Producing

Salomon Smith Barney (what is now Citigroup Global Markets) used to have a pretty cool and wise slogan to describe their approach to financial decisions - "It's not about timing the market - it's about time IN the market."

I think everyone on this platform would agree with extending the analogy to American Film Market, no? Look forward to attending, after too long of a pause.

And I see that Stage32 is providing an impeccably timed (exactly 1 month to festival) FREE webinar about how to make the most of your AFM attendance - October 13th | 1:30pm Pacific

You can register here: https://www.stage32.com/education/products/how-to-work-the-afm-2025

Who will be attending the AFM? cheers

The indie-film revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for independent filmmakers. 

In ye olden days, filmmaking was prohibitively expensive. It took a full company of highly trained experts to make a movie. Even the most basic production would likely require camera operators, talent, administration, film processing, lighting and electrical expertise, and the capital to cover labor and material costs. 

in the 1960s, the adoption of lightweight "prosumer" level cameras allowed the first great reimagining of world cinema. Most notably, French New Wave filmmakers introduced new energy, experimental narrative structures, and invented techniques that would expand the visual language of cinema.

However, we should think of this era not as the meritorious rise of auteur voices into the mainstream, but moreso that the Hollywood distribution machine knew a life raft when it saw one. This phenomenon we're experiencing currently, this general lack of confidence in Hollywoods' ability to create new or interesting art isn't actually new at all. After Hollywood studios spent the 40's and 50's turning production methodologies towards corporatization and "assembly-line-ification"; the cost-cutting and mad-libsy storytelling was already showing on screen. Those bored audience members were primed to go crazy when they were exposed to the novel storytelling styles of New Wave filmmakers - particularly because these filmmakers' work was itself a direct response to the same boring filmmaking that the public had come to pan. Yet these new wave filmmakers were still distributing their films through traditional, "gatekept" avenues. We may think of this era of technique as the dawn of independent filmmaking, but these filmmakers were only empowered to a point and were still dependent on studio distribution. Not David vs Goliath, but David and Goliath begrudgingly work together.

In the 1990s, the second wave of film democratization began. Another technological leap (primarily in the "speed" of film stocks and the rise of low cost audio recording and mastering tools entering the home audio market) allowed filmmakers again to reduce both the labor and material cost of filmmaking drastically. Simultaneously, the new home video market had suddenly expanded from VHS and VCRs - for the first time ever the industry could no longer keep 99% of its IP behind a paywall. Also for the first time ever, a filmmaker really was able to make their own distribution prints and plan their own theatrical distributions, town by town. But that's a lot of work, and a lot of capital investment. The studios already had systems in place for distribution and plenty of capital. Indie filmmakers, needing to pay rent and also wanting to enter the studio system and follow in the footsteps of their own idols, tended again to work with studios for release. Since studios already had the need to increase production outputs and meet new home video demands, this era proved highly profitable for both sides for about 15 years while VHS's became DVD's and then faded out rapidly as impulse DVD sales became less common during the dawn of steaming services. 

The fundamental structure of filmmaker-studio business relationships stayed fairly uniform between this first and second revolution. Most of the indie-world ran on what's called a negative pickup deal. That just means the filmmaker produces the film out of pocket and then sells it to the studio for a pre-agreed price. This was a great tool for a long time because a filmmaker could confidently produce a film, knowing they would make a profit as long as the film adhered to whatever contractual stipulations the studio had put forward (usually casting requirements, as theatrical attendance seemed to be driven primarily by lead talent's branding). It also worked out well for the studios because they could almost order films be made on demand in response to a release calendar that would shift based on sales trends in children's fiction, tmz headlines, and corporate strategizing. 

This structure of one-time cash payments unfortunately always seemed to necessitate that the studio purchase the filmmakers work outright, in perpetuity. Meaning the studio now owned the film, 100% forever. All the IP, the story, characters, everything. Filmmakers almost never owned their films, only the rights to certain royalties. (ex: George Lucas purchase Star Wars back from the studio using his toy sales royalties)

You may say, well that's only fair, the studio has accepted the capital risk behind marketing the film as a product. It only makes sense for the studio to own the IP. Perhaps you're right. In the past it may have made a certain sense and it may have even been beneficial to filmmakers, since recirculating the film over the years, rereleasing onto new formats, creating spin-off properties, all these things that can create more revenue over time tended to be out of scope for the filmmaker and only possible for a studio. 

However! We are now at the TAIL END of the 3rd and final democratization of filmmaking. IMO it started when the canon 5D Mkii came out and it ended when disney, hbo, nbc, abc, qvc, and your mom all dropped their new streaming services and turned every multibillion dollar studio into a youtube channel. That is the business model now. period. uniform across, not just "the industry", but all media in every market segment - the money comes from ads or subscriptions. (as opposed to media sales). The magical thing about that is - anyone can take advantage of that system equally.

