Making Movies Without Losing Money

This book is about the practical realities of the film market today and how to make a film while minimizing financial risk. Film is a risky investment and securing that investment is a huge challenge. The best way to get investors is to do everything possible to make the film without losing money. Featuring interviews with film industry veterans - sales agents, producers, distributors, directors, film investors, film authors and accountants - Daniel Harlow explores some of the biggest obstacles to making a commercially successful film and offers best practice advice on making a good film, that will also be a commercial success. The book explores key topics such as smart financing, casting to add value, understanding the film supply chain, the importance of genre, picking the right producer, negotiating pre-sales and much more. By learning how to break even, this book provides invaluable insight into the film industry that will help filmmakers build a real, continuing career. A vital resource for filmmakers serious about sustaining a career in the 21st century film industry.

Why does a director choose a particular script? What must they do in order to keep actors fresh and truthful through take after take of a single scene? How do you stage a shootout—involving more than one hundred extras and three colliding taxis—in the heart of New York’s diamond district? What does it take to keep the studio honchos happy? From the first rehearsal to the final screening, Making Movies is a master’s take, delivered with clarity, candor, and a wealth of anecdote. For in this book, Sidney Lumet, one of our most consistently acclaimed directors, gives us both a professional memoir and a definitive guide to the art, craft, and business of the motion picture. Drawing on forty years of experience on movies that range from Long Day’s Journey into Night to Network and The Verdict—and with such stars as Katharine Hepburn, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, and Al Pacino—Lumet explains how painstaking labor and inspired split-second decisions can result in two hours of screen magic.

You see them on the video shelves, with titles such as Domestic Strangers, The Bride of Frank, The Blood Between Us, Strawberry Estates and Sandman. Skeptically, perhaps, you rent one and slip it into the VCR. Hey, you think, this isn't so bad--sometimes actually quite good. Suddenly, you discover that there is a whole range of movies from filmmakers operating outside the studio system that have their own attractions that the big budget fare can't match. You have, of course, discovered the world of independent filmmaking. Intrigued, you begin thinking that maybe you could do this, maybe you could make an independent feature film. In this work, J.R. Bookwalter, Ronnie Cramer, Mike Gingold, Eric Stanze, Steve Ballot, and 20 others tell what it is really like to make an independent feature. Covering such topics as the script, equipment, actors, publicity, distribution, all facets of production, and budgeting, these indie filmmakers give a virtual how-to for those interested in joining them or just learning more about how those interesting titles end up on video store shelves.

An estimated 50,000 screenplays are registered with the Writers Guild America every year. When someone goes to the trouble and expense of protecting their work with WGA registration, that's an indication of serious intent; these folks want to see their script produced.If you're one of those screenwriters or filmmakers with the dream of seeing your story produced and projected on movie screens around the world, you know that having a great script isn't really enough. You may even have trouble getting anyone in "the industry" to simply read and consider your screenplay for production. That's the norm in today's movie-making pipeline: it's essentially a closed shop unless you have successful (profitable to financiers) films in your credit history. The only way around this Catch-22 is to produce your own film from material you truly believe in. But the stumbling block faced by everyone with a great script in their hands is that it takes money to independently produce a film of any quality...lots of money. FINDING THAT MONEY SO YOU CAN MAKE YOUR FILM IS WHAT THIS BOOK IS ALL ABOUT.Raising the money you need to make your movie is no longer the impossible task it once was. You only need to find those individuals with money they're willing to risk, and then convince them that your film has a reasonable chance of returning their investment plus some net profit attached.Does that sound impossible?Well, it's not. Mark Stouffer has raised millions of dollars from private individuals for his movies, and he's done it repeatedly. Now, for the first time, he shows you exactly how you can raise the money you need to make your films.All you have to do is pay attention and carefully follow the 7 Steps to Raising Money for Your Movie in this book.Nobody said that making a movie-or raising the money to finance your filmmaking venture-was easy. But it can be done...and you can do it exactly the way the author has done it.More than once, Stouffer started from absolute Ground Zero with nothing more than a telephone and blank paper on his desk. He's gone from "idea" to . . . to script . . . to business plan . . . to pitch . . . to production financing . . . to final cut . . . to distribution deal . . . to the red carpet. Asking others for money so that you can make your movie may sound like an impossible challenge. But if you use the tactics, strategies, and principles in this book, you will be an undeniable force. You will raise the money you need, and you will make your movie!

