How to parlay Fan Films into a career

Whatd he say?

 

By the looks of things, something along the lines of "Goodbye, cruel world."

But being more realistic, I'm betting it was something about how we're all losers and we'll never make it in film, gosh, isn't this all pointless. I can't imagine what else would get someone THAT severely edited unless it was totally out of context...
...hell, dude might even have got himself banned. Heh.

 

helloall is a serial troll with many socks -- one of which includes forceoflight. So good times, let's move on.

 

There's been a few comments made about how tough the path of a writer is. No kidding! is what I have to say to that. Especially in the case of a screenwriter.

I understand a lot of creatively minded people don't tend to have the aptitude for the business side of things and that the usual formula for getting your work produced is the only real avenue open to them but when I found out first hand what a cluster it is, it's what drove me to produce my own projects. Allow me to illustrate.

Your average Joe screenwriter has a completed final spec draft he's ready to sell. Check out this flow chart of steps it takes.

First things first, he needs an agent to represent his work because 99% of production companies don't take unsolicited material (scripts they didn't ask to see and can't accept anyway for legal ownership reasons).

If he doesn't have a close friend or colleague who's already repped by an agency, he has no referral and has to get one from scratch.

He writes up a damn good query letter explaining who he is, what his project(s) is about and why anyone should care.

He submits that query along with a copy of his script to every single agency on planet Earth up against thousands of others vying for the same thing.

If he's lucky, sometime in the next 3 months he hears back from one of them.

Somehow through some miracle he convinces an agent with the power of his work to represent him, a new addition to an industry where the agent has a bunch of veteran clients he also works for who can make him more money with less effort involved.

Some time later the agent actually gets his clients script into the hands of a production company.

The Script proofer at the production company looks at his script. The writer prays that the reader is having a good day and is not in a bad mood. The proofer evaluates the script and writes a report with a one word recommendation at the end. "Yes" or "No".

If it says "Yes" it gets sent to a producer in a pile of maybe 20 - 100 "Yes" scripts for review.

A handful make into development. For the sake of argument, we say our writer made the cut. If not, he starts all over again.

That handful of scripts from development gets narrowed down again into a shortlist of 2 or 3 that will be sent into pre-production. Writer gets an option which is a legal agreement saying he can't shop his script to anyone else for a fixed amount of time in exchange for a bit of money. Usually $50K - $100K depending on the budget range and viability.

Now the producer has to find investors willing to fund the film. If the film gets funded and put into production, NOW the writer gets paid for real.

From start to finish this process takes on average 2 - 5 years.


This is exactly why I became a producer. Write my script, prep business plan, secure my own LOI for distribution and Completion Bond, start shopping for investors. Total turn around time from completion of script to investor ready proposal is about 1 month. Average time to find, present to and secure offers from interested parties based on 6 hours a day of prospecting - 6 months.

Amount of time spent dealing with the system - 0 time vs minimum 2 yrs.
Percentage of profit paid to a sales agent or booking agent - 0% vs 10% on average.
Amount of money spent on printed materials for submission - $0 vs $200 on avg.
Amount of profit generated from producing project - Writer: Flat fee based on budget. vs Producer: 50% of everything the film takes in after distribution costs and budget recovery with no limit. 100% if you're the financier yourself.


It may take a lot more prep work, an attitude of not ever taking no for an answer, and using rejection as fuel to make you go twice as hard in retaliation, but it's the producers life for me all the way.

 

Sweet zombie jesus I did it.

I did my homework, made sure that all my ducks were in a row before hitting up the big boys and now we're there.

My comedy project Day Players is on a countdown with 6 weeks until we are fully funded and ready to schedule pre-production. It's my first major multi-million dollar feature and we're looking very realistically at getting Alec Baldwin and Jeff Goldblum on board, and then I'm going after Kevin Smith to play himself too.

I paid my dues, got in front of some serious investors (one of which has real solid connections with decision makers at Paramount) who could see the value in my business case and now we're off to the races. We'll be able to start shooting in the summer.

Of course one of the sweetest fringe benefits is that because I used professional actors in Secrets of the Rebellion, I can recast many of them in Day Players causing the backward cross promotion to launch that film into a stratosphere of exposure to the general public that never could be imagined without it. It's going to have an enormous effect on the way fan based material is seen, giving the higher production value fan projects a much larger worldwide audience than the typical fan base circles. And of course my new abundance of free time can allow me to get the post production on it done faster. I don't want that to turn into the next "Tydirium" where it's shelved for ten years before someone thinks about getting back to it.

Without my fan project to prove my crew had what it takes to get the job done and do it right, this would not be happening right now.

 

That's fantastic news! Major congratulations!

Whether you know it or not, you seem to be following the philosophy of Dov SS Simens' book From Reel to Deal. Instead of following the wannabe filmmaker path where you graduate from a 4 year film school, move to Hollywood, become a 2nd Assistant Cameraman (of the clapper/loader variety) and hope to reach the top someday, you're going directly into getting the financing, making a film, and selling it.

There's a reason it's called Show Business and not Show Art!