filmmaking/producing

Five reasons for attending film festivals

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After a productive and fun Tampere Film Festival last week I wanted to share my tips for having a great film festival experience.

1.) Find inspiration

Watching international competitions is a convenient way of catching up with what is going on in the business. New ideas cannot be avoided during an intensive screening marathon. Checking out retrospectives and other curated screenings is also important: If you don’t know the history of your art you might end up ‘inventing’ something that has already been done 50 years ago.

2.) Compete and discuss

Of course, if you have a film in competition you have an extra reason to attend and be excited about the screenings. To dissect your competitor’s films as well as your own can be rewarding and instructive. But even if you don’t compete, the multitude of different movies will spark rewarding debates about cinema and beyond.

3.) Network

Film festivals are a great place to meet many of your contacts, acquaintances and friends at once. But you should also take the opportunity to meet new people. A good networking rule is to set the goal to make a new connection at every event you attend. People are usually very approachable at festivals, and the most commonly used icebreakers are:

  • “What do you do, are you a filmmaker?”
  • “Do you have a film in competition?”
  • “Is this your first time at [insert festival name]?”
  • “Have you seen any interesting films?”

4.) Do business

Film festivals are excellent places to hold meetings and conduct other business. When many of your industry contacts are at the same event it makes sense to attend as well. Schedule the appointments in advance and you will have some very productive days while you advance your projects.

5.) Have fun

Last but definitely not least, don’t forget to have fun. A film festival is a good break from your studio routine, peppered with inspiration and great people. Enjoy it to the fullest!

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animation/producing

Are test screenings feasible for European productions?

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Here’s a good article on Variety about how marketing concerns have started to play a bigger role in European productions. The attitudes are changing, even though European film remains a more ‘artistic’ affair than Hollywood or Bollywood productions.

The idea to use test screenings for animated projects is interesting, but tricky. With European budgets, there is usually not enough money to make any changes, even if test screening results would call for them. Another issue is the unreliability of market research. People are known to answer one thing in a questionnaire, even though they actually believe another.

Don’t disappoint your audience

However, test screenings to determine a finished project’s positioning can be a smart approach. Movies have to be marketed accurately, so that the expectations of the crowds match the actual film. Disappointed early audiences can easily kill a film through negative word of mouth.

Paul Young, CEO of Irish Cartoon Saloon recounts his experience with ‘Brendan and the Secret of Kells’ on Cineuropa:

“I think what happened in Ireland was that Disney didn’t know what the film was and we pitched it a little bit more like a Disney film. […] It’s very different from a commercial film like Kung-Fu Panda in the sense that it’s more traditional [and] for [a] younger children and family audience. I think pitching it more like a Disney commercial film might [have given] the wrong impression in Ireland.”

As always, there is a middle ground between rejecting test screenings as commercial humbug and completely re-editing a film on every whim of a focus group. I think European animation producers would be wise to fine tune their projects’ marketing campaigns and make sure that expectations are set correctly. With the continuous changes in the film financing landscape, producers who don’t shy away from tests will be a step ahead of the game.

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animation/producing

Summary of the German animation market

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Leading up to the release of my ebook on coproducing with German companies, I wanted to share this look into the German animation distribution market with you. This information was gathered from a presentation by Benjamina Mirnik, Head of Acquisitions and Coproductions at Universum Film, given at the Cartoon Masters Feature event in Munich last November.

Talking about the animated feature films market in Germany, Mirnik gave the following outline:

  • 2005-2009 there were an average of 17 animated features released per year.
  • 46% of these films were released by independent distributors.
  • The animated features gained a share of total cinema admissions between 10,9% (2005) and 17,9% (2006) for an average share of 14,4%.