The technology of filmmaking, from capturing the image, to post, to distribution, marketing and even collecting payments has been totally - TOTALLY - democratized. There is NOTHING that a studio can help you with that you cannot do on your own faster and cheaper by being friends with the talented filmmakers, marketers, actors, songwriters, graphic designers, etc. around you in your community and online.  

The studios no longer have any real gate to keep. So stop selling your IP!

The modern studio doesn't make money off of movies. It makes money because it has money. 

You may have heard justified complaining from indie filmmakers about how little they make from their films that have been accepted onto streaming. You may have heard about some of the "Hollywood accounting" behind some of your favorite movies. You may have been shocked to learn that the film itself, despite being well liked, wasn't profitable. As you might suspect, that's not an accident. But as you may not suspect, it's not (intentionally) intended to screw over filmmakers. 

Movies are a luxury good. When people don't have much money, they tend to reduce spending on luxury goods first. Since the introduction of television, studios have been fighting to maintain market dominance against a growing number of media options; the most existentially threatening being social media. Cinema has transitioned from a near monopoly over the global media landscape to simply one of many options. From an economic POV, the best strategy for cinema to maintain its share of the storytelling market is to be the highest quality storytelling experience at the lowest cost possible. 

Now why would the studios want to decrease the profit margins in cinema? Profit margins come from the consumer. The overall production budgets can inflate to the moon without hurting studios, because studios hire themselves, right? Every studio has an inhouse rentals, prop warehouse, costume shop, graphics shop, vfx shop, etc. So, when a studio movie spends 900 million, it usually paid itself 750 million. So the studio doesn't need to recoup that investment through ticket sales. They want those tickets cheap and in high demand; but the more profit they need, the higher ticket prices go. 

So how does a studio make profit then, if profiting at the theaters will lose cinema's market share to social media or video games?

The studios have taken the filmmakers' old niche. The studio no longer makes it's profit from making the movie - that's just marketing! Studios make their money from brand deals! 

Say Marvel makes Spider-Man 10. It costs 1 Billion. you know the breakdown: P&A, marketing, press tours, awards campaigns, the usual. Now Spider-Man 10 only makes 500 million, because Spidey 9 really jumped the shark. Oops, someone's getting fired, right?

Maybe not. these deals don't work like that anymore. The studio has a complex network of inter-connected contracts for every movie. If the movie hits XX$ million, then Hasbro will pay YY$ Million for the right to make 10 million Spidey toys; Baskin Robins will buy the rights to the Gwen Stacy Vanilla Bean Shake for YY$ for three fiscal quarters, that kind of thing. 

At the end of the day, that studio might have made 2-3 billion from other firms, even though Spidey 10 was a flop. 

So what becomes the studios' main concern? Will Hasbro and Baskin Robins stick around for next years' slate. At the studio level, movies are no longer made to be watched. - This isn't to say many individual execs don't love cinema and want to make the best movies ever; only that the machine that makes movies doesn't care. 

Now what does all this mean for the indie filmmaker?

The studios have nothing to offer you. 

No one is going to give you any money unless they know you're going to make more money back.

Fundamentally, structurally, they can only offer you a bad deal. With very rare exception, the studio will require you to sell your IP to them. (Sinners is the only exception that I'm aware of in 30 years, and the studio still owns it for the first and most profitable 25 years). So you're not going to be living off of royalty checks like the old days. The studio will not offer you any percentage of ancillary product sales and you're not going to be able to fight for them until you're already a marketable film name, to the degree that the branding of your name is fiscally worth more than the shares they can offer in exchange. The only piece of profit-sharing that the studio has available to offer you as a filmmaker is that theatrical ticket margin that is kept low on purpose. 

You sound insane, I hear you say. If that were true then why would the filmmakers I look up to work with the studio system? And they're obviously doing it very successfully. There must be money there somewhere. If only I can make it "in", then I could simply weave my tales and get paid handsomely. 

You remember how the studio system used to rely solely on casting to predict success? That's old news. Now it's all about packaging, my friend. You need an "undeniable" package. And the filmmaker is just part of that package. Famous directors don't get treated like that because their talented (although they are) they get to play the game like that bc people buy tickets for a Nolan movie, or a Tarantino movie. It's branding. It's product design. Yes they get paid, because you know their brand better than you know the brand Paramount or Fox. 

And that is what the streaming wars are designed to fix. 

That's why all of a sudden there's a Netflix "look", and a Peacock vibe across all the original content. We're in the era of familiarizing the consumer with studio brands. 

