Film Distribution, Filmmaking, Fundraising
In this episode of the “Don’t Suck at Video!” podcast, I cover a variety of questions posed by members of the filmmaking community. In particular, I cover a lot about what the future looks like for filmmakers. I talk about ways to gain experience as well as whether filmmakers should pursue building their own audience, among other things. I hope you enjoy!
If you’d like to check out the podcast, you can find it wherever you listen to podcasts as well as the YouTube channel.
Transcript:
I’m Nick LaRovere. Welcome to the “Don’t Suck at Video!” podcast. I’m a filmmaker, video producer, and cinematographer who helps filmmakers tell stories build a career and helps businesses grow using video marketing. Today I wanted to do a Q &A especially for my friends in the Arizona filmmaking community that pose these questions to me. Yeah, so I just thought it’d be fun to go through and answer some questions that people have so without further ado, I’ll get started.
And I would like to add that I’m not an expert in everything. There’s a lot of stuff that I don’t know. So I’m just gonna try my best to answer these questions to the best of my ability. I can’t promise that I have all the information, but I’ll do my best. And I’ll let you know, I’ll be honest with you if I’m not sure. There’s a lot of other great resources out there and people in the community that have these answers if I don’t. So, all right.
We’ll get started. So the first question that I got was how to secure an agent, which is a great question. And I’m not certain if this person is talking about an agent in terms of being a director or an actor or what have you. There’s agencies and agents that represent different kinds of people. So I know a little bit, this is one area where I’m not particularly an expert, but I do know people who have had agents and I have looked into it myself. So basically from what I understand, I think the first step is that you need to build up a body of work that is going to interest an agent or agency.
Basically, you need to be able to show that you are someone that is worth the investment to promote, that you are sellable, right? So they are acting as your representative going out to people and saying, hey, you should hire this person. So you need to have work that looks really good or great acting reel. You basically need to have, I think it would help to have a good brand basically overall. How can you position yourself in the best way possible so that someone else thinks, yes, this is a bankable person, this is someone that we can push, this is desirable. So that’s my thoughts on that.
The other thing I will say is from what I’ve heard from people who do have agents and that’s actors as well as crew, they’re not everything. They’re not a magic ticket to success. So if you think that you’re going to get an agent and then magically you’re going to get all this work, it’s just not how it works. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, it’s the same with like business stuff and agents and everything. You are going to be your own best advocate, right? No one else cares as much about you, about your career as you do. So you are going to be the one who books most of your work. An agent can help, I think, add a sense of credibility maybe or be someone that’s an intermediary that can help you with negotiation maybe. But especially what I’ve heard from actors is that a lot of the time you are going to be the person that ends up booking yourself a lot of the time and but it can help to have an agent. So that’s my answer on that. Okay.
So next question is two questions that people asked. One of the questions was, how do you get funding for your film? And the other question was, how do you get funding if you don’t have any connections or friends? This is like, could be its own whole podcast, right? And I’m still learning and I’m trying to dig in and learn as much as I can so I can share with other people. Cause it is a very painful topic in my experience for a filmmaker who wants to make films.
But filmmaking is expensive. Especially if you like to do sci -fi and stuff like I do. Because I’m crazy and I like to have no money I guess. So anyway, so how do you get funding? There’s a few ways. And some of these are going to be obvious but I’ll get into it. Crowdfunding. It is still viable for certain things to an extent. However, it’s not a set and forget thing. It takes a lot of work.
But if you approach it the right way, there is a way that you can get stuff crowdfunded. Personally financing projects is a big one, especially when you’re starting out. And I can talk about that more in a second. But yeah, personally financing it. I don’t recommend doing anything like putting your film on a credit card, but you can have a target goal, a budget for your film, and you can save up for that. You can do extra jobs if you’re motivated. Do extra work.
Find ways to make extra money, set a little bit of money aside at a time, and eventually you can save up a budget. Another common way for small films, and I’m assuming feature films here, short films is going to be another issue altogether. For the most part, I would say assuming you need to either crowdfund or personally finance short films. So for feature films, for small ones, it’s pretty common to do like small investments.
