Filmmaking Stuff Filmmaking Stuff provides resources for independent filmmakers. The website includes articles on how to take a story idea from script to screen, including articles on scriptwriting, producing, finance, shooting, editing, directing, marketing, distribution and how to build an audience. Filmmaking Stuff also has articles detailing how to make money making movies – including interviews with Hollywood Producers, Directors, writers and other filmmaking professionals.

I have a fairly large collection of “pitching sessions from hell” stories, but there was one that stands out because I blew it—afterward.

This was early in my career, and actually the pitching session itself went great. The executive loved the idea and commissioned a script for a TV movie.

I wrote the treatment, which included quite a few vivid character descriptions.

He loved the treatment.

I wrote the first draft.

He didn’t love the first draft.

He said, “In your pitch and in the treatment, your characters really came to life. I don’t see these people in the script. They’re not really coming off the page.”

He was right. I’d focused so much on having my characters hit their plot marks that I’d forgotten all the great plans I had for them as characters.

Fortunately he didn’t fire me and I had the chance to put things right in the next draft. I found ways to bring back the nuances that had made the characters interesting in the first place. The plot worked better, too, because you understood more about why people were doing what they were doing.

Now I find two things useful to think about from the start:

1: How does the character reveal who he or she is?

2: What does the character try to conceal about himself or herself, and how does that come out anyway?

Maybe that second one requires a little explanation. Usually people try to hide what they consider their bad or weak side. A guy tells people he’s over his ex and it was the best thing for both of them that they split. How do we show that he’s not really over her? Maybe he parks outside place for a few minutes every night (how this is presented will tell us whether it’s wistful or menacing).

Another example: A woman makes a point of giving a homeless person money when she’s with her friends, but when she’s by herself she walks past him without a look.

When you work these things out, your script will be richer—and your buyer happier.

- – -

Jurgen Wolff is a veteran screenwriter. You’ll find his screenwriting tips here every week and also on his website, www.ScreenwritingSuccess.com. Also get his book, “Your Writing Coach,” published by Nicholas Brealey.

Posted under SCREENWRITING

Film Investment dollars are pennies Image via Wikipedia

A few months back, I detailed my experience pitching a project to a prospective investor. As of yesterday, my investor backed out of the deal. The explanation: the project is too risky. The truth is, the idealized imaginings of actually getting a project off the ground are euphoric. And nobody (not even me), likes it when a deal falls apart.

So while this type of rejection is an experience shared by all of us, it is important to take a minute and reflect – then, MOVE ON!

One way to mitigate this “all eggs in one basket” filmmaking approach is to always have other projects in various stages of development. This allows you to check one rejection off the list, and then adjust your focus on the next. And just because one prospective investor rejects one opportunity, there is nothing stopping you from finding someone else who has the completely opposite perspective…

The truth is, if you are not getting rejected daily, you’re not pushing hard enough. And my question to you is: “Why not?” Life is too short. Push harder!

Posted under FILM FINANCING

For Los Angeles based fimmakers looking to take their show to business, I recommend checking out the next  Norman Berns workshop.  In this full-day, hands-on instruction, you will gain experience on the following:

MATCHING SCRIPT and BUDGET – SCHEDULING – BUDGETING

BUSINESS PLANS – PITCHING – FUNDRAISING

DEVELOPING THE DECK

MARKETING – DISTRIBUTION – SALES

Your day will begin with an overview of the basics. Then you’ll spend A FULL DAY working with YOUR script, YOUR schedule, YOUR plan, YOUR pitch. You’ll gain valuable insight needed to dissect the logic of a shooting schedule, review production budget cost savings and craft business plans to meet investors needs. And you’ll also discover how to allocate state film incentives correctly.

Oh. And as a highlight, I’m going to stop by and share some tips on how to market and sell your movie without the middleman. I’m told this one day event is filling up fast. So reserve your spot.