Soon the audience won't be looking for Nolan or Tarantino at all - they'll be looking for Neon and A24 (or already are) 

If all that's true - it sure looks like filmmaker and film in general are at their most vulnerable state perhaps since the dawn of cinema. The financial viability of indie filmmaking seems uncertain at best, and the future of "breaking in" seems impossible.

but I don't think that's the case. 

First and most importantly, I think filmmakers MUST KILL the myth of "breaking in". There is no breaking into the industry. There is no in and no out. If there ever was, the technology of our day has ended it. 

Please please please recognize that, if you're a filmmaker who is trying to put together their first project - no matter what it is - the studio system is WRONG for you. I would go so far as to say RAISING MONEY is wrong for you. 

You're doing this because you love the craft, the act of DOING the WORK, not one single script, not the dream of what you think Hollywood filmmaking will be like once you "make it". Stop getting hung up on all that. Please. 

Stop wanting to BE a filmmaker.

Start wanting to MAKE FILMS.

If you're sitting around with a screenplay and a pitch deck hoping to stumble into someone who invests in movies as a hobby - that's not going to happen. And if it does, I promise you'll wish it didn't. Any serious investor is going to want to know that your project is a safe financial bet. If you haven't made a film before, it's not. period. 

Those stories you hear of a friend of a friend reading a script and sending it to the right person, well that happens sometimes, but it's not going to happen to you. 

If you're serious about getting your movie made you need to be thinking for yourself, what's the next step? And you need to be stepping. 

No one is going to get the ball rolling for you, but they might hop on a moving train. 

If you can make a film trailer for your unproduced script, AI is a way to do it for little cost with cinematic-level outputs.

But, not to say that it won't come with frustration to nail any given scene with consistent characters and getting the cut acceptable. It does take patience!

On The Misstep ( my short film) we had one of those moments.

We were shooting a tense scene, high stakes, low light, perfect silence. The actor was in position. The camera rolled. And just as the emotional beat landed… a crew member sneezed. Loud. Like, earthquake-level loud.

Everyone froze. Then burst out laughing.

We reset. And somehow, the next take was even better. The tension had cracked, and what came through was real.

Producing isn’t just about control, it’s about flow.

It’s knowing when to recalibrate, when to laugh, and when to let the moment breathe.

So here’s our thread:

Share a behind-the-scenes moment that made you laugh, especially one that cracked open something deeper.

The more I embrace the role of Producer, the more excited I feel about the process. This is a learning curve for me and so reading this article in the Hollywood Reporter, on the Locarno Pro StepIn 2025, encourages me to dig deeper into the industry. Not just how it works today, but how we can improve the process of it.

This for me, includes educating investors on how to finance film production and what to expect.

“The four topics at the center of this year’s StepIn program were: independent production between public and private financing; independent distribution today: “The art of taking risks and how to handle it”; festivals and the press; and building a truly inclusive audiovisual industry.”

“The sections also compiled various recommendations, including: create public–private partnerships to strengthen production companies and enable “higher-budget projects without losing talent to other markets”; recognise entertainment as an asset class by educating investors in Europe…”

The area of public-private partnerships excites me most, because I feel this would offer a greater confidence to investors to show a mutuality of risk and reward. I have felt for a long time now that the UK’s over reliance on public funding, is causing a major problem for independent producers and the growth and sustaining of the industry.

During one of the sessions I attended for this year’s Screen Summit, at the BFI in London, we were informed that BBC Films has a budget of £11m and Film 4 around £20m, for the funding of film production. This causes a major log jam of projects, in the annual applications for funding.

What are your thoughts about this? What models for alternative distribution are there, that can increase the amount of ROI for film producers and investors?

For me, I’d love to get a look at this report and then I’ll report back later, to the community.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/independent-film-ris...

As a co founder of a non profit production company, we are now starting to look for donations that might complete our finance gap. Anyone of you ever went down that road? Did you learn any valuable lessons you would like to share with us?

Work is evaporating, businesses are closing, longtime residents are leaving, and the city’s creative middle class is hanging on by a thread.

https://www.wsj.com/business/media/los-angeles-entertainment-economy-dow...

But also; Getting started is easier than ever. Filmmaking tools are cheap and online distribution is free. Elite YouTube creators sometimes employ up to 100 or more production workers in L.A.

Abhijay Prakash has built his career on bridging creative ambition with smart business strategy—an approach that now shapes Blumhouse, where he leads as President. The studio has become an empire built on bold ideas, small budgets, and massive cultural impact.

Starting as an intern at Universal Pictures, Abhijay worked his way through key roles at Focus Features, DreamWorks Animation, and Universal, where he helped guide major creative and business decisions. His passion for film was sparked by a love of Bollywood and Hollywood classics, and today, that passion fuels his approach to taking smart risks, championing daring stories, and evolving the horror genre.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_1JgCSwAos)