Film Courage: You are here in Los Angeles screening a film at the Pan African Film Festival?
Mark Harris, Filmmaker: Yes.
Film Courage: And are you a full-time filmmaker in Chicago or do you have another job?
Mark: I’m a full-time filmmaker in Chicago, this is what I do.
This is how I provide for my family.
I don’t do anything else but make films.
Again, I have a marketing company (what I use to market my films).
The way I provide for my family is through filmmaking.
Film Courage: For filmmakers who haven’t figured out the business side yet what advice
can you give them?
And how can you explain the ways that a filmmaker can get out of having a 9-to-5 job.
Mark: Great question.
Here’s how you can definitely get out.
Say for instance you asked the question a filmmaker that makes a film for $20,000.
What you have to do is you have that $20,000.
Within 2 months how can I make $40,000?
You want to do a certain amount of screeners so you can bring in at least $40,000.
Now that $20,000 if you use your own money to make that film or you use investor’s
money then you know off the top that $20,000 is going to go back to paying the investors
back.
So you have your investors and you pay your investors back.
So you have a profit of another $20,000, what you do with that $20,000 if you have a home
(your own place, an apartment), you use a portion of that $20,000 to pay your rent off
for 6 months so you know for 6 months that are you covered with your rent.
Say after you pay you have another $10,000 left over.
What you do with that $10,000 is you have more screenings.
You may have another screening and invest maybe $3,000 of that money in another screening.
And don’t look to always want to screen your film in LA (it’s very expensive).
Look at the Southern places, look at Charlotte, look at Atlanta (Atlanta is pretty expensive
too), look at places like South Carolina, North Carolina, Nashville.
Go to different places like that where they are looking for filmmakers to come in and
screen their films and they will support because no one else is doing this.
And so if you take $3,000 of that money and you screen for maybe three days and you charge
$10 a day at 300 seats that’s a total of $3,000 a night.
Now within 3 nights you are making $9,000.
So that’s a total of $9,000 you made within 3 days depending on the number of seats that
you want to rent out.
Now you take that money and you make sure you save.
You already know that your rent is paid up for 6 months, right?
Now you have this film and you are good for 6 months because your rent is paid up for
6 months.
That’s stress that is no longer there.
Because a lot of things that keep us from being free is the fear and the stress of not
being able to pay our rent.
We know we have this 6 months.
Now we know that we have this film that we made for $20,000 right?
Now we want to look at what are we going to do to get this film sold?
We want to start pitching this film to Netflix and Amazon and different companies who are
always looking for content.
You start to pitch the film and while you are pitching the film you still have time.
You can still be screening it too.
As you are screening the film at these different theaters you are constantly making money.
You have to be very careful of the numbers.
So a $20,000 film you could make $100,000 if it’s done properly within the entire
year and that’s profit if it’s done properly.
But you have to hit these cities like Nashvilles, like the Charlottes like the South Carolinas.
These cities that nobody is going to.
Film Courage: Interesting.
So not LA, not New York, probably not Seattle?
Mark: I wouldn’t do New York, I wouldn’t do LA.
I would do Chicago.
Here is why I would do Chicago.
Chicago has a lot of theaters that are very affordable.
For instance, I can screen at the Ice Theater (a theater in Chicago).
They may charge me $800 to screen this film.
But you are looking at a theater that seats 300 people.
Charge $12.00, sell it out, that’s a profit.
You do that for three nights you just made what?
You made $9,000.
Film Courage: So how are you getting people do go to these theaters if you are not from
that area?
Like if I wanted to go to Nashville and I want to buy some time in a theater, then how
am I getting the word out?
Mark: Great question.
So this is what I would normally do.
If I screen my film, if I screen in Charlotte (which we have done) I would partner with
someone, a film festival or someone who does marketing for clubs and things like that (a
promoter).
Because you have all these promoters (thank goodness for social media).
If you know someone who is a promoter in one of these cities, send them an inbox and say
I have a film I want you to promote and maybe we will do a 70/30 deal.
I get 70, you’ll get 30.
Now the promoter who maybe promotes for clubs or parties and things like that, they have
someone different that they can make money off of.
If it’s something that makes sense business wise, they are open to it.
They may take your film and say “I’ll promote it for you in my city.
