Market Vibes Leading Up To AFM
+ MIPCOM insights from the trenches
I’m fresh off the boat from MIPCOM and honestly still processing all of my take-away’s so I’ll be parsing them out over several newsletters.
The TLDR; is that the sense of positivity and cooperation I experienced from the market at large far surpassed my expectations. Things are roaring back to life in a post-strike(ish) environment and the message is loud and clear from companies to execs to producers that we’re all ready to W-O-R-K.
My meetings and interactions spanned indie features, scripted and unscripted series, with a heavy dose of AVOD and FAST opportunities across the world.
If I could leave you with one tidbit today before I explore all of these topics in more depth in the coming weeks it’s that as producers/creators/filmmakers it pays to be diversified in every sense of the word - country, territory, genre, format…. all of it. It’s a tough economic climate out there no doubt and we’re living in an era where we have to do more with less, which just happens to be the indie filmmaker special right? Time to embrace fewer commissions, lower budgets, and higher costs and figure out how to make things work across all your projects.
AFM Prep + Packaging
Did you guys catch the last webinar in the AFM series on packaging? It was another good one so I suggest checking it out when you get a chance.
Unless you have a SAG IA you probably haven’t been able to package your project much in the lead up to AFM but it’s worth bringing it there and engaging in the strategic guidance on budgets and cast from sales agents and distributors if you can make it in person. It starts next week which is coming up fast!
Even if you can’t make it in person, I’ve still got a few AFM Consulting slots open to help get your completed film or one in the pitching stages into the right hands. Hit me up at stacey@filmspecific.com and let me know what you’ve got and let’s discuss how I can hopefully help.
How To Package A Film Properly
One of the pieces I wanted to highlight from the AFM Webinar I linked to above is something that they talked about at length - building a budget and financing plan in a contracting marketplace.
Across the board we all need to be thinking about creative ways to do more with less. I’ve talked about this before but one of the areas I’m pushing into hard with my own slate is international productions and territories where things just cost less. Add in currency arbitrage plus highly skilled talent pools and now we’ve got some wind in our sails.
Tax credits in and of themselves may not be enough to defray budgets anymore - the finance plans I’m devising for my own and client projects contain line items like ‘regional funding’ and ‘brand funding’…. plus enough equity to cover the decrease in Gap funding that’s avail/not avail in a high interest/low risk environment. It’s like playing chess instead of checkers… you really gotta zoom out and get super duper creative with your moves.
They also talked about how critical the Producing team has become to evaluating a project for financing. It’s as important as ‘who’s in it’. So finding the right Producing partner or EP for your film can make a world of difference in the packaging and financing of a project - sort of gives a nod of credibility in the eyes of agents, managers, financiers, and distributors.
The catch here is most Producers have their own deep bench of projects they are trying to get off the ground so coming to them with a project where you’ve already done some of the heavy lifting of attaching an actor or two, director, and a few bucks of equity in the bank can really help get your project considered seriously.
If you’re at this stage with your project how are your outreach activities going and what have you found works best?
Let’s discuss in the comments below….
On that note, I’ll wrap things up for today. I hope you have a fabulous day ahead and I’ll speak to you again soon!
Stacey
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