12 posts tagged “market”
There's an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal today that's worth checking out: Indie Films Suffer Drop-off in Rights Sales.
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
Filmmakers check this out: Midnight Screams. They're accepting submissions for both shorts and features to broadcast on satellite and cable in the Chicago area.
http://feraldream.com/Day 9
- Get an apartment or hotel close by. To do this you’ve got to book at least 8 months in advance. The best located places will only rent the Cannes period as a block (rather than day-by-day) so share if you have to bring down the cost.
- Bring two pairs of shoes, lightweight clothes and be prepared to shower and change midway through every day – it’s hot and humid and there’s a lot of walking to be done
- Get your party invitations organised before you come, if you can. Find out who else you know is going and team up because most invites are you plus one – allows you to network on someone else’s dime
- Take the Zen approach to networking: keep an open, enquiring mind; be passionate about your project but dispassionate about the future – there are too many variables outside your control; tune into your Buddha nature – opportunities are at every bar for those with a pure heart!
Day 8
Day 7 – Market Premiere
This was the day of our first market screening. I was up early and emailed all the buyers on my distribution lists to remind them we would screen at 2:00pm.
I was wearing my t-shirt with MindFlesh back and front so I looked like a walking billboard – which is important in Cannes because it’s not the sort of place where you can just leave your flyers anywhere :)
I’d chosen the time and place of screening after experience of previous years: convenience. There are so many films screening that any effort required on the part of the buyer might be enough to discourage attendance. Hence, I chose the Palais D – it’s in the main building and visible from the top of the stairs. The start time of 2pm allows those who party all night enough time to wake-up, recover and get something to eat.
Of course my second screening tomorrow is at the earlier time but I thought I ought to mix it up a little for those buyers who get busy with meetings in the afternoon.
At 1pm I was in the cinema and the projectionist allowed me to check the sound and image – he was very friendly and spoke English.
At 1:45pm our first audience member arrived. At each screening room there’s a woman with a barcode reader. As each person arrives she scans it over their market badge and it’s fed into a market report for viewing the next day. I’m writing this on Day 8 and I’ve just viewed and downloaded the report - now I can follow-up with people.
The screening was well attended so it proved worthwhile plus I’d given out about five DVD screeners ahead of time for those too busy or unable to attended at this time.
After the screening, I headed out to Century – another London private members club that was holidaying in Cannes on the beach. I met with horror director Jake West and some financiers that Calum works with. We got kicked out about 7:30pm and I headed over to the party in the Czech Republic pavilion being hosted by a Czech studio keen to promote itself to producers. I met a composer at the bar and when he left I went home early to be ready for Tuesday’s screening.
Meeting People
Here’s the thing: for the public Cannes is about films, for the industry it’s about meeting people. Many take the route of emailing or calling people they’d like to meet – after all, every Cannes delegate has contact details in the printed Cannes Guide and online.
For me, however, I find the best place to meet people is at parties. I know this doesn’t sound very professional but it works very well for me because most of the people I’d really like to meet probably wouldn’t return my phone calls ;)
Day 6
In the spirit of transparency, I’m writing up Day 6 (Sunday) retrospectively because it’s been a very busy couple of days preparing for and promoting the screening.
The two major events were a meeting with a distributor and a presentation on video on demand from the European Audiovisual Observatory.
Distributor meeting
I got this meeting by just cruising the stands and looking at film posters. Although buyers, sellers, producers, press etc. all have different badges, it can be a bit rude checking out someone’s badge before deciding to speak to them. Hence, most of the guys at front of house on the stand are friendly to all – especially if you’re there early in the morning and not much is going on. Once engaged in polite conversation it’s easy to mention that you’re selling a film. If the stand is being run by a company that buys and sells films like yours (as many do) then there’s a chance you can get them interested in your film. This has worked for me a couple of times and I’d been invited back to screen my trailer to the CEO.
I was invited into the depths of the stand where the distributor has a comfortable screening area – sofa and widescreen TV – and we all watched the trailer, I answered questions, we discussed the deal I was interested in and then I left them with a screener. It’s really as simple as that.
Video On Demand
This presentation was about the take-up of video on demand in Europe with specific case studies on the UK and France – the two largest markets.
Rather than repeat all the numbers here, slides from the presentation are probably available on the EAO website. I recon you can find them if you Google “VoD – which licences for which markets?”.
The definition of VoD here is download or streaming of internet-based films and TV shows either to PC or TV (including Germany’s MaxDome, BBC’s iPlayer, Virgin Media’s offering etc.). Had they looked at the US then it would have included, say, Comcasts’ OnDemand service, Jaman, Amazon Unboxed etc.
