Adelaide Screenwriter: The Truth about filmmaking

The film industry is pretty simple to break into if, first, you understand some basic concepts. The basic concepts can be learned pretty quickly, despite what industry moguls tell you.

However, there is some basic bullshit that surrounds the industry that keeps first-timers away from writing, directing, producing or starring in a movie.

1st Lie: Filmmaking Is An Art

If filmmaking was an art, you would go get some film stock, rent a camera, make your 'art', and then line up on Piccadilly on a Sunday morning with the other buskers and try to sell your art to a passers-by, or give it away for free for others to enjoy. But we both know that it doesn?t work like that.

To make a movie you need to write cheques?and lots of them. When your movie is finished, you will want to negotiate the best possible deal for the greatest amount of revenue. Therefore, filmmaking could be discussed as writing cheques, negotiating and revenue potential. To me, that sounds like a business. And everything in the British film industry is about business. The sooner you realise this, the sooner you are likely to succeed.

2nd Lie: Filmmaking Is A Filmmaking Industry

The film industry spends more money marketing a film than making it. You have probably heard about the way a distributor 'opens', 'releases' or 'markets' a film. So if it costs so much to open, release, or market a film, then surely the film industry is more concerned with this, than with the actual making of a movie. Technically, in the film industry, the marketing budget is called 'the P&A budget' (prints and advertising). And the two elements of a movie that the industry markets are: Who is in the film, and What is the budget.

When you make your first independent feature film, you should know what it costs to strike a print and what ads (print, radio, TV, etc.) cost. At the very least you must know this to market your film to distributors at a film festival. But please, always remember that the film industry is a marketing machine that creates perceived values every weekend.

Hint: You?ve made a film. A film has no value. No one pays for a film.

Everyone pays for a movie. When does a film become a movie? The answer is, ?when it?s in a cinema?. When it?s in a cinema, you see newspaper ads and movie reviews in newspapers. When you see a newspaper ad you think "It?s a movie." It?s in a movie theatre. Are movie theatres free? Answer, ?No!? Thus, movies cost money to see. Films you can see for free.

When your film is picked up by a distributor and they put in their ?P&A? money, it now has a value of $10. This is the normal cost of buying a ticket at a movie theatre. In America there are 280 million people. If only 1 out 100 people see the movie it translates into 2.8 million ticket sales, times $10, for a GROSS of $28,000,000.

Distributors and filmmakers don?t see that $28,000,000. That?s what cinema owners collect. Box Office Gross! Do filmmakers see Box Office? Of course not. But the moviegoer has now been taught that your free film is now worth $10. W

Source: http://adelaidescreenwriter.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-truth-about-filmmaking.html

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