Armen Dilanchian's Lounge Discussions

Armen Dilanchian Barev! The project looks great :)

Welcome to the community, Ivan Cvetkovic. Fellow Sci-Fi writer here. Here's a great blog that'll help you navigate Stage 32: www.stage32.com/blog/navigating-stage-32-for-your-best-experience-3095

Barev Susan! Thank you. Always great to hear from a fellow Armenian:-)

Another example that diligence must be always done, references should be always sourced and nobody should charge creatives to do the work that producers and prod cos are supposed tone doing. Thanks for the share, Armen Dilanchian!

Armen Dilanchian yes, we get a little more savvy as we progress. They do say we learn more from our failures than our successes!

Thank you Geoff!

Armen Dilanchian Ugh. Thanks for the heads up. That's the last thing anyone needs is another snake in the grass.

Agreed:-)

Yes, especially the one sales agent at Applied Art Productions we had to deal with. Really bad. Soemtimes they change their business name so filmamkers won't figure it out until it's too late.

Oh man Armen Dilanchian. That really is shady.

They're very shady. I am sure they'll be dealing with lot of lawsuits. I'm SUPRISED filmmakers still talk to them for their distribution deals. Maybe it's because they don't know how bad this comapny is. The owner is from India (I think)? Our feeling is when the lawsuits come his way, he may leave the country to avoid payments to content creators. That's how shady they are.:-(

Thanks for the heads up Armen Dilanchian!

You bet!

Pride Jewel a feature film by 4DLegacy Studios is now on FilmHub.com.

Distributors can now attain licensing right for worldwide distribution!

www.4DLegacyStudios.com

qqq,pride-jewel.com

Hi David - we have an awesome webinar that breaks down step by step everything you need to know about putting your film on Amazon, and economics, too: https://www.stage32.com/webinars/Amazon-Distribution-101

omg another pay service! nevermind.

DAvid Rorie I don't know about numbers - but I've heard good things about IndieRights.com.

I've also been hearing that AVOD platforms are offering a much higher CPM than SVOD nowadays.

I spoke with a pretty well respected distributor last week and they shed some behind the scenes light for me. Amazon's Freevee is currently paying 8 cents an hour streamed. It could be 6 by the time I post this. Viewing the ads during streaming doesn't matter, pretty straight forward. Amazon Prime seems to pay more similar to how Tubi pays. The more viewership a movie is getting, the higher the payment metric. Which is different info than Amazon was sharing a year ago when they claimed they were paying, wait for it, "a penny per hour".

Ryan Little -

I agree, having a budget in place is key. And of course, depending on the budget, incentives would come into play. But, there is the chicken and egg dance where no bankable talent will get on board without pay or play money and Sales Agents are are not really doing pre-sales on smaller budget films. Unless you're talking about films in the multi million dollar range, which is not really feasible for most smaller filmmakers.

What about an approach for MicroBudget filmmakers looking to upgrade to something in the 75k - 250k range?

Hi Ryan, Thanks for doing this AMA! What advice do you give to new filmmakers and producers, about financing and investors, who are starting from scratch in terms of a network?

Thanks Ryan Little!

Steve you are certainly right. Bankable talent is hard to get without a "pay or play" deal in place. And let's be honest "bankable talent" changes so quickly that who is bankable now might not be in a year. And yes pre-sales are almost impossible without talent attached. I was able to do pre-sales on my second film with no talent attached because it was a sequel to the first film and due to the finical success the foreign countries saw on that film they were willing to buy into a sequel based on script alone. When I mentioned talking to sales agents in my other comment as nice as it would be to get a pre-sale I was talking about the idea of finding a good sales agent to go with after you have made your film. By lining up a sales agent you think could do a good job selling your completed film you can share that with your potential investor to show you are working towards making their money back as quickly as possible once done. Micro-budget films are really the best way to start for your first feature. Reverse engineer it. Build something around the resources you have. I was well connected with the WWII re-enactment community so I wrote a script to build around that resource and it paid off. With films done at that budget range they are not based around talent of course which means you would be selling the film to a platform like Tubi for example who are comfortable with showing good films that have good no named actors in them. If you can find an investor for 50 -100K they are certainly more likely to take the risk on a 1st time filmmaker and give you that money. If you can defer certain budget costs like: directing fees, script, locations, actors, and equipment then you can tell you investor that you are covering a certain portion of the budget with "sweat equity". Which to them means you have "skin in the game" and have something to lose along with them.

Hey Niki. When starting from scratch I think you just need to get in social gatherings where you might potentially meet money people. I do mean you have to go to a ton of parties, but for example I knew a bunch of WWII collectors and re-enactors. Even though re-enactors are not actors in the traditional sense they do love the idea of performing. And the collectors spend a lot of money on the vehicles they own. I knew spending time with those people at events and getting to know them was going to pay off, and it did eventually lead me to people who were passionate about WWII and wanted to invest in a film on that topic. So as you think about the kind of film you want to make think about the kind of people who would want to see a film about that topic and figure out where they spend their time on social level. You can also think about people you know who might not be film people but do know people who do have that kind of money. You can then ask them to come on as an executive producer if they can help the people they know to consider financing your film endeavor, and of course the person who helped you get the money would be paid either a finders fee or participation in the films backend, or both.

Hi Armen! That’s great. What genres do you specialize in?

Thank you for the tip

Gigi, our genres are action(Thrillers), Drama, Ron0-Com and faith based

Nice to meet you!!

You're welcome, Armen Dilanchian. "Gabriel" sounds intriguing. Action/Thrillers are some of my top movies to watch. Excited to hear more about your movie when it moves into production.