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| Showbiz Expo Summit |
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WJC's notes from the day for Hollywood Entertainment Network filmmakers.....
99 Minute Film School. Film Production, Making the Feature Film. Part I 9-10:45 a.m.
This seminar is for all first-time filmmakers who are ready to take charge of their careers.
Dov S-S Simens, low budget filmmaking guru and founder of the Hollywood Film Institute, gives step-by-step practical advice. Simens believes that the only way to get noticed is to do everything you can to make your film and not wait around thinking a studio will finance your project and that if they do you'll be able to see your vision. Simens teaches how to get a first film produced and distributed no matter what. He is practical, truthful and sincere and provides a good amount of information in a short amount of time.
For Simens, the bottom line is to produce a feature film for around $200,000 or less. He cites THE BROTHERS MCMULLEN ($70,000 budget) and EL MARIACHI ($7,000 budget) as examples. To complete the film, Simens says the filmmaker must write 38 bank checks. These checks are the basis of Simens' 38 Steps to Filmmaking regardless of the size of the film budget.
Simens advises shooting in 3-4 weeks with a 90-100 page script, with a maximum of 4-5 locations - see SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPES and LIVING IN OBLIVION. This means 35-50 set-ups a day, moving camera placement every 15-20 minutes, and not printing any dailies if you know the takes weren't good on the set.
Information on classes and tapes regarding the 38 Steps to Filmmaking can be found at (800)366-3456.
99 Minute Film School. Film Business, Selling the Feature Film. Part II 11:00-12:45 p.m.
Once your first feature is completed, Simens has the following advice:
* Remember who matters to you the independent filmmaker with a finished low budget film - the 70-90 acquisitions execs in the U.S.
* Publicity. Pre-production, during production and in post-production. List your shoot in the trades, even Canadian and European trades. For two months your shoot is in the trades being read by acquisitions execs whose job it is to pursue you.
* Prepare your photography stills (b&w and color), and your poster picture during production.
* Press kit, as professional as possible. Stills, bios, story of how you made the film.
* Never show rough cuts to anyone, no one buys from a rough cut. Never send a tape, if buyers won't leave their offices to watch your film, they probably won't buy your film.
* Festivals. Get a festival directory and determine where you should go. Festivals cost money - entrance fee, cost to send print, cost to protect print, travel and lodging. You go to be interviewed and get reviews, you go to get distribution, it's all about you and your film being discovered. There are 300-500 fests per year all over world.
* Film Markets. Focus on AFM, Cannes, MIFED, they are about pre-sales and foreign sales, the majors as you know don't go to markets. Goal is to get a domestic theatrical distributor.
* Sell to foreign territories. Negotiate with a foreign sales agent or sell territory by territory, get a payment schedule. Always get some of $ upfront. To deal with paranoia on both sides, an irrevocable Letter of Credit guaranteeing payment is standard and expected.
* Sell to U.S. domestic cable, pay-per-view or pay (HBO or SHOWTIME only movies), basic pays between $5-$150,000 per film. There are not a lot of phone calls to make.
* If you are not selling to cable, sell to video. Remember you can't sell to both because of a perception of values in their respective markets.
* Syndication sales. Bottom of the rung, last window for your film.
* P& A (prints and advertising) Budget. A film is a movie when there is a newspaper ad. If there has been domestic theatrical distribution, domestic cable will buy it. Your P& A source will keep the pay TV window.
* The Deal. Filmmakers are employees when they go to someone else for $. Get your salary and credit and stop expecting profits, it's not realistic. Only when you take the gamble by yourself to produce a film, will you get the intelligent gross distribution deal, or a distribution deal where you get all foreign and a % of domestic gross.
Simens notes on the WEB...predicts that everyone can become their own distributor, presuming there is marketing along side. He said only governments and phone companies hate the web because they can't tax it and they can't control it. For the moment only geeks and nerds are making money on the web
2:00 p.m. Screening of PEKING OPERA BLUES and panel discussion about "The Future of Asian Cinema".
PEKING OPERA BLUES is an action-adventure comedy written, directed and produced by Tsui Hark in 1986. The film won the attention of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and it is clear why - it has non-stop crowd-pleasing set pieces, stunning photography, spectacular stunts, perfectly timed editing, and delightful actors. What's most impressive is the energy of this farce set during the Chinese political upheavals of 1913. The movie moves so quickly it is over before you know it.
Andy Klein, senior film critic for the L.A. Reader, moderated a panel with guests Cheng-Sim Lim, Programmer for the UCLA Asian-Pacific Film Festival; Terence Chang, producer of John Woo's HARD-BOILED and BROKEN ARROW; Kirk Wong, director of CRIME STORY (to be released by Miramax in summer 1997); and Lee Stollman, William Morris agent who represents 40 year old Hong Kong actor Chow Yun-Fat (star of over 70 movies), producer Stanely Tong (RUMBLE IN THE BRONX, SUPERCOP), actress Michelle Kahn (SUPERCOP), and director Kirk Wong, among other Asian clients.
Klein, who is exceedingly knowledgeable about Asian films, led an entertaining discussion about the unprecedented boom of Asian cinema in America. (There was no mention of Japanese, Korean, Philipino, Vietnamese cinema). Klein pointed out that until the 1980's James Wong Howe, the Hollywood cinematographer of the 1940's, and action star Bruce Lee, were the only well-known Chinese names known to American movie audiences.
Ching-Sim Lim added that there are three main confluences in Chinese cinema - the fifth generation filmmakers who surfaced after the Cultural Revolution, the Taiwanese filmmmakers who saw an end to marshal law and heavy censorship in the 1980's, and the first generation of filmmakers (some from the mainland) who've grown up in Hong Kong.
For purposes of the discussion, Chinese was a reference to all filmmakers of Chinese dissent whether living in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the U.S., or elsewhere.
Kirk Wong moved to Los Angeles from Hong Kong four years ago "for the money and for the opportunity to work with higher film budgets, and because as a director in the U.S. you don't have to do everything... my mother was a prop woman on my first film." Wong, who has directed 10 feature films, says filmmaking is a cosmopolitan activity and he doesn't differentiate between Honk Kong films or U.S. films or any others, he simply likes movies.
Producer Terence Chang went to school in the states, worked as a producer in Hong Kong, and returned to the states with director John Woo. He pointed out that in the beginning there was a language problem for Woo, that Wood did not always understand the implications or meanings of what he heard at studio meetings. After Woo learned better English, these problems were surmounted. Chang also noted that American studios Fox and Warner Brothers have an appreciation for the value of the Asian market and have subsequently invested in Asian talent.
Agent Stollman said "the William Morris Agency has always been aggressive in the foreign market and has aggressively been signing Hong Kong talent."
Of particular note: The main protagonists in PEKING OPERA BLUES are three young women who learn to assert their independence. The trailer for the soon-to-be released SUPERCOP with action star Jackie Chan, has a physically and intellectually empowered buddy, Hong Kong female action star Michelle Kahn.
The event was held at the Laemmle Grand 4-Plex in downtown Los Angeles, a few blocks from the L.A. Convention Center.
Audio cassettes of Showbiz Expo 1996 seminars are available at $15 per cassette from Conference Copy Inc. 8435 Route 739 Hawley, PA 18428. Telephone (717)775-0580, fax (717)775-9671.
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