Glen Reynolds, Founder of Circus Road Films: They know all films are not going to work but they're
playing the long game of making multiple films over the course of a year and that they know that
the winners will pay for the losers. Film Courage:
Why is your advice to filmmakers to not make movies for money?
Glen: It depends on the level of investment of a film and my advice changes film to film
for sure and filmmaker to filmmaker depending on their goals and what they're doing.
If your passion is to make a film about growing mushrooms and you want to spend an hour and a half
just watching the mushrooms grow, you shouldn't tell an investor you need
$150,000 to shoot that movie and it'll get on Netflix. But if you can go out and do it for
your own pocket change and you can do it on your iPhone and then you can put it in an art museum
okay great. That's your passion, you have found an interesting way to film those mushrooms.
The point there is I guess that if you make something low-budget and
because and it's your passion and everybody knows the high risk of whatever you're spending,
then great. Everybody's going in eyes wide open but ultimately most films just monetarily fail
(overwhelmingly fail) and that's not because of distributors
being crooked (although there's a little of that in places).
It's not because they spend too much money advertising or putting it in their pockets or have
exorbitant deals, it's because there's an overwhelming amount of content out there for
consumers to consume and just no way to monetize every independent film that everybody makes in
a way that makes sense vis-a-vis the budget. I'm in the position of seeing the results for
intimately over a thousand films in 25 years and overwhelmingly most films fail,
that's just the reality of the marketplace. If you look at (not to name names) but if you
look at a decent art house distributor, one of the ones that distributes 20 to 25 films a year
and has a prominent brand and well thought of and everybody wants to be with,
if you look at their box office for each of the films that year, there are a couple that
get over a million dollars and there's about 20 that make 200 to a few thousand dollars
and they've spent money to try to make those films into something and it just didn't work.
That's why everyone should approach filmmaking as the business with a huge amount of caution
because it's better to put your money in a mutual fund. Film is not a great investment
and so if you are making a film for in the two to three million dollar range there are ways
to go about it without just taking someone's cash and blowing it that to amortize the risk
or to minimize the risk you can shoot in an estate with a tax credit like to take care of 25 and 30
percent of the budget so narrowing how much the person has to spend in cash on the film there's
getting involved with a international sales agent and getting cast that they can sell the film on
to to pre-sell the film so that you can take those contracts and cat and get cash for those from a
bank in order to squeeze down then the amount of equity you have to spend so there are ways
to minimize it so that you've let's say you've made a two million dollar film and you've now
all you need in equity is 25 of the budget you're making a two million dollar film essentially for
half a million dollars now hopefully with the name that you've got and the quality of
the film you made when you're when it's done you'll be able to present to the territories
you didn't pre-sell and get numbers that are bigger than that half a million but
you're still risking that half million dollars if it turns out badly it's gone
and there's just only so many films a year that distributors who can pay a million dollars plus
for a film are gonna buy like I said there's like 10 000 films made a year
and big the biggest distributors that actually take on indie films only want a couple of them
companies a little a little lower down want 20-25 the ones that are doing real theatrical films here
they're some that want 10 to 20. and then there are there's a good number
of I would call kind of mostly all rights digital distributors who sometimes do theatrical
as well but most of them aren't paying a lot of money for films so
you know when you're looking at the film as a business you have to realize it's hardly even
a business it's practically throwing money away and the thing that studios and bigger distributors
know is that not they know all films are not going to work so they're but they're they're
playing the long game of making multiple films over the course of a year and that they know that
the winners will pay for the losers over time as independent filmmaker one making one movie
you're taking one shot and that makes it even a higher risk so going back to the argument of
don't try to make money from the film it seems like it's an interesting thing in
that do you make it for the market and try to try to cash in on it or do you make it
based on something you're really passionate about but then is it going to be marketable
yeah that's tough I think you have to look to the individual and their soul and what they're about
at the end of the day right and there are some people that have is they have it all
they have the talent they have something they're very passionate about that that is let's say it's
a dramatic story that isn't a thriller horror or family film it's not obviously commercial
but they've just really they've written it well people are responding to on the page
actors are responding to on the page financiers are responding on the page and then it all comes
together and it becomes this great thing that does well it sells to Netflix or sells to a big company
that can happen but those are very rare occurrences so I think all filmmakers
have to kind of juggle that stuff some people also inherently have commercial sensibilities
and they grew up loving Spielberg and Ron Howard and people and who people who
had commercial sensibility and they tell this kind of instinctively tell commercial stories
there's some people that don't they go they're more Fellini fans or Truffaut or someone
like and that's what the way they see the world but they and probably having those influences
is gonna make the way they tell stories a little different and so that has to be kind of brought to
the mix of like how does this how does this talent converge with what's commercial I don't think it's
ever really good to make a movie because well it's the right genre and we've got the right name but
the talent the director's okay and the screenplay is okay right that's okay maybe they'll trade
dollars because they could pre-sell the movie and get some money based on the name and it gets an
okay deal but it's probably just trading dollars at the end of the day it's probably not gonna
the film's probably not gonna lift beyond that I think there you have to take into
consideration kind of everything in this business when you're making a film again depending on the
budget again if you're going out and spending ten thousand dollars on your little movie
go crazy right like you're only risking your own ten thousand dollars and there are there
are lots of people doing that and that's that's fine right as long as you understand that like
you're probably not getting a 100 000 HBO deal out of that so cursed are the ones that
want to do a movie on shiitake mushrooms with organic soil and but you never know if it's just
the greatest mushrooms yeah only cursed if they think that they're gonna get a Netflix deal out of
it right okay if it's so if it's okay that they make it and show it in an art museum perfectly
legitimate right there's an audience there there are people that like avant-garde interesting
experimental things but you don't see that stuff on the major streamers you don't see
even IFC, Magnolia, A24, they're not picking up avant-garde stuff or just even or weird stuff
I mean if you look at most their slates it's fairly commercial stuff even though it's you
know high brow and has interesting filmmakers a lot of them you look at genre a lot of love those
films are thrillers and horror films they're just elevated in some way right a good portion of them
none of those guys are doing like 25 dramas a year the market wouldn't bear it for them
it wouldn't work yeah I don't know why this keeps coming into my my mind right now but Searching For
Sugar Man which was such an excellent film I know some people were critical of it I loved it but
it was able to sort of transcend I mean it won an academy award correct or yeah I think so yeah yeah
and so here here's a story that seems kind of unlikely and it was just so beautifully told
and the the main character was so fascinating and there are anomalies right so this is like but you
just don't build a business which is each film is almost a business at a certain budget level right
you can't you can't build a business based on an anomaly right you have to you should you should
look at genre you should look at cast you should look at those things depending on what your budget
level is there's certain budget levels you can't afford cast right you can't afford names that
will work on your film unless your uncle is tom cruise like then then you're you're most likely
not casting someone that helps prop up the movie so I think you have to factor in cast and genre
in your budget in addition something I don't think enough people do is vet their screenplay
with get a hundred people to read it get script services to read it get feedback
there's so many so many films that I have to turn down that I think wow is really well shot
and the acting's competent but there's just no story here or there's just not enough of
the story we didn't get the story fast enough there's certain kind of rules of
screenwriting you kind of have to follow in order to make a a commercial movie.
What are your thoughts on making a movie only for money?