The 49th Annual International Film Festival (Oct. 10-24) is in full swing. Yesterday was the Chicago Film and Media Summit & Expo at the Cultural Center. Tonight is the Chicago Showbiz Networking gathering at Chicago’s Laugh Factory. And, there are several other gatherings this month by multiple Chicago film organizations.

October seems to be the key month when Chicago filmmakers find a new mix of talent and spin great creative projects. Some get fleshed out and produced, while others find no traction. In either case, networking opportunities rise to a new high as well.

Last Friday night, I met with a group of up coming actors who have a great idea for a television series. After reviewing their first draft script, we made alterations to the story structure that would make it ideal for HBO. The energy in the room from all the creative input was tremendous.

I’m not sure if all these networking opportunities play a role in the process, but several film grants are made available in October for Chicago filmmakers. This year one organization has increased their grants to $100,000 with the hope of seeing more films made.

Many times the grants will cover equipment costs. Typically the actors, crew and filmmakers will donate their time to leverage the project for greater visibility with gaining full funding from investors or a studio’s attention. There are also small film projects that are sometimes funded in full by the grants.

Some years back, I won a grant for a documentary that I produced on female barbershop quartets. The grant provided a lot of equipment and film stock, but at the time I was in need of finishing funds. The timing was off due to the quartet’s competitive schedule. They participated in the national competition that took place in the EnergySolution arena – Home of the Utah Jazz.

The timing of networking, festivals and grant applications never perfectly match any green lit film project. Seldom do you sign your entire ideal list of actors, crew and locations. There are few people locked to each project that can determine the timing of the shoot. Most have to find a way to adapt if they want to participate in the project.

November and December will soon follow – The two biggest months for attracting investors due to their need for tax write offs. These last two months will also see several single days of shooting for many companies, as they try to grandfather in their tax incentive program for carry over in 2014.

Copyright © 2013 by CJ Powers

Social media has become increasingly more important in the promotion of feature films. It has also become critically important to start developing the fan base well before the film is released. This past week I’ve interviewed a dozen social media experts to learn what they can offer our team, so I thought I’d share some insights.

Each social media guru has access to specialty lists, not too dissimilar to the mailing lists of yester year. The coverage can be pinpointed down to the activities and purchasing choices that each potential fan makes, giving us a clear picture of the exact type of person that is willing to buy a ticket to see our movie.

My development team is looking at a primary audience of women between the age of 18 and 39. Our primary woman loves intrigue, wants a movie that requires some thinking, and wants a romantically pleasant ending. She is a person who loves a great theatrical experience that includes some good-natured humor, little foul language, and characters that suck you into their lives.

With this in mind, we can search vast databases for a handful of films and books that generate similar responses and do a demographic sort based on these elements. By cross referencing Hulu, Netflicks, and other online distribution channels, we are able to create ideal lists of people who are interested in our film before we start principal photography.

Our secondary audience is people of all ages that like wholesome and moral films. This category gives us access to 2,000 bloggers that reach 1 million likeminded people and an additional 6 million Twitter impressions. By adding in our primary audience with an expectation that they each share info about our film with two people, we can generate more than 100 million impressions before we start filming.

Once we begin filming, we are able to add in magazines, news outlets, and promotional tracks that will provide us an additional 200 million impressions. And, during the film’s release, our ad dollars will help us target the exact geographic areas of our theaters. Our goal is to have 500 million impressions in total.

These numbers are very realistic, but will cost thousands of dollars. However, the value is worth every dollar and then some, as retailers will want to join us in cross promoting products within each of our promotions. This of course is limited based on related content.

We have set a social media marketing budget in place that should outperform any other film of the same type and genre. It will be fun to see how the approach works. I’m really looking forward to it. And you…You will be able to help us with social media too. I’ll let you know more about that in the near future (October).

Copyright © 2013 by CJ Powers

Frustration! Intense frustration!

The hardest part of filmmaking is the Catch-22. You need a great story, key actors or distribution in place to attract accredited investors. However, you can’t get key actors without money for a “Pay or Play” contract, and you can’t get a distribution contract that an investor would love without a film.

That leaves us with the screenplay being the only thing to work with, which we have. Unfortunately, no investor has time to read, nor do they know how to read a screenplay, as it’s far from the process used to read a novel. But they do have time for a synopsis.

I’ve been told that our story has such great layers that make it an amazing read for those who have time to get through the screenplay, but when summarized into a simple paragraph, the magic disappears. Thankfully some are willing to read a one-page treatment and others a three-page treatment. Those who are really willing to dive deeper into the story are happy to read a 12-page treatment and a few will read a 40-page treatment that’s packed with detail.

Argh! The amount of writing and rewriting to create all these various forms of the story to have an investor consider supporting the film is insane, especially since our expertise is writing screenplays, not novels. There is a completely different writing style employed to write something a filmmaker can understand versus an investor.

Screenplays are written visually on a shot by shot basis. It’s a string of moments, rather than a telling approach, that allows the story to surface through a process we call “show, don’t tell.” Writing prose is more of a story telling, not too dissimilar to sharing a story to campers sitting around a campfire.

These techniques are diametrically opposed and frustrate the best of writers who attempt to cross over from books to the screen or visa versa. And yet, many inexperienced film investors demand the skilled screenplay writer to write in the same style as a book.

I’m not sure people are aware that most books written after a film releases is done by a writing specialist whose main skill is translating the visual word to the written word. These are people who can’t write books or screenplays, but have found their niche in the translation process.

However, most people are aware of the translation process that takes a book to the screen, as most attempts are complete failures in the eyes of the original author. Disney’s new film Mr. Banks, starring Tom Hanks, deals with this very issue when Disney made Mary Poppins. The film was a huge success and changed the motion picture industry, but the author was so upset by how her story was destroyed that she refused to give Walt Disney the remaining books in the series.

So here I am with an incredible screenplay, thanks to the creative team who helped me develop the story, and I’m frustrated that I have to develop other documents to convince investors that the screenplay is excellent. It’s like being a manufacturer of a great car that no one will test drive until they watch a cool commercial that suggests the car will make them look cool.

What if the manufacturer makes a less than cool commercial because they are great makers of cool cars, not commercials?

It’s too bad that we face these types of Catch-22s. Even stars have little time to read, so they let others tell them which scripts to read and avoid. I have to hope that the star’s reader has the same taste in order to move the star to the negotiating table, or I have to offer them a contract, which I can’t do until the investors are in place, which they won’t do until the actor is in place. Argh!

It’s time for a miracle!

© 2013 by CJ Powers