Germany remains one of the largest audiovisual markets, as you can see from the number of films released annually. It is also important to note the high market share of the independent distributors, as the Hollywood majors will rarely distribute an independent animated feature. An interesting part of the presentation was the look at the German VoD and DVD market:

  • The digital market in Germany, as everywhere else, is constantly growing. Generally, total digital sales amount to approximately 3% of total DVD sales. DVD sales will remain the main home entertainment distribution channel for at least the next 3-5 years.
  • Animated films are neither stronger nor weaker than other genres available for digital distribution, when compared to DVD sales.
  • DVD sales of animated films in the children’s entertainment segment have remained stable.
  • The major studios demonstrate, that high quality storytelling and animation coupled with deep marketing pockets suffice to achieve success in the German market. However, independent productions still rely heavily on branded properties, that are well known in Germany.
  • Stereoscopic 3D projects are dominating the release and production of animation projects at present, but stereoscopic 3D will not suffice on its own to make a film a success.

Parents still want to use the good old DVD-babysitter, which can be seen in the stable situation in DVD sales in the family and kids segment. It’s just easier to buy the DVD than to pirate it, especially if the kids want to watch it over and over again on the TV. Mirnik also outlined the success factors for animated feature films released in Germany by independent distributors:

  • Brand awareness resulting from a well known IP that the film is based on,
  • a top creative team
  • and sequels.

Sequels and previous brand awareness both point to the same conclusion: Producing feature length animation is a risky business. Producer’s do anything in their power to lower the risks, and familiar IP’s and prequels often pave the road in a way that no marketing campaign can.

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financing

There is a right budget for every film

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I’m currently budgeting an animated feature project that has a rediculously low budget when compared to other CGI features. But I’m also sure it is the right budget for this project. This is because I know that

  • the film targets a compact niche audience that is easy to reach,
  • the target audience will forgive this film* from saving on certain production values, if it deliveres in core areas important to the project, and
  • meticulous planning will save a big chunk of money.

It all boils down to knowing the essentials:

  • What is your story?
  • Who then is your audience?
  • How much financing can you expect to raise on your audience calculation?

This gives you your budget. Now you will have to “back into” it, as Dov Simens calls it. If, at this point, you discover that you cannot deliver the quality your audience expects from this kind of a story for the amount of financing you will be able to raise, you have to revise or abandon the project. It is all about your target audience – they dictate what your project can cost.

* Notice I wrote “this film”. They will have different expectations for other films, so it all comes down to the individual project.

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producing

What Richard Branson can teach you about producing

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Lately I’ve been thinking about Richard Branson’s way of doing business, and how it relates to the world of animation or film producing. In his 44 years as a bootstrapped entrepreneur he has amassed more than 400 companies in his Virgin Group and made a fortune doing business his way.

So what are the traits that have helped Richard Branson succeed and how can you apply them to producing your animated film projects?

1.) Branson is great at spotting and exploiting gaps in the market. He was returning from an island vacation when he heard that his flight was cancelled. Not the one to get bummed out by something like this he chartered a plane, wrote “Virgin Airlines” on a blackboard and sold all seats to the other passengers from his flight, thus also laying the ground work for his future airline business.

>> To exploit gaps you need to be on the lookout for them and be prepared to act when oppportunity presents itself. Always seek out new ideas and influences, educate yourself about business trends also in markets other than animation and carry a few projects in different stages of development with you at all times.

2.) Take risks and protect your downside. Branson is renowned for taking risks in his businesses. But whenever he is embarking on a new venture he also calculates what risks are involved. Branson takes precautions to limit the damages caused by a possible failure, in his words “protecting the downside”. For example when he bought the first 747 from Boeing he negotiated a deal to hand it back if the airline didn’t succeed in the first year.

>> As a producer you take constant risks developing new projects without knowing which ones will turn out to be profitable. You have to decide how much time and money to invest into each, and kill them if necessary. Protect yourself using an old poker player’s rule: Don’t throw good money after bad.

3.) Branson uses all the leverage available to him. Be it selling Virgin Records to save Virgin Airlines, using the Virgin brand for instant recognisability for new products or leveraging himself as the figurehead of his ventures he uses all of his resources to the maximum.

