By Rick Dugdale, President of Enderby Entertainment

Soft monies in the form of tax credits, rebates or any form of government subsidies are the first place any producer goes to try to round out his or her budgets in the development phase of a film (see “Price Point” http://tinyurl.com/4xh7dwe).

Many states and countries around the world offer incentives. These tax incentives can range from 10% up to 65% (in the case of Manitoba, Canada). That makes them very enticing.

While incentives are the big, sexy drawing card, there are several things that often get overlooked—or that can even backfire and negatively impact your soft money—when productions pursue them with blinders on. Here are a few:

Economy

A strong economy versus a recession can have many impacts on your production—including cost and availability of equipment, and even finding experienced crew who are willing to work.

Infrastructure

Filming in places with big infrastructures can also backfire on your production, since such locations are typically also leading destinations for the studios to target, hence creating high prices and limited or no availability.

Unions

Depending on your level of budget, make sure you meet certain union criteria (or make sure you can even qualify), as this surely will also determine the value of your soft money.

Foreign exchange

Lastly, although obvious, never forget to look at the foreign exchange for the country you’re shooting in, as this can cause your budget to fluctuate immensely. When you’re dealing with short timelines and quick cash-flows, this can easily be overlooked.

In the world of independent filmmaking, every bit of knowledge helps. Do the work and compare states and countries to find the best home for your production.

As we roll out a polished and improved web and social media presence, one of the things that is going to get some additional attention is the featuring of our projects. (that side shot is the set of Silver Falls, a mystery in post-production now, July 2011)

It’s easy, as we have our heads down, cranking out the work day to day, to forget to take a moment to reflect on what we’re accomplishing. But, many, many people work tirelessly for us – great talent, overwhelming commitment, and a seemingly boundless energy for our projects. It’s only right to take a moment to thank those people, every single one of them, for their hard work.

Actors, production staff, writers, et all – we thank you. We are so thrilled to be doing such quality work with such dedicated people. *we humbly bow in thanks*

Explore Enderby movie and TV projects in full at our main website and watch for set and filming location news for our many projects here on the blog. We’ll do our best to keep you plugged in.

The Story is Everything!
~Vicki

Hi! (ok, where I come from we say Howdy!)

My name is Vicki Flaugher and I am the newest member of the team. I’ll be running the social media for Enderby (Facebook and Twitter) and I couldn’t be happier about it! I feel so honored and thrilled to be part of such a world class team and am super excited about the projects coming through (oh, and by the way – click on the above links and get connected right now…).

Don’t worry that Daniel and Rick are off the hook here – they will continue to weigh in (like only they can) on the power of a great story and the leverage of the perfect financing set-up in modern film making. It’s what they’re all about and what I will make sure they talk to you about.

My part, though, will be posting entertainment industry news, movie updates, festival highlights, script writing pointers, and indie film tips. I’ll grab the good stuff from our team and others (the best of the best) in the business and share it with you.

I’ll also keep everyone updated on what Enderby’s working on in production, what’s being cast, and what’s about to launch (like Combat Hospital on June 21st – woot!).

My goal is to provide information that is relevant to you and your ambitions in the movie biz.  And, it’s your job to let me know if I’m giving you what you want and need, ok? If there’s something you want to know about, feel free to reach out and ask. I’ll do what I can!

Drop me a line on my personal social media  – I’m @Smartwoman online – or wave hello on Enderby’s pages. I sincerely look forward to the fun and adventure I can already feel coming. Nice to meet you. *she bows*

Vicki @Smartwoman Flaugher

Those of you who know me may have heard me talk about these two key words: PRICE POINT. For those who don’t know me … pay attention. This will help you.

We have hundreds of submissions of screenplays and packaged film projects, much like every production company in the business.  Some of the many questions that filmmakers ask us are, “What projects are you looking for?  What size budget are you looking for?  What genre do you produce or finance? Does it help if there is a ‘star’ attached?” (BTW, check out our colleague Jeff Steele’s blog on “star” definition. )

In my opinion, these are all good questions. But it all comes down to those two words: PRICE POINT. Can the film be done for the right price point?

