great
business, unless the film has already been a success in the cinema and even then
on-line distribution is only just beginning to take off. Is your film low
budget enough to be able to recoup funds this way alone?
On-line
distribution is where the self-financed, self-directed, self-produced near
no-budget movie finds itself unless very lucky. Writing for this market –
though market is perhaps too generous a term - might be the only way you can
get that first directing gig!
However, in Hong
Kong, it looks like this is your main market and so when developing
scripts for your debut, you should think in terms of no-budget productions
and cleverly try make that an asset.
You might, as they say, go viral, and use an on-line success to allow
you to scale up your operations next time around. You might even plug back into the Art Entertainment circuit and get Cable TV stepping in to give you and yours a pay day.
To sum up: think
through what you are trying to achieve when writing the script and who your
audience is. And have a plan beyond merely finishing the script and hoping for
something to happen. Avoid bankruptcy!