Now that Independent Film Week is over I finally have a chance to reflect on the experience of bringing my project
Day Dream to IFW's No Borders program last week. All in all, everything went extremely well. We had about 20 half-hour meetings over the course of four days. For people who have never done back-to-back pitch meetings like this it is a bit like speed dating. Trying to put your best foot forward in a short amount of time with the hope that the relationship might continue or even be mutually beneficial and satisfying in the long run. The great thing about the No Borders program is that
Susan Boehm and her team are literally traveling the world to make connections and bring foreign sales agents and distributors to the program to meet the mostly U.S. filmmakers with projects. These are companies that I doubt I would have had any opportunity to meet with otherwise. Some of these companies that seemed sparked by the project included Wild Bunch, Future Films, Bankside Films and Revolver Entertainment. Compared to my last experience in the No Borders program with my film
Brother To Brother in 2000 I'd say that it has become more focused on these types of foreign sales companies/distributors which is great since this is what makes the program unique. Our most intense day was Tuesday where we had nine meetings pretty much back to back in a five hour stretch. One of my producers,
Anna Higgs, and I began getting pretty wiggy by the end and started singing our conversations to each other during our breaks in full-on musical mode to keep the energy up. Whatever it takes.....
As I had suspected, it was easier taking the meetings with my two U.K. producers Anna and her partner, Gavin Humphries, as opposed to going solo like I did in 2000. It did take some of the pressure off where I could focus more on the creative side talking about structure, characters, story, visual style, sound design, actors, etc and they could pick up the conversation when it turned to European pre-sales, U.K. and Louisiana tax incentives, debt financing, gap financing, low-end budgets, etc.. Up until this point I had basically been producing it myself, developing the screenplay on my own and raising funds through foundations and grant organizations. It felt REALLY good to be able to relinquish some of these producer duties. When I said this to Anna she looked at me and said "Relinquish away. That's what we're here for". It was also helpful that they had discussed the project with some of the companies like Bankside and Future Films earlier. They also worked previously at Capitol Films and Pathe in London and thus were able to suss out tangible pre-sales interest in Europe based on the huge audience for jazz that exists there. So if anything our experience last week helped build confidence among the members of our newly formed team and in the fact that we're able to work really well together. Our skills and areas of expertise are different yet serve to complement each other. I think Gavin and Anna combined with my other L.A based producer Shelby Stone who is handling most of the actor negotiations make a really strong team. It is great to feel like experienced, hard working people have your back and have the skills needed to move a project from script to screen. Shelby is also a VP at Jamie Foxx's company, Foxx/King Entertainment and he will be an executive producer on the project. This will hopefully help to open some doors. It is still a wildly ambitious period film that will be tough to pull off for the planned $3-$5 million budget but this does seem like the team that can make it happen. And the process thus far has actually been fun. Crazy as that may sound. Now this week it is all about followup-letters, e-mailing the script and sending DVDs of my first feature out. As Billy Strayhorn used to say "Ever onward and upward". As James Brown used to say "Ya got to use what ya got to get jus' what ya want" Or as I am saying to myself now, "it is seriously time to make shit happen....."
Comments (0)
