Path To Production: Re-Approaching The Market
Path To Production: Re-Approaching The Market
After you take the temperate on your project in the marketplace how do you take it back out once you've made packaging tweaks? PLUS Pre-Sales agents, Indie-Friendly debt companies, and more.
Over the last couple months we’ve been discussing my framework for a Path To Production for independent features in today’s marketplace - ‘in the trenches’ intel on what’s been working for me and my clients moving projects forward and getting them made.
The last installment was all about taking the temp in the market with your initial package, soliciting feedback, and altering your elements and strategy as needed. But what happens after you’ve done that? Time to take it back out to market!
Speaking of, I have a couple of announcements related to taking projects out to the market…
Post-EFM we’ve added a few new assets to the FS Pro Resource Hub: Indie-Friendly Pre-Sales Agents, Indie-Friendly Debt Financiers, and a sample inquiry template so you can DIY your outreach in a targeted manner.
As you can probably guess, not all sales agents or even debt companies are created equal. BIG differences among the players that you’ll want to be aware of.
If these sound like helpful resources to you and you’d like to access them along with all the other guides, lists, and templates I’ve created PLUS receive guidance from me during the entire process, head over to FS Pro and fill out the application to join our killer group of filmmakers and producers.
Or if you’re not up to DIY’ing the process and want the outreach process done for you, then check out my bespoke Submissions Service which is available for Features AND Series.
OK so you’re taking your project back out to the market after making tweaks…. what I like to do when I re-connect with the companies who gave initial feedback is highlight the changes that have been made, to make it easy for them to reassess potential.
For example, letting them know new talent attachments, bullet point changes to the script or budget, providing links to teasers, previous films or work from the director, etc.
I’m finding director and producer bodies of work to be important to sales companies in a way I’ve never seen before. So being able to easily reference your IMDB page, your website with all the latest projects and press, can be very helpful. In other words, the ‘who’ part of the equation is being scrutinized in a different way these days. Companies want to see at least someone on the team has experience at the scope and budget level you’re trying to pull off.
Which goes for the partners you are choosing to work with. You don’t want to haphazardly start adding producers and production company partners to your project unless there is undeniable value added by their involvement, and you have proof that their body of work aligns with the level of project you’re pitching to the market.
A couple resources I make regular use of to research these elements are IMDB Pro as well as googling companies’ individual websites. If they don’t care enough to keep it up to date and looking professional, that’s an immediate red flag for me.
With markets like MIPTV and Cannes coming up, you can also register for their attendee databases to research prospects. Cannes is just two months away and I’m already getting calls from my sales agent contacts looking for new projects to take to market, so it’s a great window of time to be putting these outreach practices into place.
Do you have any questions about the process? Or are you already knee-deep in it and have commentary on how it’s going for you?
Hit me up in the comments below and let me know or email me at stacey@filmspecific.com.
On that note, I’ll wrap this up for today. I hope you all have a fabulous day ahead and I’ll speak to you again soon!
To your success,
Stacey
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