>> As a producer you have to recognise the different kinds of resources at your disposal and put them to their best use. If your director has a golden tongue, use him in your financing efforts. If your production company has been able to build a brand for itself, leverage it for future productions.

4.) “My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them.” He sets himself tough goals and works very hard towards them. Branson is the epitome of the bootstrapped entrepreneur and his biography includes the necessary stories about working around the clock to reach his objectives.

>> There is a reason that success stories contain tales of sweat, tears and hard work. If you don’t set goals for yourself and your business, you will never get anywhere. But remember, enjoy what you are doing!

5.) “Screw it, let’s do it!” With his trademark quote, akin to zen master Nike’s slogan, Branson expresses what is most important for an entrepreneur, taking action!

>> As a producer, you are an entrepreneur even if you don’t own the production company you work for. Developing, planning and preparing all have their time and place but they are worth nothing without action. So go, hustle!

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financing

My three latest pitching mistakes

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Mistakes are a commodity: You usually cannot afford too many and you want to know where they come from. Analysing your mistakes is the best way to learn from them, reading about those made by others is still second best. With this in mind I thought I’d share the mistakes from my last pitch.

I took part in a pitching competition for small development grants and I presented a kid’s series that I had prepared with a partner. As the title of this post suggests, the pitch wasn’t successful and I spent some time analysing what went wrong, as well as talking to a few jury members afterwards to get their side of the story.

The main mistakes I found were:

1.) The project was visually underdeveloped. We should have brought some visual materials with us, even though the competition guidelines discouraged that. It would have helped establish our vision of the project quickly and easily. As we obeyed the guidelines blindly we neglected to develop one important side of the idea.

2.) The pitch had two main points. We had a technological as well as a content angle on the project. This was partly due to the fact that the competition emphasised “new contents, multimedia projects, etc”. Still, it would have been our task to focus the pitch on one or the other to avoid fence-sitting and an air of ambiguity.

3.) The pitch was too fragmented. One jury member said that she found the pitch hard to follow because the pieces didn’t fit together smoothly. This was true and due to the fact that the idea was very new even for us. We didn’t yet “breathe” the project, as you do when you’re really familiar with it.

The lessons I learned from the pitch are:

1.) Develop further. A project doesn’t (usually) have to be production ready when you’re still pitching it. But it does need to be fleshed out enough so people who don’t know anything about it can get a grasp on your idea. The level of detail required varies greatly by whom you are pitching to.

2.) Focus your pitch on one sharp point. Even when you have two intertwined angles as we had, there’s always a way of presenting your idea in a streamlined way. Use colleagues or friends as a test audience and gather their feedback. Build on it.

3.) Always practice your pitch until you know your project inside out. This is what I usually do and having limited time available is a lousy excuse, so this one bugs me the most. But the annoyance will also translate into working more rigorously next time.

Do you have any hard earned pitching lessons you’d like to share? Please post in the comments or on Twitter!

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animation/financing/producing

Report in the works about coproducing with Germany

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I’m working on a free report about German funding sources, coproduction structures and so forth. If you have any questions you’d like to have answered please email me or post in the comments!

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animation/filmmaking/financing/producing

How to finance your (short) film part II

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This is the second of two posts about how to finance your shortfilm. Although the following information is specific to Finland you will find similar possibilities all around the EU and elsewhere in the world. After completing part I you know how much money you need. Now let’s get to finding it.

1.) The triangle model
For quite a while shortfilms in Finland have been funded by the “triangle model”, composed of grants by the Finnish Film Fund (FFF) and AVEK (the centre for audiovisual arts) and a presale from YLE, our public broadcaster.

The FFF gets their money from the state lottery (Veikkaus) and AVEK from the copyright payments from blank dvd’s, cd-r’s and external hard drives. They both emphasize that they fund only a) professional projects and b) films that have secured some kind of distribution. This makes sense, as they have limited funds and don’t want to spend those on films that aren’t shown anywhere.