When: Monday, May 9th

Where: Showbiz Software Store

500 S. Sepulveda, Los Angeles

9am – 6pm

Posted under FILMMAKING

I did it again. I refined a concept and wrote a business plan. I made the pitch. I got a warm reception and now months have gone by with radio silence. If you’re into filmmaking and you’re also trying to get projects off the ground – I understand what you’re going through.

The ongoing question I get: “How will this make money?”

While it’s safe to provide projections – any investor with any business experience will understand that each project carries it’s own risk to reward ratio. Your goal as a filmmaker is to help mitigate these risks as best you can.

But the reality is, you can only push so hard. You can only be patient for so long. And then one day you have to pack your proverbial filmmaking bags and move on to the next project… Or the next opportunity.

One of the biggest filmmaking (and life success lessons) I’ve learned is this – asking permission sucks. Try to avoid it – if you can.

-  -  -

Also, if you’re new here, you might want to watch my video   >>

Posted under FILM FINANCING

If I could go back and talk to myself ten years ago… And if I could only share one filmmaking success tip, what would I say?

In two words: Cold Calling.

I know this may sound unrelated to filmmaking. But I can tell you that success is not created in a vacuum. It is created with the help and support of other people, including mentors and customers.

And while it is true that some people stumble upon contacts and get lucky, I would venture to say that over 90 percent of self-made successful people got what they wanted in life by utilizing some variation of the following three success tips:

First: They knew what they wanted.

Second: They made a plan to get what they wanted.

Third: They picked up the phone and cold called people who could help make their plan a reality.

Think about it. Could you go to “networking events” and try to find folks to help introduce you to the appropriate contact? Yes. But just as easily you could pick up the phone, call your prospective contact’s place of business and try to get him or her on the phone to make your pitch.

Will you get through? Maybe. Maybe not. But if you had a list of 100 prospects and you called all the people on that list, odds are good you would find someone willing to sit down with you.

Why is this important to your filmmaking? Because unless you ASK for what you want, how is anybody in life going to know how to find you?

If you would like to find out more about networking, success strategies and most importantly – how to find prospective investors for your next movie, you might want to check out the independent producer’s guide to getting movie money. You can find out more by clicking here  >>

Posted under FILM FINANCING

As an independent filmmaker, the prospect of putting together a project and creating something awesome out of an idea really gets us going. Serious indie filmmakers stop at noting until the movie is actually in the can – or these days – in your hard drive. Still if you’ve been working to make movies for any length of time, you know there are days when you hit obstacles, sometimes so seemingly insurmountable that you just want to give up on your project. Don’t do it!

Here are 5 filmmaking tips to help you push forward:

1. Remember Perspective – you’re not performing brain surgery. You’re attempting to make a movie. This is a fun business. This is a privilege.
2. Facing Rejection – Always ask WHY? Sometimes your pitch is perfect, but your audience is wrong. Make sure you’re talking to people who are actually interested in your type of project.
3. Break down BIG goals – Setting out to make your version of impossible, possible can be overwhelming. It is important to break all of your goals into smaller, more manageable tasks
4. Missing Personal Deadlines – It happens. Sometimes people cry. I suggest you simply change your deadline.
5. Your Peer Group – If you surround yourself with negative losers, you lose. Make it an ongoing habit to always surround yourself with winners.

I know 2011 is right around the corner. Do yourself a favor – make this your year. No more excuses. Grab a camera and start capturing stuff.

Happy Filmmaking!

Posted under FILMMAKING

Image via Wikipedia

One of the most important filmmaking strategies you must adopt in this era of modern moviemaking is a long term perspective. In years past, filmmakers focused on making one movie, selling it and then moving on to the next movie.

While the idea of creating multiple titles over the course of your filmmaking career has not changed, it is now vitally important that you plan a series of movies from day one. The reason for this is simple. You are now solely responsible for the success of your movie business. And to stay in business, you will need to create a profitable library of titles that continually pay you.

To use a real estate business analogy, in years past you built a house and sold it for maximum profit. But these days, given the changes in the real estate market, it makes sense to hold onto the house, rent it out and collect rent checks every month. This is the difference between capital gains and cashflow. And as an independent filmmaker, the growing demise in DVD sales outlets means that filmmakers must now focus on creating multiple titles – and increasing cashflow, over time.