The key conclusions that I took away were:
- that there is strong demand for VoD but the overwhelming majority of the demand is being satisfied through piracy (ie. the illegal download of films without payment from bit torrent sites)
- the public’s appetite for piracy is unlikely to be sated until VoD suppliers (and producers) offer a compelling service - and this is mostly likely to be “all you can eat”-type subscription services rather than pay-per-download.
One final interesting factoid: use of the BBC iPlayer (PC-based catch-up TV player) accounts for 5% of all UK internet traffic!
So far, my impression of Cannes is that it's one giant party. But we all know a lot of business gets done there and I think tomorrow is Robert's big screening. Let's all wish him luck! Here's his day 5 report:
Day 5
I guess by now it’s possible to see a routine emerging? We finished at 4:30am this morning. With the market screening now only a day away I’m going to cut back on the drinking this afternoon and try to get an early night.
Yesterday Calum Waddell, journalist, producer and party fixer, got us into a vodka promotion party. I think it was pitched to him as some kind of glamorous beauty pageant but I think it was actually a Russian vodka industry awards party.
First we couldn’t understand a word of the ceremony because the master of ceremonies spoke alternately in French and then in Russian and secondly there were so many awards I recon almost everyone there walked away with one – in fact some people had three or four under their arm. All the filmmakers like us who’d been duped where just left laughing so much because the whole thing was so bogus. There was no reason at all to hold this self-congratulating back-slapping event in Cannes.
The icing on the cake was the Miss Vodoka awards that seemed to me to go to the hosting Russian vodka millionaire’s daughter, wife and niece. By this time we’d had too much vodka and I joined the line of Russians to get my photograph taken with them. Lol! What a phoney event and only the filmmakers could see the comedy in it all. Still, I’m being a little unfair – we had a nice time, drank a lot of free vodka and it was an early evening do so it set us up for the night. The highlight for me was seeing the White Russian – a young guy dressed all in white except for his dark wrap-around sunglasses. How on earth he could see in the dim lighting I don’t know. He’d obviously dressed up to collect his six awards :)
We finished the evening at The Hospital party and two friends missed their bus back to Nice so had to crash with us. I tip-toed over them this morning as they all slept soundly on the floor. Top tip: book accommodation early and get a hotel or apartment in Cannes.
Festival Passes
I have a meeting with a distributor this afternoon which I set up yesterday and after that I’m hoping to get tickets to see the Clint Eastwood movie that’s premiering here. There are several different types of pass with varying degrees of privilege. Mine allows me to reserve tickets for grand events in the main festival cinema. Only the early 8:30am screenings have no dress code otherwise everyone has to wear evening gown or tuxedo (black tie). If I can get the tickets, I’ll be doing the 8:30am screening and turning up scruffy.
Availability of these top tickets are carefully managed and it’s necessary to go online about 24hrs before the screening when the tickets first become available to avoid disappointment. I’m supposed to be at a party this afternoon so I’m going to have to drag myself away for a few minutes……
Sounds like the party-ing's getting hot and heavy! Here's Robert's Day 4 report:
Day 4
I’m pleased to be writing these blog postings every day because otherwise I think I might lose track of the days!
I finished at 4:30am yesterday…well.. earlier today and that was only because they shut the bar otherwise I fear I could have been there at sunrise! And what a day for meeting people – best day so far I’d say.
There are a lot of cinemas in Cannes and the afternoon screening of Clubbed (great film - a kinda character-driven British gangster movie) was at the Star – probably the cinema farthest away from the main festival building. I set off well ahead of time and was glad I did because I ran into quite a few people I know so had to make frequent stops to talk. The first person I met was the producer of a movie now in post directed by Duncan Jones (David Bowie’s son) called Moon. I’d seen only a few stills on the film’s Facebook page but running into Stuart he whipped out his iPod and allowed me to watch the trailer (they’re selling the movie out here but it yet has many months of post-production SFX to be added so viewings of the trailer have been by invitation only I believe). Oh man! Superb – I gotta get an invitation to the premiere of this movie. I don’t know how much of what I was told is public knowledge and how much was in confidence so I won’t say any more except check out the Facebook page and track how this film becomes bigger and bigger over the coming year.
After Clubbed I took in another meeting I’d arranged and then took a shower and got ready for the evening.