YLE’s “Uusi Kino” is the third corner of the triangle, paying a modest amount for a pre-sale. Until autumn 2010 YLE practically had a veto in all shorfilm financing processes in Finland, as the FFF demanded TV or theatre distribution from all films it supports. Shortfilms don’t get screened in cinemas, so YLE’s “Uusi Kino” was the only channel and slot that bought and screened shorts.

But now the FFF is finally acknowledging a change in times and they will also accept projects with for example internet distribution. Your distribution plan has to be fairly convincing, but it is good to know that things are progressing.

One important limitation to be aware of is that you need to have a production company involved to be able to apply at the FFF. If you don’t have an own company you can try to shop around the screenplay and rough budget that you prepared in part I, and look for an interested producer.

2.) Coproduction
Coproductions with other countries can be quite complicated affairs and require quite some time to set up. Usually they don’t make sense for shortfilms, but it doesn’t hurt to find out if your film is an exception. The idea here is that your foreign coproducer tries to raise his part of the funding in his country, going to his FFF/AVEK/Broadcaster equivalents and usually then takes over a proportionate part of the work.

3.) Sponsorship and product placement
If you don’t have an exceptional angle and a surefire way of getting the short in front of a lot of people, forget trying to raise much cash this way, at least in Finland. The problem from the sponsor’s point of view is that your shortfilm will not reach a very large audience.

Bartering however is usually possible, so you get lent some supplies or work stations in exchange for putting a few logos in the credits. Be careful here if you work with YLE, as they have quite strict policies regarding sponsoring and product placement. Talk to them beforehand so that there will be no problems when you deliver your film.

4.) Crowdfunding
I’ve written about this before. Used on it’s own or maybe in combination with www.wreckamovie.com this can add a bit to your budget. Depending on who you are, the size of your tribe and the nature of your idea this might be peanuts, or up to 900.000 euros.

5.) Bank loans
These are impossible to obtain without securities. Banks are not in the business of investing and are very risk sensitive. They will not consider the sales forecasts of your short as having any value, and your only option here is to secure the loan with something concrete, like your house.

6.) Own investment
Very widely used in all kinds of film financing packages, this is you as a filmmaker putting your own money on the table. Whether it’s savings, a salary from another job or money raised from a yard sale this often rounds out a shorfilm’s budget.

7.) Deferrals
Related to the above are “deferred” wages for you or your crew. The idea here is that you and/or your crew members make a deal with the production, allowing it to defer the payment of part or all wages until future sales of the film bring in more money. At that point the deferrals would be paid out, ideally. In practice this rarely happens with shortfilms, at least not to 100%.

8.) Volunteers
Again, related to the above two is the use of a volunteer workforce. Convince people to work on your film for free or a fraction of their normal wage and you’ve raised a part of your film’s financing. This works best with people trying to get into the business, who need a calling card and are convinced that your film could be a break for them.

9.) Private loans or investors
With shorfilm projects this usually amounts to “FFF”, namely Friends, Family and Fools. Please make sure that the people investing are aware that a shortfilm usually never makes any money and that their input is more like a gift than a real investment. You’ll be lucky if you can pay them back even their 100%, let alone any interest.

10.) The EU’s MEDIA programme & Eurimages
There are a few support schemes on the EU level, but none are suitable for shortfilms, except for very rare cases. Contact the Mediadesk and browse their website to learn more about the eligibility criteria.

11.) Tax schemes
No tax shelters or tax schemes exist in Finland at the moment, which is why some Finnish productions are being shot abroad. There has been a concerted effort by FAVEX for lobbying on this front, so things might well change in the near future. Let’s hope for the best.

This concludes my tips on financing your shortfilm. If you have questions, criticism or comments, please post them here or on Twitter!