So basically local people that you know, either people do like the dentist and doctor, family members, that sort of thing. And it’s kind of like a big version of crowdfunding, right? Like you are basically going to select people and asking for investment into a project. And it’s kind of like crowdfunding in a different way. You could raise 30, 50 grand that way. It just depends on who you know. And then the other way is, seeking a person who is a film investor or someone who is interested in investing in film. And this is a connection saying when you start to go in this direction, and I think it’s true when you’re asking anyone for money, but especially when you start asking total strangers for money for your project, you really need to have a pitch deck that’s clear, that shows that you have a plan, you know what you’re getting into, and you’re not just like, yeah, I want to make my movie. Can you just… finance my hobby for me, but that you’re showing hey, no, this is a business plan. I have this all thought out Here’s my team. Here’s what we’re doing. Here’s similar films and this is how much they’ve made Here’s our plan for for selling the film and so even if you aren’t able like you haven’t done that before it’s going through the process of Putting the best business plan together that you can Yeah, so is there anything I miss anything?
Investors. I think that covers everything. The question, the part of the question about if you don’t have any connections or friends is if you want to be, in my opinion, if you want to be a successful filmmaker, you need to start making connections and friends because filmmaking is not a solo sport, it’s a team sport. So if you want to make good films and you want to do it sustainably over time, I think you need to…
You need to form those relationships. You need to be networking with people. You need to be building those relationships so you have people who want to work with you, who want to invest in you, and you need to…
Yeah, people who want to invest in you. And connections, the more people you know, the more people that you talk to. You never know that someone that you know knows someone who, if you ask them, potentially could be interested in funding your film. So you just got to get out there. I know that it’s not comfortable. I know it can be very difficult, but you just got to get out of your shell. I’m an introvert, so I get it.
You gotta get out of your shell and you gotta talk to people and you gotta meet people, you gotta make connections. It’s just, it’ll help you so much. So, that’s what I have to say. Those are methods to get funding. The nuts and bolts of it, I probably need to move on. At the end of the day, I think if you are going to fund it yourself, you can do whatever you want, right? You get total freedom, so that’s kind of the cool thing. But, that can be tough.
It’s very expensive to make films. So you just have to weigh that against getting investment, which means you’re going to have to put in the extra work to put a pitch deck together and find that money or crowdfund that money. And at the end of the day, you just need to commit internally to the fact that it is going to be a lot of work no matter what. There is never going to be a silver bullet that gets you what you want to make your film. So there you go.
Who me can talk about financing more later? I plan on releasing a document of my collected notes. I need to write down some more stuff. Okay, so the next question is, what are the best steps to take in addition to networking to getting on projects and becoming a more skilled producer? Hmm, the best steps to take to get on projects and become a more skilled producer.
Addition and networking. Well, I would say there’s two ways to get experience, either on your projects or someone else’s projects. So networking, offering to help other people so that you can get experience. Hey, I want to help you produce this project. I think there’s no substitute for experience, in my opinion. So you can become a more skilled producer.
Also though by doing your own projects. So if you’re having a hard time finding those opportunities that work for you, the alternative is make a project happen yourself, right? Let’s say you don’t want to direct, but you do want to produce. You can put the team together, right? Like that is sort of what a producer does is putting the machine together. So you don’t have to have all the elements. You just have to find them and put them together.
So you can find a director with a script or you can find a director and find a script. You can make this thing happen. I think the key is you want to find a director and you want to find key people who are excited about that project. Like they want to do it and also carry it because you as a producer, you’re not the creative lead, right? So you can’t carry that whole project on your shoulders. So you’re going to want to find a director that wants to creatively carry.
They’re part of the burden and not just get a free ride to get to direct something. So yeah, but then you could also direct it and then you get the experience of producing and directing and you run the show. So that’s a way that you can get experience. Yeah, and I just think with repetition, you improve your processes, you create processes and you document what you did last time and you continually improve. That’s how you’ll get better with producing. You also seek mentors and… read and stuff like that.
