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Truly Free Film

16+ Thoughts On Picking A Producer’s Rep

Toronto, Sundance, SXSW, Cannes, Berlin, Venice, or any small town -- it's all 1 Festival!
Toronto, Sundance, SXSW, Cannes, Berlin, Venice, or any small town — it’s all 1 Festival!

You’ve made your movie.  You’ve even applied to some great film festivals, and maybe they’ve been encouraging.  Now people are calling you, asking to see it, and offering to license it on your behalf.  How do you determine whom to collaborate with?  What questions need to be asked BEFORE you make a deal?

The best thing you can ever do is talk to other filmmakers who have worked with the rep — and not just the ones that the rep recommends.  Make those calls.  The second best thing you can do is to have a face to face meeting with the proposed rep.  The personal approach matters.  Look them in the eye.  Connect.  Have a beer or a cup of coffee.  Ask yourself if you’d like to have dinner with them a year for now.

Now start to ask some questions, ask for some help, and gain a better understanding of both the process and the individual or company you are considering.

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Truly Free Film

Sundance Sales Dissection: Septien (Part Two)

Today’s guest post is from George Rush, producers rep and attorney.  Yesterday George started telling us about how he engineered the sale of Michael Tully’s Sundance At Midnight hit, SEPTIEN.  Today’s post concludes the dissection.

I had been to Sundance before with Midnight films and know it can be difficult to get good buzz.  Sundance audiences are not reflective of real audiences.  It is a mixture of film nerds, rich party people, and earnest do gooders seeking some culture.  I’ve found most people want to see the buzzed about stereotypical Sundance films—The Are All Right, Winter’s Bone.  These tickets are hard to come by.  However, midnight screening tickets are easier to come by and thus people get stuck with them.  They come in hoping for some culture and get blood and guts and farts.

I’ve seen packed houses at Midnight screenings pretty empty by the time the lights came up.  Because Michael’s film, SEPTIEN,  is so different, I felt a good number of the audience and some critics would dismiss it outright because it did not fit their expectation of what a Sundance film should be.  It sort of reminds me of a friend of mine who hates Wes Anderson movies because he expects Bill Murray to always play the Bill Murray of Ghostbusters.

Those who stayed, who bought in, would be massively rewarded by SEPTIEN, but there would be some naysayers.  So my feeling was Sundance was going to be a wildcard, with champions and detractors.

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Truly Free Film

Sundance Sale Dissection: Septien

Today’s guest post is from attorney and sales rep George Rush.  It is part one of two. George handled the sale of Michael Tully’s Septian to IFC’s Sundance Selects.

I have worked as a lawyer or a producer’s rep on hundreds of films over the years, and this experience has made me quite skeptical about the business model for independent producers.  The business is worse than it has been historically, but it is still the same very basic model.  You produce a film, a distributor exploits those rights.  You are good at creating content, they are good at marketing.  Hopefully those two things come together to benefit both parties.

I’m a hyper skeptic of producers essentially acting as their own distributors because generally they aren’t strong in both skill sets, and thus something usually suffers.  So I usually assume a producer is good at producing, and try to leave it at that.

Most of what I work on is low budget films with few if any stars.  Ten years ago, I considered a low budget film under two million dollars.  Today, I consider it under $500,000 and believe if you do something for a larger budget without a truly bankable cast, you are being reckless with your budget.

The distribution business has become tougher and they are paying less for content, and thus budgets go down correspondingly.  So how can you make something quality for under $500K—most people fail at this effort and there is a glut of so so films that just can’t compete with larger budgeted film—they are clearly inferior.  Indeed, most festival films in this budget range will never see the light of day beyond the festivals.  However, I don’t know how, but some people do.  It takes an extremely resourceful producer and director who is willing to take some chances to pull it off.

Enter Michael Tully’s Septien.