I can get the people out.
We’ll do a 70/30 split.
I’ll take 70 as the filmmaker, you take 30.
You’ve got to give them something for their time.
They will get the people out to the theater you just do that.
Because there are promoters all over the country.
In one city you can find thousands and thousands of promoters, just link up with a promoter.
Or link up with a film festival.
Even like the smaller film festivals in those different cities, most cities you have film
festivals.
Just link up with the director of the film festival, someone who works with the film
festival and just say I’m looking to screen my film.
Are you looking to make some extra money.
And if you are, can we partner and you help me promote it, come out and we do a 70/30
split.
Most times, who is going to turn that down?
If I have a built-in audience that I’m already promoting to and I know I can get 300 people
out to a theater, if I screen a film there, that’s money to be made.
It’s a business deal.
Film Courage: Have you tried the same thing here in LA?
I know you said you wouldn’t do it but I am just curious if you’ve tried it?
Other than with film festivals.
Mark: Like when I did BLACK COFFEE, we screened the film in LA.
But if was more for marketing, not to make money.
But outside of that Chicago, Charlotte is a great place to screen your film.
They are looking for more independent films to support.
Film Courage: So when you did [screen] in LA, you realized that it would probably be
a loss and it would just be to get the word out and you were okay with this?
Mark: Yes.
And here’s the thing, say for instance if you just want to get the marking and just
to say “I screened my film in LA.”
To use that as a tool for the other cities, you can do a screening in LA knowing that
you may break even or you may make a profit or you may not make a profit.
You may loose, you may go in the red.
But you can still say I screened my film in LA.
LA has a lot of power.
Again when you say you’ve screened your film in LA it’s going to put the antennas
up and people want to know “Okay, that’s cool.
In LA?”
So we can use that as leverage (even in New York).
Chicago not so much but in LA, New York you can use that as leverage for the smaller cities.
Film Courage: Interesting, I did not know that.
How did you figure the business model out in how to make money with these smaller films?
Mark: I always knew that I had to keep the films very low.
So for me, $20,000 was too much to spend on a film.
Especially if you don’t have named actors in it.
So I knew I’m going to keep the films about $10,000.
And from $10,000, I knew I can make that back within a weekend.
So I knew that I’m want to keep these films low, I’m going to make that profit back
and I’m going to reinvest and do more screenings.
By keeping it so low, if you have investors, you can pay your investors back whether it’s
$1,000, $5,00 whatever.
Because a 90-minute film is 90-minute film, right?
So people don’t know what you paid to get the film made, they are not aware of that.
You don’t have to tell people “I made this film for $20,000.”
No one needs to know that but if a film like BLACK PANTHER comes out, of course you have
millions and millions of dollars for marketing and you have people who are going to rush.
But it’s still a feature film.
A $20,000 feature film is a feature film.
So if you’re going to shoot that film for $20,000 you have to look at it like it’s
a studio film, even though it’s not a studio film.
But you have to treat it like “This is my studio film.”
Because again, we are a studio, you are a studio.
We may not have the hundreds of millions of dollars to do marketing to put in a film.
But your $20,000 film, you have to use the same method and process that the studios are
doing for this film.
So you take it out, screen it, you make money off it it, you continue to screen it, because
again, people want to see those independent films.
Like Hollywood?
The blockbuster stuff.
So this is a perfect time for independent filmmakers because everything that’s coming
out of Hollywood is blockbuster.
And we want to see a good little story, we want to see a good dramatic film, a good story
without things having to be blown up.
So this is like the perfect time for us.
You take it to those small cities and screen your film.
You can make money, you can make a living off of just screening your film.
Film Courage: Have all of your films made money?
Mark: All of them, every last one of them.
Every last thing I’ve ever made all made a profit.
Because if I’m making a film for $1,000 or $10,000, if I can’t make a profit of
it that, I don’t need to be making films.
If I make the movie I made BLACK BUTTERFLY, which I made for less than $10,000.
We sold it and we made money off of it and we put it out.
I can say this now, I’m still selling DVDs.
I was still doing screenings of the film.
That’s how I was able to make a living is by screening these films, making DVDs, going
online (just don’t depend on Youtube or Apple).
You have to go out and screen your film.
We have to make money off of our films.