Allow me to explain …

Since we think from the point of view of the investors here, it only makes sense for us look at risk mitigation.  This is not new, however the thought process may be.

The standard model exists that includes various ways to mitigate the investors’ risk, including foreign pre-sales, tax credits, zero interest state loan programs and any other government subsidies and soft monies. Add all that up and your risk is mitigated, for the most part.  However, you just eliminated your “blue-sky” potential in the eyes of the investor.  You’ve sold your soul for no real upside.

The thought process instead needs to consist of knowing what the worldwide marketplace is buying and what is working for them.  Combine that with a budget that reflects what the market price is—and you know that you are going to be able to sell your film to a distributor for once it’s completed, as long as you deliver a quality product.  Generate a creative package (i.e. director, writer and cast), add in your tax credit estimates and realize that on the low end, you can deliver your budget back to the investor.  To a certain degree, it is demystifying the industry or the world of film finance by bringing things into reality—for the non-film investor.   It’s great to make the “arthouse”—but just make sure you ask yourself, “Does this make sense?” and “Is this the right price point?”

Showing graphs, “projections” and colorful waterfall flowcharts and saying that because your film is an indy horror movie that you have the next $1,000,000,000 “Saw” franchise on your hands is just not reality.  Proformas are not realistic in the film business either, sadly.  It would be great to work like a junior uranium exploration company and say, “Today uranium is trading at X, and we have a property in the Thelon Basin with X amount of pounds in the ground, therefore our asset is worth X.”  Again, sadly, this is not the reality in our business.  Allow for common sense to prevail and make your film for the right PRICE POINT.

In simple points:

• Know the market.  Know your audience.
• Risk Mitigation.  Pursue attachments.
• Create a financial instrument with investor upside.
• Allow for soft monies (see above).
• Deliver a quality product.
• On to the next one.

Know your market before putting pen to paper and especially before you raise the financing.  Remember that if you deliver to your investors, they will be around for the next one … and possibly forever.  Investors are partners—not just investors.  Protect your investors and put the power back in the hands of the Producer.

Enderby Entertainment is a new independent film company and this is a new blog.

Now, you can argue that there are already thousands of new independent film companies and gazillions of blogs and that the world doesn’t need another one of either. But we’re going to do both anyway.

As a company, our “unique selling proposition” as the advertising people say, is our belief in the foundational importance of story and screenplay on the creative side, and our belief that our investors are entitled to the greatest possible bang for their buck on the financial side.

You might think that both such beliefs are absolutely obvious, and you’d be right. You might even think that that those beliefs are so obvious that every independent film company would surely operate on that basis. To that, all I can say is, you’d be surprised.

Given those beliefs, and given that we’re going to do a blog, it makes sense to take those beliefs as our blog’s theme. I’ll largely leave it to my partners to talk about the financial side of independent filmmaking, and I will concentrate on the creative side.

While I am proud of being a producer and director, I wouldn’t be either one of those things unless I was first and foremost a screenwriter. You could even say that I’m a writer who also occasionally produces and directs, and I wouldn’t take offense. So when I claim that the screenplay is the foundational element that is the most important determinant of a film’s success or lack of it, you can certainly accuse me of being biased.

Well, guilty. I am biased. Nevertheless, it’s true. And, of course, Story is the foundation for the screenplay, so Story is the cornerstone upon which the entire structure of a film rests.

Now, I’m not saying that to denigrate the contributions of anyone else or any other element to a movie. Of course the director matters. The actors matter. So do any number of other things: the budget, the cinematography, the marketing, the score, the costume design, the makeup – everything matters. There are no unimportant aspects of making a movie.

