Film Courage: Advice to first time, second time filmmakers on seeking a distribution
deal and then actually committing to it?
Jay Silverman, filmmaker/photographer: It’s a tough question for me because every time
you make a deal you learn about new deals.
I’ll give you an illustration, when we made my first movie we didn’t have people knocking
on my door to distribute my movie.
We had sales reps I never knew what that was but there are a lot of companies in L.A. and
in Hollywood that are sales reps (the rep movies) and they would take your movie to
Netflix and they would take your movie to Fox and they would make deals.
I totally believe in that scenario.
It never even occurred to me that my next movie would be good enough for someone to
want to distribute it.
Of course, there is no money exchanged.
You have to wait to get the movie distributed and then eventually make your money back.
If you’re lucky enough to hypothetically wake up in the morning at Sundance and someone
buys your movie to distribute it they might say say we’ll give you X dollars not to
mention that after advertising dollars are spent we’ll give you 50 cents on the dollar
you know whatever it might be.
I did not have that luxury but I did have the luxury this time of getting a reputable
distribution company and taking it up a notch so each time I learn more.
But distribution and I’m saying this redundantly because I said it before is an every-changing
medium and I’m learning right as we speak that filmmakers are expected to do things
that have nothing to do with filmmaking and that is if you really want to succeed with
your movie and that is if you really want to succeed with your movie social media has
to be played, you have to market yourself, you have to do interviews like this.
I’m really grateful but I’m not a social media guy but you have to learn how to do
that.
It’s fascinating because I have a number of people on my Facebook that are filmmakers
and every once in awhile I see a filmmaker promoting their movie and I’m empathetic
because it requires just an inordinate amount of collective collaboration with the distributor
to succeed because the distributor who picked up my movie puts out four movies a month.
That’s 48 movies a year.
That’s a lot of movies for a small company.
And one of the ones I passed on has 30 to 40 movies a month.
And there in to the volume aspect so I thought that the one that I picked was more desirable
because they would give it more energy and more time and I don’t have a regret for
that.
But here again speaking from first time experience.
I met a gentleman just last week who is doing our social media and he’s also a director.
Smart, young guy and if I was able to tell him what I learned now
on his first movie he would have done something differently.
And it’s not like he made a horrific mistake but he utlimately took his movie off the market
and there are other ways to do it, no different from the woman who told me on my last movie
wasn’t ever exploited on social media.
The content matter itself should have been an easy pitch but we didn’t do it.
So is it a missed opportunity?
No really because the source material is timeless.
It’s happening everyday and it still continues to happen.
But this movie that I just finished comes out basically a week before Valentine’s
Day.
It’s not accident, it’s a romantic comedy (I like that idea).
It helps take the movie to a noticeable level.
Otherwise you are just going to get in the mush.
There’s a great story in the trades about Netflix buying movies at Sundance last year
(not this year, last year).
It’s written by empathetic filmmakers who said here is a movie that everybody knows
the title, everybody would like to see it, it was one Netflix for one week and one the
first page and then it just disappeared.
So you have to really know a lot about the movie, properly spell it and source it.
I went last night on Amazon to see if my movie was up for sale because it just came out,
it required me to go through some closed doors just to get there.
I’m talking about searching for it because when I typed in the name it didn’t pop right
up.
And there is a whole other subject, naming your movie.
I think distributors would prefer you name your movie A, B, C, D because it’s closer
to the beginning of the alphabet.
Perhaps not now because everybody now is searching for their films and you just type it in.
But analytics play a role now.
You go on to Netflix or on Amazon and you’re trending with romantic comedies, they’ll
suggest my movie hopefully.
So that is a plus to them for making money and a plus to the distributor who is making
money.
But all that stuff never existed, I mean the format of Netflix and Amazon have changed
three times in the last month meaning.
Like right now if you click on a movie on Amazon a trailer pops up and Netflix, too.
The trailer for anything you’re watching (a TV show or whatever), while you’re still
searching it’s playing a commercial.
That’s all new innovative technology and it helps the filmmaker but me to what’s
really critical is if you know about a filmmaker like me talking about what I experienced and
try to avoid that with your own experience.
So maybe my movie would be called come and eat the food - C rather than M. Or maybe it
doesn’t matter.