Category: Producing a Film

Changing the World, a Little at a Time

Hands

For more than three years, I’ve been working as a co-writer (and reluctant (but proud!) producer) on a script about a black woman and an Iranian man who fall in love, how this affects their relationships with their families, communities, their feelings about religion and themselves.  THOSE PEOPLE: A Love Story is a light drama–a love story. It’s fun. But it also represents is something we take seriously — not just a movie cast with diverse actors (though we applaud that) and not just a “celebration” of diversity (although movies that do that are good too) but an actual exploration of diversity and its challenges today.

Today marks the last week of our campaign to raise development funds to lift this project off the ground. The amount we’re trying to raise is small by Hollywood standards, but it’s a lot for us – and we can do a lot with it!  We’re already working with a passionate producer who’s been working for free – we’d like pay her! And before reaching out to investors we’ll hire an experienced casting director to help find the perfect actors, and a lawyer to put together the legal end of things… You can see the details (and me, in a video!) at  https://www.seedandspark.com/fund/those-ppl-movie.

A couple things:

1)    Any amount you contribute is just a pledge—until we meet 80% of our $20,000 goal. If we don’t get $16,000 in pledges, we don’t take any money and your card will never be charged. If we do reach our goal, you’ll know that we have enough to push forward to the next step, and that your money won’t just float away. (As of this writing, we are $9000 away from that require 80%)

2)    We also really need people to FOLLOW our project on Seed and Spark. FOLLOWING IS FREE, but it helps us! Investors will look at our followers number to know that there are people who are interested in seeing our film, and, if we get to 500, Seed and Spark will guarantee us distribution! (As of this writing, we need about 350 people to meet this goal.)

A few more words about this project. Black and Persian. Strange combo, right? Sometimes love is strange! But we are happy with both sides of our interracial equation:

Even though they are loyal film-goers, black women are one of the most neglected  groups — both on screen and as an audience.

And time and again we hear our Iranian friends wishing to see their real lives reflected on screen — without a terrorist plot!

When I imagine this film made, I think of someone browsing through her Netflix options, and having the options of seeing a story about someone who looks like her… and I think of other people having the option of choosing to watch a movie that helps them understand the lives of people who might look different from them. That’s how the world changes, little by little. A march, a story, a song… a film,

We want to make a piece of art that moves the needle on the dial just a little. If you’d like support of that, a little or a lot, here’s how:

You can CHECK OUT our Seed & Spark site, watch our VIDEO,  and read about our TEAM.

If you like what you see, you can SHARE this post with anyone you know who might be interested.

You can FOLLOW us for FREE simply by clicking the BLUE FOLLOW BUTTON on the right. (They’ll make you log in, either with Facebook or an email. Sorry for the pain. We recommend using those 60 seconds to meditate on the positive intention you’re putting into the world!

You can CONTRIBUTE by clicking the GREEN CONTRIBUTE BUTTON.  Don’t feel bad if you’re not a big spender — no amount is too small!  (Actually, there’s a $1 minimum, but $1 is not too small — it brings us $1 closer to our goal!)

The countdown is on. I’ll check back in on April 21 —  6 days and 8 hours from now — with the final results.

 

 

I Was On The Radio

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So, I did a little radio interview this week for a show called Let’s Get Reel on KPC Radio — which is the station run by Pierce College.

“Reel” is like “film reel”– clever, right? We get to do that for a few more years I guess, until film reels are no more…  It was the first on-air interview for my host, Sal Fariaz, and he did an amazing job!  Much better than I did being interviewed. In a way it’s comforting to know how incredibly unlikely it is that I shall ever be famous and oft-interviewed.

But of course I’m posting the interview here because… it exists.

Out of the several things I’d like to go back to say more eloquently or much more briefly (or not at all), the only one I’ll point out is last question, which was the “wrap up” question, that I should have seen coming. “What is a piece of advice you would give to someone wanting to get into screenwriting?” Anyone who gets interviewed ever should have a prepared a “one piece of advice” answer for their specialty, but of course, I didn’t.

Being a little jaded, I advised aspiring scribes to understand that for a long time, being a writer costs more than it brings in, and to brace oneself for that.  It’s actually a practical piece of advice, but I wish I’d added just a little more–which is, while you do need to do non-writing things to feed your stomach, and your landlord–you also do need to feed your soul. Make some kind of little pact with yourself to try to GET BETTER every day–whatever that means.  Maybe it’s writing a page a day, or maybe on some days, it’s just watching a TV show, but I think it’s good to plan out what your ritual is, and then do it with intention. Take little actions that will move you — even incrementally — toward your goal, and keep reminding yourself that you are a writer. So that’s my bonus, off-air advice!

Least Favorite Night of the Year

My yearly scans: colonscopy, endoscopy, various ultrasounds and a trip to the dermatologist, are like my annual mini-gauntlet that must be run before the pleasant holidays.  The first on that list is, of course, the least favorite, due to the day of fasting, followed by the night-long uncomfortable evening of “prep.”

That evening was last night.  To make up for the lack of sleep, food, and physical comfort, I try to offer myself other pleasures in the form of reading or watching multiple episodes of a TV show (TV tends to work a better than movies because frequent bathroom breaks are somehow more conducive TV.

Last night I checked out Master of None, the Netflix series created by Aziz Ansari and loved it.

I spent some time trying to figure out the ongoing mystery why my friends keep liking our Lovers In Their Right Mind Facebook page but they don’t show up on our counter and we can’t seem to break the the 500 fans threshold. Although some Facebook support pages indicate that this is due to people’s privacy settings, this seems inaccurate in our case, and more and like a ploy to back us into a corner where we have to pay to “boost” our visibility, but before falling prey to my own cynicism I decided to call my brother and making him play with his privacy settings.  It made no difference, so my cynicism is intact, but we also got a chance to chat and I found out he also has a blog, related to learning science and his current job working with education and underprivileged youth. It’s pretty groovy.

