Part 2
Part 3
So X's three week vacation was over and I was excited to start on some sort of regular daily routine. I won't go into regular detail on everything I did during the day for fear of stretching out this series of posts into infinity but what a normal day looked like was thus: come in, get my lap top set up, check e mail, create a daily list of things to get done with X, make phone calls until around 10:00 am (by which time it is closing time for most foreign territories that fit into that time zone) and then go about other daily tasks such as creating e-blasts (a mass e mail sent to all the distributors in a certain territory to announce either the availability of a title or an upcoming screening at a local film festival), going over deals, and other such things. It wasn't an exciting routine although there always seemed to be something to do and even though we went from 9:00 am till 6:30 pm (which, at $400 a week was less than minimum wage), the day usually went quick.
There are three main tasks that I had was specifically involved with during this time that I was involved in and that I will break down separately: 1) prepping for TIFF 2) penetrating the TV market and 3) prepping a delivery to Australia.
TIFF, although one of the world's biggest film festivals, isn't a major film market for the small guys. One of the nice things about TIFF is that it continues to maintain it's image as the public's film festival which is more about appreciating movies than making deals. That's not to say that deals aren't made there, because they are but it's not as formal as say Cannes or Berlin and it's usually only the big players who carry any weight at TIFF (since it's mostly the big movies that get played there). If you think about AFM or Cannes, sales companies will go there, set up a booth, display their promotional material and hand out screeners to interested buyers (which is what my phone calls were following up on). You won't see this going on at TIFF (it happens but mostly in hotel rooms and lobbys) and TIFF mainly attracts the likes of the Entertainment Ones or The Weinstein Companys; the big guys with money to throw around. Cannes however, because it is mostly all about business will attract all kinds of small and independent companies, like ours, trying to sell all kinds of films.
Therefore, TIFF wasn't as high on our radar as the other major markets were (Cannes, AFM and Berlin, plus Mipcom, which is a TV festival held in Cannes in October). That didn't mean there still wasn't prepping to do as X would be around, going to parties, meeting people, getting tips on what is looking good and seeing if there is anything worth acquiring (X's plan, for the record, was to have three new titles to reveal at Cannes. If his website is correct, he has, since, September, acquired just 1 new title). The problem with this company is that what X basically acquired was the leftovers that no one else wanted. Any company worth their salt already has their claim to the best stuff well in advance of the festivals (although I did spend a brief stint on the phone trying to find out the availability of Fubar 2).
However, one of my jobs was to download a list of all the films that were playing and check them on IMDBpro to see if they were available and if not who had gotten the sales rights and/or what countries did they already have distribution with. The reason for this was twofold. On one hand, it gave X a good idea of what films were available, in which case he would investigate whether or not they were worth checking out as well as, if we saw that one company was distributing such a film and we had one just like it, that, in sales, is what we call an angle.
The other TIFF assignment was to download the patron list to see who was attending, mark off who looked like someone we should talk to and e mail them to try and set up a meetings as well as RSVP to parties and other administrative duties.
TV was where X wanted to be. It was his belief that theatre and video were dying breeds and therefore ondemand and PayTV was where the future was and he wanted a piece of that pie (as well, I think he knew that the majority of the titles we backed were not worth the time to put into theaters and would only appeal to niche audiences on video). Therefore, having not much experience with TV, he left it up to me to dig deep into the TV market, find out who's who and what's what and try to get these movies in front of the people who could get them broadcast. We started with the States with two titles that were available there, although, to be fair, I can't imagine any big channel in the U.S. ever playing either of them. One being sci-fi movie, I targeted sci-fi channels as well as family channels for the other one as it was my opinion that it would play best as a harmless vanilla comedy that wouldn't offend anyone.
But this wasn't good enough for X. He wanted the HBO's, the Turners, the Star TVs, the big, global broadcasters. I had no faith in this exercise but it got me through the day. I called up HBO, many times trying to get through to someone in charge of acquisitions however, anyone who has ever called HBO without a direct name and/or number, knows it's next to impossible to get passed the switchboard. However, I did manage to track down the names and numbers of the acquisitions people for Turner, The Hallmark Movie Channel, as well as some little family channel and AMC. I also managed to set up phone interviews with AMC and Starz (the former of which didn't want the movie but wanted to tell us what they would like to see if we ever came across it and the latter had already seen the movie several years ago and passed on it then but wanted to have the same kind of conversation). It was progress.
As one last little note on this before moving on, I also did manage to get a screener sent to the Spiritual Cinema Circle which is a club that sends out monthly DVDs to members of movies that deal with Spiritual (not religious) subject matter and since our little movie involved God and the ghost of George Burns, I thought, why not? I never stuck around long enough to find out the outcome of any of these connections.
The most interesting thing I did during the remainder of August and the beginning of September was to hunt down all the materials for a delivery. The good news, was that the delivery was to Australia, an English speaking country (which eased the pressure a little) but the bad news is is that the delivery date was fast approaching and we didn't have all the materials. A delivery, in brief, is when you have sold a movie and you are sending the distributors all the materials it will take for them to format the film's release to their region. This includes, but is not limited to, the 5.1 sound, the M&E, a Dialogue Transcript, the Billing Block, the HD Master, the DVD Bonus features (if applicable), the Textless Backgrounds, etc.
Let me do a quick breakdown: 5.1 speaks for itself; M&E stands for "music and effects" which is exactly that, but without the inclusion of the dialogue (foreign countries need this for dubbing); a dialogue transcript is a print-out of all the dialogue and at what time it occurs in the film (which is needed for creating subtitles); the Billing Block is what you see on the bottom of posters where all the names of who did what are listed, HD Master I assume speaks for itself, as does DVD bonus features; Textless Background is the entire film without any text inserts. This is needed because, if a film starts with an image and over top reads: "Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away..." that will need to be translated into the country's language and put back in into the finished film.
We had exactly none of this. The problem was that the filmmakers behind the film were young first-timers who didn't really know what they were doing and since their movie had more or less made them all the money it was going to, they didn't really seem to care anymore. They had said that they didn't have any of the materials and put us in touch with a nice and helpful man named Oliver at Roadside Attractions in LA who were looking after the North American DVD release. Oliver gave us one-time access to the master at Fotokem so that we could make a copy of it but said that all of the other materials he had sent back to the filmmakers on burned DVDs. Despite this, they still claimed that didn't have it and didn't know anything about it. It was a brutal back and forth that was about the equivalent of clubbing seals. After Oliver had kindly, despite his business, offered to burn us what he had (the 5.1 and bonus features), the filmmakers decided they did have that after all and sent it to us.
Fine, now what about the M&E (which, once again, wasn't as important due to it being sent to an English speaking country, but would still be needed in the future) and Dialogue Transcript? The filmmakers sent me on another wild goose chase to another company in New York who did not have a dialogue transcript but directed me to another man in another company who might, as he had created the Spanish subtitles for the DVD. He didn't exactly have a complete dialogue transcript but he sent us his notes anyway and they would do for now. At this point we also had 4 people who were telling me that no M&E had ever been created. Fine enough, we'd do it and charge the filmmakers.
This task was done. So was I...
To Be Continued...The Conclusion Awaits
No comments:
Post a Comment