Next question. Okay, so I’m going to mention this question, but I’m not going to answer it in this episode because it is a well, let me just tell you what the question is first. How do you handle proper channels to report, etc. being harassed and or assaulted on set or behind the scenes, please? So like I was saying, this is a very important topic and it is a serious topic and the gravity of this question deserves its own episode and something more well thought out than me just going off the cuff. So I will at some point take some time to go through and answer that to the best of my ability and talk about stuff surrounding that topic because obviously this is a problem that needs to be addressed and it is…
It requires some thought on my part to articulate what I think about it. And so that’s why I want to take some time and not just jump into it. It takes, it needs some thought because it’s not totally clear what needs to happen in different kinds of situations. There’s some nuance to different situations that can happen. Like there’s stuff that’s very clear, like, Hey, I was assaulted versus harassment. Sometimes it can be more unclear what should be done.
Like on the one hand someone could get arrested by the police and go to jail. That’s pretty clear on the other hand if something is not illegal Okay, but it’s bad. What do you do about it? So Anyway, I’ll get into it and I’ll cover it thoroughly in another episode because I think it’s important Okay, next question is Have you had an experience dealing with an actor with a big ego? If so, how did you deal with it?
I thought about this before when I read it and I honestly, I can’t say I’ve dealt with an actor with a big ego yet. Not really. I mean, generally speaking, most of the people that I’ve worked with have been very reasonable and everybody’s got their problems and their flaws. But generally speaking, everyone I’ve worked with has been good. So…
How would I answer this? First off, try to cast people that are reasonable. I don’t know how to put this.
If you’re getting red flags from an actor at some point in the process, you don’t have to hire them. Like honestly, if you feel that they are going to be a pain or you feel like they are going to be unreliable or you feel that they are going to cause you problems on set, then you should think about whether that is a person that should be in the role or not. If you’re dealing with a situation where, hey, but they’re really good, I… really want this person. You’re just gonna have to make a decision. It might work out, might be fine, or you might have to deal with some stuff. You might have to deal with a difficult person. And this can happen with crew too. It’s not just actors, I’m not picking on actors. But you’re just gonna have to make a decision and you can make a decision that no, I’m gonna wait, I’m gonna find someone else. Or you can decide to go with that person.
And just understand that you made the decision and you have to deal with the consequences. How would I deal with it?
It’s hard to answer that outside of a specific scenario, but you just try and be diplomatic with people and understand, unless they’re just totally out of their mind, most people can be reasoned with, like they are there for a reason, they want to be there for a reason, so you can, it’s a give and take, like, okay, I need this from you. What can I do for you to make this go smoothly? And just…
Try and understand where they’re coming from and maybe you can figure something out. Yeah. Okay. boy. Big question. Okay. So the next question is what is going to be the future of content and independent creators and filmmakers? Second part Hollywood is basically in shambles and is on eggshells due to the potentiality of IATSE going on strike talks.
Going good, thankfully it seems. Are people better off doing their own projects and tailor it to the internet, or should people continue trying to go the traditional route? So the question is, what’s the future of content and independent creators, filmmakers? Should people just do their own thing, or should they try and continue to do the traditional route? I have a lot of opinions about the traditional Hollywood route.
I would say for quite a while now, it has been clear that we have been moving away from the traditional system just because equipment and method of distributing your films out to audiences, the ability, the means to create your own audience and provide content to them on your own outside of any established system.
It’s been democratized, so everybody has access to these distribution platforms and the ability to create an audience and cheaper ability to create content. So, I mean, that’s been going on for like 15 years, right? Basically since YouTube existed. And there’s more and more streaming sites, which means potentially more and more places where your stuff could go. I would say there still is a traditional route, but…
What’s going on right now is over time, over the past few decades, studios, there have been fewer and fewer studios, and those fewer studios are making bigger and bigger budget films over time. Like, there’s a term called the tent pole feature, which is, this is the biggest feature film that a studio does in a whole year, right? It’s the big spectacle, it’s the biggest budget film, it’s got the biggest stars. It used to be those only happened, once in a while. They were much rarer. And a big budget film was like $20 million. Like I’m just, you know, I’m just spitballing numbers here, but like the films were not two or $300 million. That’s an insane amount of money. And considering like we’ve got more technology and filmmaking is actually easier in a lot of ways. It’s like insane how much the prices have ballooned. So in my opinion, so.
