In the world of independent film funding, we, the independent filmmaker, always find ourselves in a conundrum of information and advice. We always want to instill investor confidence but investors want to know if you have distribution lined up, distribution wants to know who is starring in your project and agents of talent want to know if the budget is in place. The unions, whether cast or crew, don't seem to have any real influence except when they want to turn the general public against them and hurt interest in your project and union leaders don't hold any of their members responsible for hurting the publicity of a film project. This is supposedly a team effort? How can it be when everyone on your team is out for themselves and egos are the useless currency that has absolutely no value and pays for nothing.
That being said, people suggest that you don't contact distribution until the project is done but investors want pre-sales. How can you have pre-sales if the movie is not done? It's not really sales but more of speculation. You can't really be a serious business man if you base things on pre-speculation. What kind of distribution deal can get based on pre-speculation? Now hopefully you can get a Letter of Interest which says a distribution company is interested in your project but doesn't commit them to a deal if the project turns out terrible, but even that is harder to get than developing stigmata during Easter. I really don't know what their hourly wage is, but how hard is it to write up a letter stating, "We are very interested in possibly being the distributor of your film and look forward to having an exclusive viewing of the screener." That sure as hell didn't take me that long to type that sentence and I'm not that fast a typist. So what gives?
Ultimately, it's all a chess game where your opponent doesn't want your King because in independent filmmaking, the King is just another powerless pawn. What they want is to enslave your Queen and let all the other pieces fall victim to their control.
It's truly sick how one can make the most solid of plans in a very risky industry and so much attention is given to a girl making an inaccurate sound effect to depict a p[private act of affection. I'm sure her bio-pic is in the works with a higher budget than my project and investors are just lining up licking their hawk tau muscles to spit in the hands of progress to make a deal. I wonder what their pre-speculation numbers are.
Gotta love filmmaking.
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Welcome to the world of competitive business, where multinational corporations set the rules in order to destroy small businesses.
Does anybody do presales anymore? That might be a thing of the past, at least in the low budget world.
Distribution is the hold up in many well-laid plans. No a-listers-not interested-but with a -listers the budget blows up 100x. Non-union-low budget-no a-listers-you can make a great film with 40 actors, many locations, great props, etc-for almost nothing-where are your a-listers??? LOL