Step 7 – Leverage Your Following.

As I mentioned previously, creating a highly targeted mailing list is now essential for your success.

Thinking long term, the most important component of your movie making success is establishing a loyal following. From a business perspective, the size of your mailing list will provide a solid metric on which to base forward looking revenue projections. In other words, you can take look at your list and say “two percent of our followers bought this movie. I wonder how many fans will be interested in my next movie?” But instead of guess work, you can send your followers an email and ask them.

As you grow your community your fans will begin to know you, know your company and celebrate your work. And as long as you continue to provide good entertainment, you may eventually reach mass great enough to fund your future movie projects. Imagine how much prospective investors will appreciate your pitch when you already have one-hundred-thousand fans eager to buy your next movie?

In the end, the heart and soul of all forms of distribution is finding an audience willing to pay you for your work. Video on demand simply removes the middle-man from the process and allows you to connect directly with the people who matter the most – your audience.

Posted under DISTRIBUTION

Image via Wikipedia

Hi Filmmakers,

If this is your first time visiting Filmmaking Stuff, welcome! For those of you who have been a member of the Filmmaking Stuff community for some time, hello again! I’m writing you from my home in Laural Canyon. For those of you who don’t know this part of Los Angeles, I’m in the canyon between the Hollywood Hills, and within walking distance to Jim Morrison’s former house (which is for sale if any of you have an extra 1.6 Million).

I wanted to write YOU because our filmmaking community is growing like crazy. It seems many of you have told your friends about www.FreeFilmmakingBook.com – and your friends have told their friends, and their friends have told their friends… So THANK YOU for spreading the word! The goal is to grow our community of modern moviemakers to at least 10,000 by December 2011.

Because our filmmaking community is growing so rapidly, you can tell I’m already planning my filmmaking stuff goals for 2011. I am looking for ways in which we can help each other increase our moviemaking business. Obviously our facebook and twitter pages provide at least one way to connect, but I think there is more we can do. Over the next few months, I will share some solutions. (And you’ll be the first to know.)

Filmmaking Stuff News Updates – In Prep For 2011

1. Film Festivals:

I’m in the process of scheduling workshops and panel discussions at various film festivals around the world. My focus is showing filmmakers how to market and sell their movies, utilizing new methods in VOD distribution (and also how to leverage these sales channels to raise money from prospective investors.)

Why is this important to you? Because, before VOD, filmmakers had to find some sort of  middle man to market and sell their movies. But this has changed for the better. These days, you can finally make a movie and distribute your movie without asking permission – which means, you can finally pitch your movie project as a REAL business to investors. (Please stop putting stuff in your business plan about how you hope to get into Sundance and garner a dream distribution deal. 1995 is over. Investors don’t want to play the lottery. They want a business!)

So, if you know of a local film festival that would benefit from the “Maximize Your Movie Profits Without The Middle Man” workshop – feel free to tell them them about Jason Brubaker and Filmmaking Stuff. If I book a gig as a result of your efforts, you will get a copy of the entire Movie Maker Action Pack.

2. New Filmmaking Product:

Speaking of the Action Pack, two weeks ago I totally updated and silently released my latest product. I call it the Independent Produer’s Guide to Digital Self Distribution. It is a step-by-step action guide with some fill-in-the-blank type stuff.  Not surprisingly, this action guide is complementary to my workshop.

In truth, there are a lot of people out there that tell you that twitter and facebook is a great way to promote your movies. And while I agree that FB and Twitter are powerful tools, the other material never fully addresses (or solves) the real question: How do we make filmmaking a viable business? Hmmm?