One of the most talented and imaginative artists of independent cinema, Gus Van Sant established himself with a number of important movies of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Beginning with Mala Noche, the 1986 gay classic of personal film expression, followed by two key works of the American indie movement, Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho, Van Sant films often feature characters on the borders of mainstream society. Subsequent films included hits, misses, and a notorious remake of Psycho. Regardless of the critical or commercial response to his work, Van Sant has maintained a vision that is unique among contemporary filmmakers. Conversations with Gus Van Sant is the first critical study to include both extensive original interviews with the director as well as discussions of his entirebody of work. The exchanges between film scholar Mario Falsetto and the indie filmmaker cover fifteen films directed by Van Sant over a period of thirty years. Throughout these discussions, Van Sant talks candidly about each film’s production history, visual style, editing patterns, and creative soundwork. The director also expounds on his work with actors, the relationship of independent filmmakers to the wider film industry, and many other subjects related to his filmmaking process. The conversations examine the rich thematic explorations of Van Sant’s films, which often revolve around the search for love and community on the margins of society and feature a fascination with death. From experimental films such as Gerry, Last Days, Elephant,and Paranoid Park—where Van Sant rebooted his understanding of cinema and his relationship to the Hollywood film industry—to Milk and Promised Land, this book explores the rich network of meanings in the director’s work. By melding the author’s critical perspective with the filmmaker’s own ideas, Conversations with Gus Van Sant creates a wider perspective on one of the most iconoclastic and imaginative directors of the last thirty years.

“An under-read and engaging show-biz memoir.” –The New Yorker "If I had a talent for anything, it was a talent for knowing who was talented." Mike Medavoy is a Hollywood rarity: a studio executive who, though never far from controversy, has remained well loved and respected through four decades of moviemaking. What further sets him apart is his role in bringing to the screen some of the most acclaimed Oscar-winning films of our time: Apocalypse Now, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus, The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, and Sleepless in Seattle are just some of the projects he green-lighted at United Artists, Orion, TriStar, his own Phoenix Pictures. "The ultimate lose-lose situation for a studio executive: to wind up with a commercial bomb and a bad movie." Of course, there are the box office disasters, and the films, as Medavoy says, "for which I should be shot." They, too, have a place in his fascinating memoir -- a pull-no-punches account of financial and political maneuvering, and of working with the industry's brightest star power, including Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Kevin Costner, Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Sharon Stone, Michael Douglas, Meg Ryan, and countless others. "Putting together the elements of a film is a succession of best guesses." Medavoy speaks out on how movie studio buyouts have stymied the creative process and brought an end to the "hands-off" golden age of filmmaking. An eyewitness to Hollywood history in the making, he gives a powerful and poignant view of the past and future of a world he knows intimately.

This is a moving, star-filled account of one of Hollywood’s true golden ages as told by a man in the middle of it all. Walter Mirisch’s company has produced some of the most entertaining and enduring classics in film history, including West Side Story, Some Like It Hot, In the Heat of the Night, and The Magnificent Seven. His work has led to 87 Academy Award nominations and 28 Oscars. Richly illustrated with rare photographs from his personal collection, I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History reveals Mirisch’s own experience of Hollywood and tells the stories of the stars—emerging and established—who appeared in his films, including Natalie Wood, John Wayne, Peter Sellers, Sidney Poitier, Steve McQueen, Marilyn Monroe, and many others. With hard-won insight and gentle humor, Mirisch recounts how he witnessed the end of the studio system, the development of independent production, and the rise and fall of some of Hollywood’s most gifted (and notorious) cultural icons. A producer with a passion for creative excellence, he offers insights into his innovative filmmaking process, revealing a rare ingenuity for placating the demands of auteur directors, weak-kneed studio executives, and troubled screen sirens. From his early start as a movie theater usher to the presentation of such masterpieces as The Apartment, Fiddler on the Roof, and The Great Escape, Mirisch tells the inspiring life story of his climb to the highest echelon of the American film industry. This book assures Mirisch’s legacy—as Elmore Leonard puts it—as “one of the good guys.” Best Books for Special Interests, selected by the American Association of School Librarians, and Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the Public Library Association