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animation/filmmaking/financing/producing

How to finance your (short) film part I

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I often get asked by film makers if I could tell them how to raise money for their shortfilm. In order to save myself from typing the same answers time and again I decided to write down what I know about financing a shortfilm in Finland. This turned out to be quite a long post, so I’ll divide it into two parts.

1.) You need a script and a breakdown. It all starts with the script. Your story tells you what happens on screen, what you will need to model, draw, animate, colour, edit etc. To be able to answer the coming questions you need to know how much work it will take to realize your script.

There are lots of books teaching you how to do script breakdowns, but for a director working on a fairly compact film you can start with a rule of thumb: Try to calculate man hours or weeks.

For a CGI production, you count the number of characters, props and locations and then estimate, based on your experience, how many hours or days or weeks it would take one person to model, rig and texturise them. Then you either make a rough animatic from your storyboard or just go through the script while imagining the final film in your head, stop-watch in hand. This should give you an estimate on the running time of your production. Judging from previous projects you can now estimate how long it will take for you and/or your crew to animate everything. Be as precise as you can and try to factor in crows scenes etc. Then repeat this for SFX, rendering, editing and so forth.

If you do not know the answer to one of these questions, ask around. Like I’ve written earlier, as a producer (and you are a producer when you finance your own production) you don’t need to know everything yourself. You can also have a look at my list of things that affect an animated project’s budget. Finally let the breakdown sit for a day or two, then go back to the calculation and raise most of your man hour estimates 10-50%, as everyone tends to be too optimistic when budgeting. If possible, run the breakdown by a colleague to get a second opinion.

2.) Prepare a budget. “How much do you need?” This is the question that everyone will ask you when you try to finance your film. Now that you’ve done a complete breakdown of the work involved you can calculate a proper budget.

Start with multiplying your workload from the breakdown with a wage multiplier. Don’t worry about how many people you need at this point, that’s why you calculated man hours in the breakdown. On smaller projects you might just use one wage category for everyone, on larger ones you can check the Finnish cinema & TV worker’s union for their tariff’s. Remember that if you are doing the project through a company (more on that in part II) you need to calculate side costs and holiday pay in Finland, which can be up to 38% on top of the wage.

Film budgets are always heaviest in the wages section, so congratulate yourself for working more than half way through! The rest is estimating what you will be needing in equipment (computers, software licenses, cameras, lighting etc) as well as materials (puppet parts, scenery, etc) and other costs (telephone bill, tape transfers, etc). Here you can make educated guesses or ask around. A budget template helps not only in calculating your costs but also in being a checklist for stuff you really do not want to forget. A good one can be found on the forms page of the Finnish Film Foundation (FFF), both in Finnish and English.

Armed with your script and your budget you can now approach financiers. Books discussing live-action shorts or Hollywood filmmaking will urge you to attach known actors to your package to raise your chances, but when making animated shorts in Finland you can save your energy here. Do a good breakdown and you’ll get far.

Next week I’ll discuss where you can go to find your film some financing.

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animation/producing

Interview: Punks in social media

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Today’s post is an interview with three guys from OASIS Multimedia. I met them at the Interfilm shortfilm festival in Berlin and we had a chat about their experiences with social media marketing. They have an animated series in development called Punks’n’Banters and have been quite successful in creating a small dedicated tribe around it.

The concept for Punks’n’Banters is a mixture of animation and comics. It’s about three punks: Bastard, Coffee and Sweetie, who live in a squat house called “Chaos central”. They have lots of R-rated adventures involving drugs, sex and violence, while just trying to cope with everyday life.

The OASIS team consists of Donald (Benedikt Rietzel), a punk, all-round designer and the creative head behind the project, Tego (Tobias Gessner), media manager and communicator and Olle (Oliver Lentz), owner of OASIS Multimedia, producer and supporter.

How do you use social media for your advantage?

Unfortunately we didn’t invent social media, but we use all possibilities provided by this form of marketing very intentionally. Not least by connecting different platforms in order to acquire and reach the largest possible fan base.