If you have the same question, then you’re in luck. With the Indie Guide to Digital Self Distribution, I’ll show you how to market and sell your movie through video on demand and direct DVD sales – And I will also share how I lost over $100,000.00 with my first feature and how you can avoid my mistakes. Here is the link>>>

3. Modern Moviemaking Podcasts:

I started a FREE filmmaking podcast. Next time you open iTunes, search for Filmmaking Stuff. You’ll be able to subscribe to the Filmmaking Stuff, Filmmaking Podcast. In the coming months, I hope to interview a whole bunch of industry folks. I am going to focus on finding professionals willing to give away their secret sauce… I’ll keep you posted.

4. Modern Moviemaking Community, online:

Since publishing the modern moviemaking manifesto, some of you have written, requesting an online community where you can share ideas with other filmmakers involved in our movement. So I have taken the initial steps to creating the modern moviemaking community. If you want to be among the first to know about it (because it’s exclusive), make sure you get on the list.

5. Happy 2011. OK… I know I’m early.

For those of you who have gotten to know me, you already understand that I’m passionate and excited for the future of moviemaking. I have so many little projects lined up for 2011, I figure – Why wait? I’m eager to get moving and you should be too. Why? Because I believe the movie industry is changing fast! And it is vitally important that you stay on top of all the changes.

My suggestion? Read everything you can about finance, marketing, filmmaking and video on demand distribution. We are entering a new era.  This is the filmmaking equivalent of the automobile replacing the horse-drawn wagon. We are in the middle of a movement!

CLICK HERE TO COMMENT>>>

Posted under FILMMAKING

While this chart represents iTunes song sales, it is clear that the sale of VOD iTunes movies are on a similar trajectory. Image via Wikipedia

Thanks to HDSLR technology, any filmmaker with passion and a story can make a feature film. And unlike years past, these backyard indie filmmakers are not prohibited by cash or creativity.

Yet despite this movement, many of my high profile “professional” friends in Los Angeles, have made a conscious effort to ignore the rise of backyard indies. Why?

Because inexpensive HDSLR filmmaking doesn’t count!

I mean, with these movies, common questions asked by Hollywood hot-shots are: Who signed the SAG agreements? Who contacted the Unions? Who notified the MPAA that another movie will need to be rated? Who paid enough people to call this a “real” feature film?

Nobody.

Guess what? Audience word-of-mouth doesn’t care if the movie was an official union indie or a backyard indie made for pocket change. And thanks to the demise of traditional distribution and the increased market domination of iTunes, Amazon and Netflix, the big difference between a $10,000 back yard indie and a $2,000,000 dollar indie isn’t the budget, it’s which filmmaker gets the most clicks on his or her “BUY NOW” button. And to break even on a 2M feature, the filmmaker is gonna need a lot of clicks!

As a rough example, to recoup 2M dollars, the filmmaker will need to to sell (roughly) 200,000 video on demand downloads at $10 a pop. These first sales will cover the 40% cost allocated to VOD providers (the real winners here), after which, the filmmaker will still need to sell an additional 200,000 downloads to repay the investors.

400,000 VOD downloads x $10 = $4,000,000 minus $2,000,000 in VOD fees = the initial $2,000,000

Meanwhile, the filmmaker with a backyard indie only has to sell 2000 VOD downloads to recover the initial 10K costs.

While nobody wants to make movies for pocket change, many filmmakers still believe we can somehow continually produce unprofitable (movie) products and expect the money and the subsequent jobs to keep rolling in. And unlike years past, filmmakers can no longer approach investors with the cliche pitch: “Filmmaking is a risky investment – if we are lucky, we might win Sundance and get a deal.” Now, with transparent distribution options availabe to all filmmakers, that line of give-me-money reasoning is reckless, no longer applicable, and in my opinion, unethical.

Aside from the initial challenge of sales and marketing, the ripple effect reveals an even greater conundrum: How will you raise enough money to pay your cast and crew AND still pay back your investors? I mean, what’s the new sweet spot? How can we once again make independent filmmaking profitable?

“SO NOW THAT I CAN’T AFFORD TO PAY MY CAST AND CREW, WHAT DO I DO?”

Here is the Jason Brubaker model on how to save the movie industry. Ready?