Clearly some roles are more important than others, with, in movies, the director topping that list. In fact, the director is usually so important that he or she can fire the writer and hire another one. Some people take this as evidence that the director is more important than the story and screenplay. Not so. If that were true, why would a director bother to fire a writer and hire another? Why do directors work so hard and struggle so much to find good material? The late great director Sydney Pollack had as good a track record as anyone, but sometimes even he would make a movie that didn’t quite work. Thinking aloud about this, he once said, “I don’t suddenly get less talented on one project, and then more talented on another project.” So what’s the difference between a Sydney Pollack movie that works and one that doesn’t? I believe there is one place to go to look for that answer:

Story.

So my portion of this blog will center on Story and the screenplay that flows from it. But I can’t even start without acknowledging that I’m coming very late to this particular party. If through some fluke of the Internet you are a new screenwriter coming to this blog without first discovering some of the great resources for screenwriters that already exist on the net, let me mention a few.

First, there’s Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott’s site Wordplay, at www.wordplayer.com. The heart of this site is a series of over 50 articles, mostly written by Terry, that surely have to rank as among the smartest insights into screenwriting written by anyone, anytime, anywhere.

The brilliant screenwriter John August also has many insightful things to say in his blog at johnaugust.com. (You can also follow him on twitter @johnaugust.) The extraordinarily gutsy and funny writer Craig Mazin has a blog called The Artful Writer – artfulwriter.com – that is well worth following.

The next two sites aren’t blogs, but belong in any screenwriters bookmark list: the websites of the Writers Guild of America, west, Inc. at www.wga.org, and the Writers Guild Foundation at www.wgfoundation.org.

We hope this blog will also, over time, come to be considered a good resource for up-and-coming screenwriters and independent filmmakers. If you stumbled across this and stayed with it so far, thanks: I hope you’ll come back to see how we do.  My partners and I welcome questions, comments and suggestions for topics from screenwriters and filmmakers, so we hope to hear from you.

There has been an awful lot of talk lately, or really over the course of the last two

years, that the DVD sales are declining rapidly. Soon to be non-existent. For all

of those who aren’t aware – everything that goes up, must come down. Things

are going to drop a heck of a lot faster if you make the load that much heavier.

When the DVD boom took off in the early ‘00’s (not sure what we’re calling

them) it represented a vast new revenue territory, much like iTunes did, for the

music industry post-Napster lawsuit. With that came greed from the studios and

distributors. Did we, as consumers really need to buy every episode off “Gilligan’s

Island” on DVD, just to watch it in this wonderful new digital format? Every film

and TV show sitting on the shelves got dusted off and repackaged for every holiday

season from then on in.

Of course the DVD revenue is going to spike. Of course it’s going to tank when the

consumer realizes that they don’t need every show from their childhood sitting on

their shelf.

DVD is still a very strong market for the people that count on it – the Independents.

The Majors are the ones concerned because their tent pole DVD sales are dropping.

Well I would too, if you need to be recouping $100+M because it failed at the box

office. Independents are not looking for numbers of that nature; hence a modest

return on DVD will continue to provide a security net to all of our investors for quite

some time. But let’s not forget, the music industry broke a new revenue stream with

the digital download boom (thanks iTunes) and as much as the film business has

been dabbling in that world for the past five or six years – we’re here now. Trust

me the sky is not falling, there are more revenue streams to recoup your investment

then ever, you just need to know your marketplace before you start the process.

As the great David Brown said “You need three things to make a good movie. The

first is Story. The second is Story. The third is Story.”

Well welcome to the inaugural Enderby Entertainment Blog. Catching up to the

Social Media platform that is so important for us to connect with our colleagues,

students and fans. We have set a mandate for our blog that will continue to discuss

two topics – Screenwriting from the ever-talented Daniel Petrie, Jr. and Film

Finance: The process Script to Screen from Rick Dugdale & Daniel Petrie, Jr.

Over the course of this blog you will notice a lot of interesting trending topics noted.

In the world of Independent Filmmaking the biggest value you can add to yourself

and to your company is – keeping your finger on the pulse.