Even though i realize the Warner Bros’ productions are probably worth a couple billion, i find it pretty unreal that they will lay down 200-300 million on a movie that isnt even guarenteed to make them a profit, or anything for that matter. Seems kinda risky to me.
So where do these Hollywood movies get their funding?
I am an independant filmmaker myself, and have made a few movies with friends, and kids from school, we liked what we did and looked at maybe getting on the Independant Film Channel, but upon investigation, the movie must have a budget of at least 500K??? How on Earth can any independant filmmaker afford that? I think all together we spent…$2000 on our movie, and we thought that was pretty steep.
Do they ask for a detailed budget? Why not just ‘cook the books’, as it were, and say it cost over $500k? If the film is good, it’s good.
I understand why they would have that limitation. They probably assume that if a filmmaker spends half a megabuck on a film, then he’s serious. I can imagine that they’d be flooded with submissions if they didn’t have the budget floor. I agree with Rodriguez that the size of the budget shouldn’t matter. I remember seeing an interview with Jim Jarmusch where he related having been asked when he would stop making ‘amateur’ films. Apparently an ‘amateur film’ is one with a budget less than $500,000. Jarmusch said (paraphrasing) ‘I guess I’ll never stop making amateur films.’
I think that answers my question about IFC, maybe i will “cook the books” a bit then hehe.
What about the major motion pictures however, do the Warner Bros really set down a quarter of a million on something that might not even make them money and could severly hurt their prestige with that?
Is the money taken on a loan? Do banks loan that much at the same time? How much of a percentage of that is just the actors/crews wages? Im guessing 50% on that.
First of all, the studio has a lot more money available than $2 billion. They are part of AOL Time Warner which isn’t doing well now but can still scrape up many billions if it needs to.
Studios are like casinos in a way. They don’t care if they win every hand. They just need a house advantage in the long run. They can’t predict with certainty what movies will do great or even be profitable. They do know that if they are skilled at picking and producing them over time, they can make money overall.
They don’t lay down that much, unless you’re making Lord of the Rings, which was a guaranteed success. Most aren’t budgeted over $100M.
Unfortunately, I’m looking for a cite here with the top-budgeted movies of all time but I can’t find it. Titanic still probably holds a high spot on the list with its then all-time high of $200M, which was way over budget anyway. This list shows the highest-budgeted animated films, with The Polar Express coming in at number 1 with a budget of $170M.
Still a lot of dough, but I just want us to be accurate 'round here.
As far as getting a budget, you’ll want to get investors. My best fiend was inspired by El Mariachi to make his own feature film. His employer was well known around town and had a lot of connections. They finally raised about $40,000. (More than Rodriguez spent on the original cut of his film, but less than a lot of filmmakers were spending in 1993.) Shot In LA said it looked as if his budget was ten times what it actually was, and called it ‘the best independent film shot in New Orleans’ at the time. So one way to get a budget is to find people who are willing to invest in your film.
I released a DVD on March 1, it was just a compilation, Best of sort of thing for a wrestling federation.
How could i go about getting that into Suncoast (everything on the DVD is owned by the wrestling fed and stuff) so i wouldn’t have to worry about copyright.
I have tried calling and emailing to no avail…would i just mail them a copy of the DVD to view it?
My friend’s film was included on two DVD compilations: Da Killaz and Livin’ Da Life. The former has four films on it. Two of the other films (Bang and The Murder Men) were made by another friend of mine. (Incidentally, when I was checking to make sure The Murder Men was one of the films on the dics, I found this comment: ‘At least 2 of the 4 movies in this combo are worth the price alone. CUT UP and BANG have some good action, suspense and occasional humor, much better than your average low budget thrillers.’ Nice.) Livin’ Da Life has ten films on it, but I don’t have that set.
Anyway, both of my friends used a distributor to get their films into stores.
If any corporation could be guaranteed a profit for any investment they made, they’d be one happy little corporation.
Nothing is guaranteed. However, the higher the production budget the higher the marketing and promotion budget. This almost always results in higher grosses. Especially these days when people rush to see a movie the first weekend and rush to buy DVDs over and over just because they change the extras. The reality of the movie world today is that a $200 million dollar production is far more likely in the long run to bring in money than 10 $20 million productions. And studios can budget for the long run. In fact, their accounting depends upon it.
Moreover, you can lose money when making a low budget film too. If you lose your entire $2000 because you can’t sell the movie, it’s worse for you than for a multi-billion dollar corporation to lose $20 million.
You need to get the movie to the distributers, they’ll handle getting it into the stores. Corporate stores like Suncoast, aren’t going to carry anything that isn’t approved by the higherups and most likely the only people the higherups talk to are the sales people for the distribitors.
Of course, this is a WAG, but I’m guess it’s how it works.
I’m not a filmmaker but I do see a lot of movies through Netflix and I get the impression that a lot of independent films get attention via film festival showings. And in fact Netflix itself is starting to sponsor and buy independent movies through a company called Red Envelope Entertainment (with a $100 million annual budget). Here is a link for information on submitting films to Netflix.