To survive in this ever changing world of indie filmmaking, we have to change our strategy. Instead of making that one big awesome indie, we now need to focus on building a genre specific movie library and spend all of our downtime building a ginormously targeted audience list.

Step 1: Find your top-ten closest filmmaking collaborators. Form a company.

Step 2: Write a business plan, but instead of putting all of your focus on making one movie, concentrate on making 3-5 feature films.

Step 3: Make sure that you include a sales and marketing plan. To do this, take your proposed budget for all movies and work backwards. And start asking yourself, “How many downloads do we need to sell to recoup our investment?”

Step 4: In this model, instead of paying freelance day rates, you’ll have to hire long term employees and provide each with a salary and back end points (sort of like stock options) on each title.

Step 5: When the title wins, you all win. Over the years, your titles will add up. And the real compensation will come back in the form of residual movie income.

While this is not a fully refined model, it’s a start. It’s better than ignoring the fact that backyard indies are being sold right next to Union Indies as well as mainstream Hollywood movies. This is a time of change. This is the indie movie distribution equivalent of the automobile replacing the horse drawn wagon.

You can choose to ignore this movement, and you can probably succeed for a few more years. But there will come a day when all entertainment will be on-demand and cheap to consume. The question is, will you ignore the backyard movement and continue to play your distribution lottery ticket in hopes of winning the dream deal, or will you  join the movement and help us filmmakers figure out a way to make indie movies profitable?

- – -

Jason Brubaker is a Hollywood based Independent Producer, PMD (Producer of Marketing and Distribution) and an expert in digital self-distribution. He is focused on helping you make, market and sell your movies more easily by growing your fan base, building buzz and creating community around your title. To learn more about Jason and grab over $100 dollars in FREE filmmaking Tools, CLICK HERE

Posted under FILM FINANCING

Filmmaking has come a long way since this picture. But one thing hasn't changed - Filmmakers Need To Make Movies to prosper. Image via Wikipedia

If you’re filmmaker seeking practical filmmaking tips you can use TODAY, I’d like to share some thoughts with you.

The world of filmmaking is changing. Producing content is getting cheaper. And distribution outlets are becoming increasingly accessible. While these changes have not fully hit mainstream Hollywood, you can rest assured that it’s only a matter of time until the ripple effect has a leveling impact.

And when these changes hit, will you be ready?

Here are my 5 filmmaking tips on how to prepare for these changes.

1. Filmmaking Tip #1 – Build Your Fan Club. Like any business, in order to prosper, you need to create, build and keep customers. For filmmakers, this means building an audience of people who like your work. (If you like this website, you can sign up for my fan club by going here: http://www.FreeFilmmakingBook.com)
2. Filmmaking Tip #2 – Create content. If you’re serious about your filmmaking future, you need to have a YouTube page and you need to be making creative short movies at least every month. Why YouTube? Because I believe the site will become a hub for Video On Demand movies, they are owned by Google and YouTube allows you to create community around your work.
3. Filmmaking Tip #3 – Create new products. Every business needs to sell a service or a product to survive. As an independent filmmaker, your primary product is feature films. To make this business viable for yourself, you need to fill your file cabinet with story ideas. Then you need to figure out how to turn those stories into feature films, ready for sale.
4. Filmmaking Tip #4 – Surround Yourself With Talent. You can’t do everything yourself. Find a group of 10 other filmmakers who have complementary talents and an equal level of passion and enthusiasm. Then join forces and create some (movie) products!
5. Filmmaking Action Tip #5 – Learn how to sell. You will need sales skills on two fronts. Firstly, you should know how to sell, so you can raise movie money. And secondly, you should know how to sell so that you can accelerate sales of your movies. Once you learn the basics – stop fetching coffee and take a sales job outside of the industry, selling something tough. If you can master sales skills, you will start cold calling heavy hitters with no hesitation. This make pitching your ideas or (independent movie) products a cinch.

Anyway, I hope these filmmaking tips are helpful.

As always, if you have thoughts or ideas or questions, feel free to comment or email.

Posted under FILMMAKING