Today the “procedure” went okay, but for the fact the surgeon had to remove some tissue and fasten the wound with clips. Not to worry, he says, I  just need to eat clear liquids for two days, after which I can have not-clear liquids for two more days.  By no means the worst outcome (as I know from having worse outcomes) but it definitely sucked some of my joy to look forward to eating something delicious this evening and then learn that I will be liquid-fasting for four more days.

But I can’t feel too sorry for myself because over the weekend I finished reading my friend Dan’s harrowing memoir Home is Burning, wherein his dad, increasingly paralyzed by ALS, goes on a feeding tube for the last months of his life — the end of solid food — and then dies.  So that’s some perspective, I guess.  As long as I can avoid getting hit by a truck in the next four days, non-liquid food is almost certainly in my future.

Financing Your Independent Film in 3 Easy Steps

So this is it: My first Lovers in Their Right Mind “Friday Process Post.”

Our movie is a about an African-American woman who falls in love with a Persian man, and has to decide whether to be with him at the risk of losing the support of her family and community.

The woman—whose name is Taylor—is in her mid-to-late thirties, so it’s what Janice calls a “film for grown-ups.” Grown-up films are “difficult” in Hollywood. Taylor is a black, middle-class woman. Black films are “difficult”—especially if they don’t portray certain tropes. And of course, films about women in general are “difficult.”

All of which is one way of saying, “You’re probably on your own finding money to make this puppy.”

So how does one “find” between one and five million dollars to make a film? That’s something we’ve set about learning for the past year.

Here’s an overview of the steps, going in reverse, LAST to FIRST. *

END GOAL:
1-5 million dollars to make your movie in an escrow account.

Let’s say your movie is going to cost three million dollars** to make. Three million dollars is not an amount you can get from your Aunt Lulu (if it is—you can stop reading—this article is not for you). It’s not even an amount you raise on Kickstarter with all your aunts and uncles and friends. Three million dollars needs to be raised, if not from companies, then from “high-net worth individuals” who are willing to INVEST in your film project. You sell them “shares” in the film, and after the film gets made and distributed, they get their money back, plus a profit called “return on investment.” There’s some legal stuff associated with selling shares. There’s tax forms and reporting that you have to do. It’s complicated, so you’ll lawyers and accountants and stuff—but set that aside for the moment, because first, you have line up those investors.

STEP 3: RAISE 1-5 million dollars to make your movie.

People with lots of money (so we’re told) are offered plenty of opportunities to spend it. If you want them to invest in your project, you need to convince them you’ve got your shit together. You need to show them who you are, what your story is, who is the audience for your story. You need to know the budget of your film and where the money is going. You need to pony up some market research and financial information about comparable films. All of this stuff is what you put into a packet called your BUSINESS PLAN. Also, because people with money are used to a certain quality, this business plan should LOOK GOOD. It should have photos and graphs and no typos and be printed in color. You should also have a version that’s electronically downloadable from a password-protected link on your WEBSITE.

Are you keeping track of all this? On top of the lawyer and the accountant, you also need a graphic designer and a website designer and a professional to “break down” your film script and assemble a realistic production budget. Assuming you don’t need to hire content writers or researchers, because you’re going to be doing all that yourself, you’re looking a stack of cash—let’s say $25,000—just to get to the place when you can legally ask someone else for a bigger stack of cash.

STEP 2: CROWDFUND your development money…

What? You don’t have an extra 25-grand sitting in your bank account? You’re going to have to CROWDFUND it, through a crowd-funding platform like Kickstarter, Indiegogo or Seed&Spark. Now is a time that Aunt Lulu—and all your aunts and uncles, your friends and casual acquaintances, and hopefully even a few benevolent strangers, can help out. The idea is if all these people kick in the cost of meal at their favorite restaurant, you’ll have enough cash to create your LLC, your Business Plan, website and lawyer stuff, etc.

But, wait! Why should any of these people – including Aunt Lulu and the benevolent strangers — give up dinner at their favorite restaurants for your project? Just like the investors further up the line, you need convince them that it’s a good idea, You have to show them who you are, what your film is about, and why it matters. You need to explain your plan so they don’t worry that once you get their money you’re going to forget all about the movie and buy a new waterbed and a trip to Hawaii instead.

But before you even do that—there’s something even more basic:

STEP 1: Build Audience and Awareness through Social Media

To do crowd-funding, you need a CROWD. You know how when you have a moving party, but you don’t invite enough people to help you move, it puts an unfair amount of pressure on the few people who do show up? If the only people who know about your campaign are Aunt Lulu and four friends, you’re going to fall short. Also, if you suddenly hit up Uncle Ed out of the blue and you’ve never even mentioned you’re a filmmaker, he might think you’re delusional…

So before anything else, you need to build an audience and build AWARENESS of your project. You should do this in many ways, like talking to people face-to-face… but also online, with SOCIAL MEDIA.

Yeah. You need to promote your project on Facebook. And Twitter. And Instagram. And Tumblr.*** As I mentioned in my intro post, there is apparently some science to about how much you should post, and when, which I can hopefully tell you about once I’ve found out.

So that’s it. How to Raise Financing for Your Film in Three-not-daunting-at-all Steps!

* I am vastly simplifying here, and omitting about 27 other steps.

**An arbitrary, though realistic number. Our film has not yet been budgeted.

***Speaking of which, you can find this post and others on our dedicated Tumblr; and follow Lovers in Their Right Mind on your choice of Facebook,  Instagram and Twitter @LoversITRM