What do you want to achieve with your social media campaign?

First of all we want to create awareness. We want to expose our idea, our product, our little punk friends to as many people as possible. To those who’re looking for something different online, those who dig comics or punk, or those who just want to enjoy how our punks go about their everyday lives and speak their minds without being censored.

Tell us about how you started out.

A lot is done via word of mouth. We have a good relationship with Matias Roskos from Visualblog.de (whom we’d like to greet here by saying: „Hi!“). He wrote a blog post which sparked interest in other bloggers and was eventually read by the folks from Interfilm Berlin, who then invited us to the festival.

Then somehow Nix Gut (a big German mail-order company for punk merchandise) found us, probably through our Facebook page. We developed a small partnership that is slowly growing. They sell t-shirts with our PnB imagery in their catalogue and online store, and we provide them with comics for their newsletter.

We also have a few true fans already, who are promoting our characters, for example in online forums.

Last but not least we try to get exposure in relevant media through interviews or getting written about, to slowly but surely grow our fan tribe. This is the way our punks are taking over the world. And talking about the world, our first long form episode, which is being produced right now, will also be available in English, so we can reach our non-German fans as well.

What kinds of interactions with the tribe have you tested?

We try to include our fans in all stages of development. They can participate and bring ideas to the table. They can vote for or against planned merchandise and/or participate in small contests we are holding. Things we’ve done are drawing contests, photo postings or interaction tasks.

What are your TOP 3 tips for social marketing for an animated project?

Generally: 1., 2. and 3.: Passion, 4. and 5. post, post, post and 6. be active on Youtube and 7. on Facebook.

Naturally, nothing will work if you’re not having fun and only want to sell your series or film. Online marketing works well with Youtube, even if you have to work hard to get noticed. For us Facebook has also worked well. On FB you just get better interaction with the fans and some of them can even help you.

And what would be your 3 Don’ts?

I don’t think there are any don’ts. You just have to have the courage to try everything. If you just go through tried and tested methods recommended by some marketing consultant, you’ll just get buried in the masses.

Hmm… maybe there are some don’ts after all then: 1. Only do tried-and-tested 2. Make no mistakes 3. Have no interactions with your fans.

Do you use crowdsourcing or crowdfunding in the project?
Oh, let us first look up those fancy words in an English business dictionary 😉

We already do crowdsourcing. Our fans have given us lots of ideas which resulted in two new characters (who haven’t been introduced yet). We also asked our FB community to invent the name of the fictive beer our characters are drinking.

In the future we want to give our fans more and more say in what will happen. At the moment this is difficult, as it’s still quite the “hobby project” and we’re not making any money with it.

Regarding crowdfunding we’re trying to raise a part of the financing for our coming actions through small donations from our fans – I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who already donated. Every euro really helps us to make this series! – but unfortunately that’s not nearly enough.

What is the role of off-line marketing in your plans? You use lots of giveaways it seems.

Off-line marketing surely has it’s place but you have to use it in a focused way. Sending flyers by mail wouldn’t make much sense, but it can help you a lot if you get exposure in the right magazines.

At the festival we had buttons for example, that we gave to people who came by our stand, so they’d remember us. The rest we gave away to our friends (I know some punks after all) and thereby promoted the show some more.

Our stickers are also off-line-marketing. We don’t just give them out at festivals and events, but we use them in our home towns or during trips to make our brand known to as many people as possible.

To conclude, do you have any exciting news about show you want to share?

In Berlin we talked with the Senior Content Manager of MTV and it was a very positive meeting. Of course nothing was decided in a short first time meeting, but we already agreed (and this is great!) to work jointly on developing the first episode, so that we can tailor it to MTV in advance. Which just means that we have to get even more extreme with the content and dialogue. This gives us the possibility that MTV or another channel might feature us or will work with us on an international distribution plan.

Thanks for the interview guys and good luck with your project!