Anything Goes : Your (our) first Film Project... HOW TO REALLY MAKE IT HAPPEN instead of begging for the cash that'll never show up. by Georgia Hilton

2 years ago I was lecturing in NYC on making your first film. My lecture normally starts with a story (true) about a film maker who contacts me to help them make their first film. Funny thing is, I get 3 or 4 of these a week, and they are almost all the same... It goes something like this: them, "Hi I've been told you can help me get my first film made." I respond with sure... tell me about your project... who wrote it? them, "oh, I did... its going to be an Oscar winner!" ( yes, that is exactly what they said...) I say, ok, have you written any screenplays I might have heard of? them, "No, this is my first one."... I pause and ask, ok, who's going to direct? them, "Me... no one knows my script better than I do. I have the whole thing in my head." ah...Have you ever directed a feature before? them, "No.... But i did a project in film school..." I say, so this is your first screenplay, you've never directed before... at this point I can't resist... I offer, do you have any attachments? them, " attachments? no i figured you'd help me get actors." Ah.. so My final question is offered up... What's the project budget? them, " $10 Million. "... After I stop laughing, I un-mute the phone... Look, I say, you've never written a screenplay except this one, you've never directed, you don't have any connections to actors, and you need $10 million dollars of someone else's money. (pause for effect) Not going to happen. them, "WELL, I guess I was wrong in calling you then...you're an asshole." ( or some similar nasty quip...) no, I'm not an asshole, I'm a realist. You need to work your way up to the big leagues.. You need to put that amazing Oscar winning screenplay back in the drawer and write a feature length film you can do for a budget you can personal afford, with cast and crew who you can beg a deal from or afford to pay... do this first, then get it finished, sold and making money... even 1 lousy dollar more than you spent making it. NOW, if you have done that, you can potentially raise a bit of cash for another small movie and do it again. And with two financially successful delivered project, you can ask for a bit more.. and keep doing this for a few years and suddenly ( 5 years later suddenly ) you'll have a few commercially successful films under your belt. You'll be marketable, You'll be bankable, And you'll have the training/talent/ability/track record to deliver a higher budget film. A few more years of this and you can dust off that "Oscar winning screenplay" you're trying to make, re-write it, because now you know how to write and direct a feature, and maybe, just maybe you'll have some industry connections by then and you'll get that $10M to make your film. But thats 10 years into the future... for now... Write your screenplay to fit your budget... Back to the lecture... A student asked me, is that how you did it? ... (cough, hack) well, no. Actually I started as a sound editor, then a sound designer, then having been annoyed at the re-recording engineers screwing up my sound work, I started mixing features, then having sat thru every frame of every movie I worked on, I realized that a lot of editors weren't that great, so I started editing films, got better, and started fixing other editors features, that lead to becoming a post supervisor, which lead me to technical director on set, which lead me to directing and writing. With that background and 15 years in technology and being a high lever executive on wall street prior to my film career, I was able to make a nice living producing, and "fixing" other peoples films. I thought about it for a moment and said. OK.. I'll put my money where my mouth is. Without calling in any "big" industry contacts, and without spending more than $10K of MY money, $15K of my friends Money and $25K from crowd sourcing, using ONLY resources that anyone of my students could get, find an agent I never met, i'll make the movie, get an agent, get distribution and make $100K out of spending $50K. So I did. SUBCONSCIOUS. ( yes, it says $500K on IMDB - thats what the agent felt the movie's production value was when he watched it.) Right now its at AFM in the $1Million to $2Million budget sales range and we're still making sales. We pre-sold the film for $200K to date, with more sales in motion and backend starting to come in next year. Yes, it was a LOT of work. I wrote, directed, edited, did 90% of the CGI/VFX, and my friends did the rest. But Yes... see, you can do it too. The total cost of the film from development to delivery to Lionsgate ( yes it even sold to Lionsgate) was $60K... The last $10K was spent from pre-sales to complete delivery. Write your first screenplay to fit the budget you can afford.... Next, we'll be doing a $200K movie with pre-sales already looking between $380K and $850K. And, yes. the people who helped make SUBCONSCIOUS are back helping on this one. And, the people who funded SUBCONSCIOUS are funding or bringing funders to the table for our next film, because we have proven we can deliver a commercial film. I'm asking for $200K because that's a nice next simple step. When this one has been delivered, we'll do another for $200K and bring that to commercial success.. why am I so sure... Because we're writing screenplays that we can afford to shoot and screenplays that our agent and SUBCONSCIOUS distributors asked for. Second and third screenplay? Write your screenplay to fit your budget and write a screenplay that people want to buy! Not what you WANT, what your CLIENT WANTS. Once we have 3 or 4 of these done... I'm going to do a couple at $500K... and maybe in another 10 years I'll be a 25 year OVERNIGHT success. And I'll dust off my $15 Million dollar screenplay... I hope this story offers you incentive and some drive, knowing it CAN be done, and it can be done inexpensively, IF you plan for the long game and work your way to your goal instead of wasting those 5 to 25 years in begging for money that will probably never come. And yes, I AM happy to help you make your first film... as long as you have a realistic plan, realistic goals and a solid screenplay that fits the budget you can afford. Cheers Georgia