2007 May | The Attic Door

Archive for May, 2007

Investors and Film Financing

Erica Harrell
Producer

One thing that always seems to mystify people about the film industry is the amount of money that it takes to make a movie. This weekend Spider-Man 3 opened, a film that cost waaaay more than $200 million dollars. Although this is a staggering amount of money, its easy to see where it came from: Spider-Man is made by Sony Pictures, which puts out a bunch of movies every year. The money made from those movies funds the next batch of movies, and so on and so forth. It’s a normal business model.

However, outside of the studio system (otherwise known as “independent” filmmaking), it is up to the filmmakers to pay for the cost of making the film. Budgets for films are always discussed in the independent world, and are marveled at how it contrasts from studio pictures; Spider-Man 3 = $250 million, but Napoleon Dynamite = only $500,000.

So in the independent world, the entire cost of the film has to be covered by the filmmakers: the cost of the production, the cost of editing, the cost of exhibiting. This is usually found in the form of individual investors.

Investing in a film is the same as investing in any other business: there is a chance for financial gain and a chance for financial loss. Of course, for a film to earn money, people need to be paying to see it. The high cost of exhibiting the film can be paid for by selling it to a motion picture distributor. The distributor would buy the certain rights to show the film commercially and the films investors would see a return on their investment.

The highest profile market for the purchase of films (also known as acquisitions) are the big film festival markets like the Sundance Film Festival or Toronto International Film Festival. Every year, representatives from various distributors, such as offshoots of major studios (like Fox Searchlight or Focus Features) attend these festivals, looking for movies that can be purchased for some kind of commercial release.

This is not the only scenario in which a film can make money, but it is the best-case scenario. There are possibilities of selling to a foreign distributor for exhibition outside of the United States, as well the direct-to-video market, where the film is available in stores, as well as video rental outlets. Now an independent filmmaker can even distribute the film digitally using interfaces such as the iTunes Music Store or hosting the film on a private website such as this.

Writing a Monster

Eric Ernst
Writer

As mentioned in my previous post, writing A Monster in the Attic has been a very different experience than with anything I had written previously. Monster is the first project that I have worked on with another writer, same with Danny.

The concept for Monster first began as a short film in the summer of 2004. Danny was considering it as his thesis project for his BFA, but it soon became apparent that the story could not be fully realized in a short film. From there, Danny started to develop it into a feature length script.

As Danny wrote the initial script, he would often have me read it for notes and feedback. This continued for a while, until we reached a point where we realized that we would be better off writing it together, as our writing strengths were complimentary.

This presented an interesting challenge for both of us. How do you work with a writing partner that is 3 time zones away? Normally we would be in the same room, hashing it out as we went. But in this case, we weren’t even in the same state.

Luckily, the skeleton for Monster was already there, which made our work easier for us. It allowed us to look at the film in smaller parts – sequences and scenes – and work on those instead of making the story up as we went along. We could take each scene and made sure it worked as best it could, both on its own and in the story as a whole.

The majority of our script conversations took place, as mentioned in Erica’s post, using the iChat program. This allows us to still work face to face even though we aren’t in the same room together. Although this is not ideal, it is sometimes beneficial, as two writers, passionate as they may be for the project, can often have very different ideas of how things can play out, and having that distance has kept us from killing each other.

Just kidding. But having a writing partner is a relationship, and like all others, has its high points and lows. However, it does teach you at least one very useful skill: compromise.

Writing A Monster in the Attic with Danny has been an experience that I’ll never forget. It’s improved me so much as a writer and its been really wonderful working with someone with so much vision and passion for his work. I can’t wait for you all to see the final product.

Until next time,

Eric

The iChat

Erica Harrell
Producer

One of the most challenging, yet intriguing aspects of producing A Monster in the Attic is communicating with crew despite their physical distance. Though the film will be shot in Utah, our crew is spread out across the country.

Since Danny Daneau, Alex Eastwood (production designer) and Bryce Hudson (unit production manager) all live in Central Florida and I live in Los Angeles with Eric Ernst (writer) and Scott Uhlfelder (director of photography), we take full advantage of communication technology in this digital age. As dedicated Mac users, Danny and I often use the video conferencing feature found on Apple’s iChat program, that allows us to communicate face to face in real time. Since there is a 3 hour time difference, we’re often communication either really early on the West coast, or really late on the East.

This challenge will only increase once we move to Utah for production, as we will then be spread across three different time zones. Though Kanab is a seven-hour drive from Los Angeles and two days from Florida, communication is made easy through advancements in technology.