Film Courage: Jeff you say making a movie is like starting a business?
Why make that comparison?
Jeff Deverett, film producer, entrepreneur, writer and director: Making an independent
movie.
There are so much to it.
I mean there are so many components to making a movie.
Think of you’re creating something from scratch, from an idea and that’s what a
business is.
You have an idea and you want to bring it to life and bring whatever it is your product
or service to market and you have to go through all of those steps and components to do that.
That is what making a movie is.
Ultimately you’re going to develop it, produce it and then market it and so that’s what
a business is, it’s creating a product or a service and then putting it out to market
and then hoping that consumers consume it and in the case of movie the consumption is
watching it or buying it whatever in that case.
How is that any different than any business?
That’s what all businesses do, they create from an idea, a product or a service and put
it out to market to be consumed and that’s why I relate it to a business.
Now in the studios there are two types.
I believe that the studio business and the independent business are entirely two separate
businesses the way a public company would be different from an entrepreneurial company.
So let’s deal with the public company so a public company has shareholders and they
have a responsibility and a mandate to earn revenue and dividends or whatever for their
shareholders, that’s their mission.
Their mission is to create wealth so that they can distribute it to their shareholders.
So everybody is focused on that, on wealth creation and whatever it takes to be profitable,
that’s why corporations exists especially public corporations so that’s what a studio
is.
I mean every studio is a public company so every studio has to be financially successful
for two reasons.
One if they’re not they can’t exist and make products they want to do and two their
shareholders wouldn’t support it.
So the studios are public companies and they are financial institutions that create wealth.
That’s the way I look at them.
The product they happen to be making is entertainment, TV shows, whatever.
But it’s for the reason of generating profit.
There are not many studio people I have met who will say to you I want to do this because
this is what I like and enjoy and it doesn’t matter if they make profit.
They won’t last too long in the studio system.
They have to be profit oriented.
On the entrepreneurial side which I would relate to the indie filmmaking business you
also if you want to exist and continue you do have to make a profit like any business
but you can take more risks the stakes are not lower and you’re not accountable to
anybody other than yourself and your investors.
On the public company side you’re accountable to all of your shareholders.
Here the accountability factor is less.
So you don’t want to stress your brains out and lose all of your investors money or
whoever it is.
It might just be your own money and your own time.
But you have the ability to take more risks which is what an entrepreneur does.
Maybe have a little bit more fun, maybe go a little bit more passion, do the things that
you truly want to do.
When I speak to filmmakers the two questions they always ask me is what genre film should
I make that would be most saleable?
That’s question number one and I answer that question and I say great question but
let me ask you a question before I answer your question.
What genre film do you like to make?
See in a studio you would never have that discussion.
That would be we need to make, here is what is trending, here is what is happening in
the marketplace, here is what we’re forecasting, this is where we are going to make the most
amount of money.
Nobody says “Hey would do you think we should do?
What would be the most fun?
What would be the most artistic?”
In the entrepreneurial world you can have that conversation, art actually matters.
I mean you know listen in the studio world you have to make good product.
It has to be fantastic and very artistic in order for people to be entertained by it.
But they don’t have the luxury of picking and choosing the way an entrepreneur does
because again they’re accountable to a smaller group of people.
But on the business side (why I related it to business) is because when you decide to
make a movie from start to finish if you want to be what I call a career filmmaker who makes
just more than one movie it would be helpful if you were profitable because that way 1)
You’d have enough money to make your money back which would help to make your next movie
2) That would invoke investor confidence.
If you are dealing with investors they would say hey this guy is able to make money with
the stuff we’re investing in so it does make it a lot easier if you’re profitable
on the entrepreneurial side but you don’t have to necessarily be profitable because
it might not lead to a good career but you could be a hobby filmmaker, just an artist
that says I have a statement that I want to make to the world and I’m going to do it
through a movie and it’s important for me.
This is the kind of movie I want to make.
This is the artistic integrity and I don’t really want to compromise so I am not really
worried about what the audience thinks.
I am more worries about what I think.
I personally don’t think that makes for great business practice because it might not
generate the profit that you’re looking for but an entrepreneur gets to do that.
That’s part of being in business and if you look at the statistics of entrepreneurs
most small businesses fail miserably.