I guess what I’m getting at is they’re doing fewer films. Like studios are doing fewer films, so…
There used to be more opportunities for filmmakers to break in, I think, because if, let’s say you do a $10 million film or your $300 million film, you can do 30, yeah, my math is right, 30 $10 million films. That’s 30 directors that get a potential opportunity versus one. So I think it’s difficult because the opportunities in the traditional side are becoming fewer.
And being concentrated with certain people. There are still smaller movies, but I think the gap is widened. So the low budget movies are lower budget, the higher budget movies are fewer in between and bigger budget. And so I guess what I’m getting at is the question is which one of those do you want to be? And how realistic are you going to be with your goals? Of course, do we want to be the guy making the $300 million movie? Of course. But realistically, it’s like, a portion of a portion of a percent of people are ever going to get that far. So you just you just have to do your best and I think that it’s good to be realistic but also set high goals. So if you are trying to be a filmmaker you want to make films full -time I think it’s not a bad idea to create your own audience and I have done a lot of research on this and you can make a full time living creating stuff online for people like obviously we have youtubers right but there are other niche audiences that don’t you there are so many niche audiences that you’ve never heard of on YouTube and other platforms that create and tell the stories that they want to tell maybe they’re not feature films but it’s stuff that they enjoy and also feature film makers as well but small budgets.
And they have built up an audience of people that are interested in seeing what they produce. So there’s a theory called 1000 true fans and basically it’s the idea that you only need a thousand really strong fans that support everything that you do. Like if you put out a movie they’re gonna buy it, they’re gonna tell their friends about it, they’re gonna share it online. There’s basically different layers of audience. There’s like general audience that are just like, cool.
There’s people who are maybe more interested in them, there’s true fans at the top. So the idea that you need millions and millions and millions of followers and subscribers or whatever to make this thing happen is not true. You need fewer maybe than you think. You need fewer and more dedicated audience members that are really interested in what you’re doing. So I think learning how to build your own audience and pursuing that is definitely a good alternative.
It’s not going to necessarily get you to making multi -million dollar movies. But the thing is, is if you have an audience, you can leverage that. And that’s something that is very powerful because you know, you have, will have dollar amounts. You will be able to say, here are my metrics. And you can actually take that to leverage and leapfrog two bigger projects.
Like, if you were looking for investment, you’re like, hey, I already have this existing audience. They’ve supported me in these ways, like that you have metrics that can show that you have it. Bankable subject matter or whatever. I hope that makes sense. That being said, building an audience is not easy. It is a long term thing. I have not really been able to do it. Part of it is just because I didn’t want to.
I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to be the guy that was making YouTube videos every week or whatever. But the other thing is I think if you don’t do something that is very resource intensive, like I’m doing sci -fi and post -apocalyptic, it’s very resource intensive. It makes it harder for me to find a way to create things on a regular basis in order to build the audience. So if you’re not in the same position as me, I think you’re in a better position than me to work on creating your own audience.
