This weekend, as the
Tribeca Film Festival rolled on just blocks away, I had the opportunity to moderate a panel for
New York Film Academy producing students on the various challenges confronting film producers in a mid-recession, New Media environment. Hosted by
SAG Indie and the
IFP, the panelists included Cinetic Rights Management's Matt Dentler, former CAA agent and current Hunting Lane Films partner Kevin Iwashina, and
The House of the Devil producer Peter Phok. We were eventually joined by cross-platform impresario and
Filmmaker Contributor Lance Weiler, who despite being held up in traffic for most of the proceedings, offered his inimitable perspectives on audience aggregation, alternative reality gaming and the impending demise of traditional forms of film authorship.
What most struck me about the event was how a veteran indie deal maker like Iwashina and a young, hungry producer like Phok described their strategies for luring private equity investment into an increasingly daunting specialty film marketplace. While Iwashina cautioned the young producers attending the panel that "we'll never be able to turn back the clock" to the time when "dumb money" was widely available, Phok confessed that he's essentially given up the notion of pitching prospective investors on the potential profitability of the relatively low budget horror films he's been making with directors like Ti West and Glenn McQuaid. After Phok claimed that most of these pitches involve endearing the investor to the personalities of the above the line talent than the potential for profits, Dentler chimed in, reflecting that "now more than ever, you have to look yourself in the mirror and ask, does this story really have to be a film? Can it be some other format? A web series? A video game?"
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