It’s really, really tough to navigate opening a new business.
That would be the same with indie films.
The good news about making indie film is even though you didn’t make any money and you
could say it sort of failed financially, it didn’t necessarily fail artistically.
So you’re going to leave the world with your legacy and your message and whatever
and hopefully audiences will enjoy it.
Maybe they didn’t pay for it but hopefully they will enjoy it.
So at least you get that out of it.
Whereas a failed business on the entrepreneurial side you know unless they open a restaurant
or a clothing store or something like that and that fails you’re just left with a lot
of debt and a lot of aggravation.
Film Courage: I was actually going to bring up as the next thing regarding certain businesses
and I was wondering if we can comparison to certain types of movies.
So if you have a restaurant which is what 90% failure rate?
I’m not sure if that is the right percentage?
Versus let’s say someone selling widgets…it’s LED lights and it’s all the rage.
Are certain movies in the category of restaurants and certain movies are in the categories of
widgets?
Jeff: I would look at it a little differently because certain restaurants in certain locations
I think have a better chance than other restaurants in other locations.
So I would say certain…there’s a trend in the movie business.
As you know like sometimes horror movies are the hot rage, sometimes it’s sci-fi and
definitely if you’re in it to make money, if you’re in the film business to make money
you definitely want to consider what your audience wants to see and who your audience
actually is and that was the second question.
They always ask “What film should I make?”
And the second question is “How do I get it to the audience?”
The first way to get a film to an audience is to identity who the audience is which means
you have to choose the genre of the film that you’re going to aim at your audience.
So for example I tend to make family films.
I like family films, I enjoy making them, I enjoy the genre, I have four kids, they
were growing up, it was a nice thing for me to do but I did it because I really enjoy
family films.
And then within family films I am very specific my films are very specific they are generally
sports dramas based on true stories because I love that genre and it’s very, very marketable
especially each one has a defined market.
Like I made two gymnastics films so I can go to the gymnastics world.
I am able to actually target market gymnasts and dancers so I don’t have to go generically
across the whole gambit to try and market to everybody.
I can specifically hone my marketing efforts in on gymnasts and dancers who I would think
would be engaged by the movie (by these particular movies) which has worked.
So as a business decision it does help to identify the audience that you want to go
to and then choose the movie that will hopefully cater to that audience or vice versa if you’re
going to choose a movie make sure you identify how you’re going to who the audience is
and how you’re going to market to them before you make the movie otherwise it’s hard to
do it after the fact.
This is what studios do.
I mean I’m convinced (I’ve never worked at a studio) but I am 100 percent convinced
that if the marketing department doesn’t green light the movie then the production
department is not making it.
They need to know who it’s going to, how it’s going to get marketed, what the plan
is going to be in order to monetize the product they make and indie film producers generally
don’t do that but if they did do that then kind of like a restauranteur opening up a
restaurant.
If you’re going to open say an Indian restaurant in an Asian marketplace it could be tricky?
I don’t know?
Maybe Asian people like Indian food?
But you better do your research and make sure they do otherwise your restaurant could be
fantastic, it just might be in the wrong place.
And that’s the same with the film.
If you’re going to make a film that caters to a certain audience and you haven’t really
identified who the audience is or how to get to them, you could make the greatest film
of all time but it’s going to be hard to get it to your audience.
Film Courage: You know you had mentioned earlier (and I love this point that you’re making)
about clothing and it brings back something I watched about Diane von Fürstenberg and
her wrap dress which was all the rage which I think it was late 1970’s/1980’s and
then I think she got in trouble because you bought a new inventory because her dresses
were so popular but by that time tastes had changed if I remember correctly.
So she had all this inventory that was not selling at the time.
I think her dresses made a resurgence later but do audiences…that’s the thing.
If we know the rage is horror movies with a certain soundtrack and things, can the audience
change and now you have this excess surplus?
Jeff: I have maybe a skewed opinion about that.
So I believe that anything that is unique, good and really entertaining can actually
create a trend itself.
And can find an audience and it’s funny I notice over the years especially with studio
pictures (it’s always with studio movies) trends seem to develop like in the 1970’s
you had this STAR WARS, STAR TREK, all these star space themes right?
That doesn’t just come
out
of nowhere.
So I have always thought about like how does
a trend
like that develop?