So, and that doesn’t have to be YouTube, but certainly it can be. YouTube will help you with organic audience growth because of the algorithm and everything. And if you do another method, you won’t have that benefit. So anyway, just do some research on that. The future of content creators, I don’t know what’s gonna happen with Hollywood. I mean, Hollywood is spending a lot of money and they’re spending a lot of money on movies that not a lot of people want to watch. And if you look at some of the last couple years, some of these top movies, the top movies that they’re spending money on, they’re not making their money back. And it’s a problem. And Netflix is having the same problem. These other streamers are having the same problem where they’re spending a lot of money and it seems like they’re kind of going upside down on these projects. It’s just not sustainable. So we’ll see what happens. I would say don’t rely on the Hollywood system. I think that you need to focus on figuring out how to forge your own path with your filmmaking. So that was the last question. Yeah, so I don’t know what the future is going to hold for independent filmmaking, you know, for someone like me who wants to be directing full time, I think that there’s nothing wrong with doing it on the side either. If you love doing it, you can do other things and you can still make films. You can do other things and do a job and take that extra time that you need to continually build an audience, to build upon your skills and to not give up. Just understand that it’s not going to be quick, it’s not going to be overnight, it’s going to take a long time. It could take you 10 years to build an audience, to learn the skills that you need to learn, to finally get some attention. It could take longer, it could go much quicker. I think the key is finding something that you can be really passionate about for a long time and that you can make…
You can tell stories in that box for an audience, a particular audience, and you can focus in on them and making stuff that they will enjoy, that you also enjoy. I think that focus is the key there. An example that a friend of mine uses, he has a friend that has a, I don’t know if it’s YouTube or whatever, but.
He has an audience that’s only focused on bikepacking, which if you haven’t heard of bikepacking, it’s like backpacking makes bicycling. So long distance bicycle, but you wear backpacking, you camp. And that’s a pretty niche thing. It’s pretty specific, but people who like backpacking, they really like bikepacking. So he’s able to cater to that audience and he can talk about and show what he really enjoys and the audiences into it. And he has his thousand true fans and he is able to make a living through that. So that’s just one example. Yeah, there’s no easy way or shortcuts here, but it can be done. It can be done. So don’t despair. Just keep trying. Do your best. Figure out what it is you can really focus in on and dedicate yourself to for a long time. Go where the audience is to some extent.
Like find that crossover between what you love and audiences that are interested in the thing. I know another guy who he makes basically Hallmark style like Christmas movies and stuff. And you know what? Is that exactly the thing that he wants to do? No, but he does enjoy it and he enjoys directing most of all. So the fact that he gets to direct for a living and create these films is awesome. And so that…
He may not be doing those forever, right? That may be a phase of his life and that’s what he’s doing right now. And it’s not quite exactly what he would want to do, but it’s pretty close. So.
Boy, I think that’s it. That’s all I got. I don’t have any other questions here. So…
I guess I’ll add one more thing and that is don’t feel like you need to suddenly or quickly be able to make money from your audience. I feel like I kind of fell into that trap. I think you’re building a long term asset. I’m not sure how else to put it. Your audience you are forming a relationship with by regularly, consistently sharing stuff that you’re creating with them and bringing them along for the ride and entertaining them or providing some kind of useful value or information. It’s not going to make money right away and so I think you can treat it like a business and create a plan. I think you should go about it in a directed and structured way.
Don’t plan so much that it stops you from doing the thing, but line out like, okay, here’s where I wanna be in five years. Here’s some of the steps I’m gonna take to do that. I’m going to, here’s my audience, define my audience, define the kind of things that I’m gonna make. And you can change as you go, but like just pick something at first. Define the audience, define the subject, and come up with some sort of content plan. Like, okay, I’m gonna post.
I’m going to do my best to post every two weeks or every week or once a month I’m going to post a short film, whatever that is, and just do it on a regular basis and continually improve as you go and have a business plan and just look at what you’re doing, see how it’s performing and keep posting. And that’s the thing that I have seen consistently no matter who you talk to. Doesn’t matter whether it’s blogging, video on YouTube, anything, any time you’re building any kind of audience.
They’re looking for consistency. And you, that’s just, consistency is gonna be the number one thing that’s gonna help you. So if you have a plan going into it and you commit to that plan, it gives you some structure. I think that will help you a lot. So that’s what I’m doing for me. So anyway, hope all that information is helpful. I know I probably didn’t totally answer all the questions here me some of these things I could just talk about forever. So anyway, yeah, hope that helps and thanks for joining me on the “Don’t Suck at Video!” podcast. I’ll see you next time.
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