I had dinner with a old friend and producer and then Calum I got into the Tatu party – yeah them, the Russian lesbian band… only they’re not lesbians any more apparently. The girls are out here with a film to promote and as part of the promotion threw a party on the beach and played a 40 minute set. The photos are from the beach gig. How did we get invited? We met Troy the guitarist in a hotel bar a few nights ago. Amazing. Calum did all the hard work though as the two of them really hit it off. His encyclopaedic knowledge of obscure indie bands finally came into use :)
Le Petit Majestic
The Tatu party kicked out at 1am and we ended the evening at Cannes’ famous Le Petit Majestic. Now I’m not a big fan of this place because it can be difficult to get a drink and last night was no exception – it was totally rammed. The bar is on a street corner and the crow spills out into crossroads for about 30 yards in all directions. There was even a 12-man line at the men’s restrooms. Still, I did meet a couple of cool people while waiting in the queue so not such a problem in the end :)
The LPM is Cannes’ worst kept secret. It’s the place where filmmakers rich and poor, the already-made-it and the aspiring throw aside all pretentions and mingle together. It’s a great place to meet people but I have to confess I was dragged along kicking and screaming because it’s not my kinda place really. Nevertheless I was proved wrong and had a great time and probably met about 5 producers just between 3am and 4am! One of whom I met when we both almost got run over by a car full of interns that tried to drive through the crowd! Only in Cannes….
So I didn’t make my usual 8am breakfast today. Got up about 10:30am and got ready for a meeting with a scriptwriter. She’d emailed me yesterday for a meeting and I was very pleased she did because I liked her pitch today and look forward to reading the script.
Not sure what I’m going to do this afternoon – my hands have just started shaking with the alcohol abuse… maybe time to re-centre myself for a few hours? Have to do it all again at 6pm – we’ve got invites to a penthouse party being thrown by a sales agent… I’ll let you know how it goes!
Hey Robert, nice shoes! :-) Here's his report:
Day 3
Yesterday afternoon I went back to the Stock Film area to check if I’d be able to view the projected film a few minutes before the screening – just to be sure it looks right. The image on the tape is anamorphic and it’s correctly labelled in English but not in French :)
I met with a friend from London who now lives in LA working as a finance finder (not entirely sure what the official name is for these guys) – he vets film projects, packages them into slates and then seeks finance. He ran by me the films he’s here to get funding for and I got his feedback on some one-pagers I have for my films in development.
No Jacket Required
Last night was the Cannes marche opening night party. I think that everyone screening a film or renting a booth in the market was invited – so very much an industry party rather than a celebrity or promotional party.
I had my invitation with me but I was going to have to try to get Calum in. I’d tried emailing the organisers to get another pass but had not heard back. So here’s what happened….
First, I checked the invite several times to make sure of the dress code. The French bouncers (the doormen? Not sure of the American word) are shipped in from around all of France because the festival requires so many and boy are they dicks.
So there’s no dress code and much to Calum’s annoyance I wore a Kooks T-shirt and my chequered Vans – he of course dressed up but then he didn’t have an invite and I still had to use my charm to get him in!
We waited in line to get through the bouncers and check in with the hostesses. As I walked in saw him look down at my shoes and I thought “oh no, run!” His arm reached out to grab mine to hold me back but I managed to stretch out my arm and fully extended stick my market pass under a hostess’ nose! Phew - close shave. The dick was still clinging on to me but the hostess flicked him a look to let me go! There’s no arguing with these dicks because they don’t speak English and I don’t speak French. So complaining that the invite doesn’t stipulate a dress code is going to be a lost cause. Every year they’re the same and that’s why Calum was annoyed with me because we both knew I was chancing my luck – but hey, I’m a nonconformist man! :)
OK, I was in and thankfully the hostess was very nice and allowed me access for one guest but it looked dicey for several minutes as she pondered the rules and regulations.
Inside was pretty cool – free food, champagne and fireworks. I met a producer, my sales agent who is selling my first feature, London Voodoo, and someone from the Canada film board. Again, another successful networking event: it all happens at the parties!
We finished at 3am again and found a small café still open serving hot snacks.
At 10am I caught a film that screened at Sundance – Quid Pro Quo and at 12:15 I met at Australian distributor who wanted a MindFlesh screener.
It’s now 2pm and I’ve been talking to another director who has a market screening next week and swapping war stories about distributors, markets, video on demand etc. I’m going to grab a bite to eat now, pick up more business cards from the apt and then catch a screening at 3:30pm because I know the producer.
More tomorrow…
More from Robert:
Went to bed about 3am yesterday and got up this morning at 8am.
Started yesterday evening with free drinks at a press association bash that my friend Calum got me into and then worked my way up and down the strip drinking in The Grand, The Martinez and then finally The Hospital - which is a creative industry private members club I belong to in London. Managed to meet a lot of people and exchange information so all in all a successful night.
Had breakfast in the AmPav and planned the day - first priority is to gently promote the MindFlesh screening, second priority is to meet people and final priority is to watch films.
I went to a market screening of The Mutant Chronicles - just the sort of audience/buyers that might be interested in my film - flashed the shirt, left a few flyers outside and happily saw people take them away. Anyone that's interested to know more will check the Cannes Product Guide and find the screening date and time.
There's a marche party tonight at 8:30pm which I plan to attend but it's now 4:30pm so I've a few hours to kill. Let you know tomorrow what I did/will do ;)
