In response to a million and one hypothetical questions, here's a very real problem I dealt with yesterday. Additional information can be provided. Names have been changed to protect the innocent.
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I worked on a film (we'll call it "Fishing Days") with some guys a while ago. We'll call them Tom and Dick. Tom's a director. Dick's a producer. The movie, for what it was, did very well. It was on the Sci Fi Channel about a month ago and has been released in seven markets (most of the world).
Dick has friends - we'll call them Harry and June. Harry is a screenwriter. June is not attached to the movie industry but wants to be; she's an extremely successful internist by day, movie producer by night.
Long story short, June is a much better internist than producer. She has, to date, made four movies, all of which have lost money hand over fist. June hired Tom to direct a film (we'll call it "Dance Wolf") that was written by Harry and which stars her daughter April (all of her movies star her daughter April). As a part of this process, June and Tom got to talking about previous projects, one of which we'll call "Poky Stick" (as it's a slasher film in which the psycho's weapon is a sharpened broom handle).
Poky Stick is a terrible film. However, Tom has been so impressed by my skillz that he convinced June to hire me to do the audio postproduction on it. Which I did. It's still a terrible film, but at least it doesn't sound like a terrible film. Poky Stick, the 2nd of June's films, was made for approximately $150k and managed to sell in the US market for $50k. Because June's first film was made for approximately $400k and sold for $5k, this was a resounding success as far as June is concerned. June and Harry are over the moon.
Unfortunately, it has also convinced Harry and June that they know how to make films. Worse, they've managed to convince themselves that they can handle distribution delivery, the true "sausage-making" of indie film. Most film companies hire a finishing service to handle the various and sundry requirements of distribution, and these finishing services charge between $50k and $65k. Which, without doing too much math, pretty much reduces Poky Stick's revenue to zero.
Tom and Dick (mostly Tom), taking pity on June, offer to handle the finishing on Poky Stick. June is initially delighted but soon finds herself beset with suitors who are offering to handle the finishing (much like sharks who smell blood in the water, finishing services can quickly discern if a producer has half a clue and June doesn't). However, since June managed to sell a $400k film for $5k, she's convinced she knows enough to keep herself out of trouble. Tensions flare between Tom, Dick and June. Harry is unable to intercede (he lacks the people skills). April's relationship with Tom is a possibility, but she's years younger and he mostly just hits on her. Dick's thought is that June should be allowed to make her mistakes and suffer accordingly, except for the following complications:
1) Money from Poky Stick's sales is underwriting the post-production of Dance Wolf, which Dick has already edited, Tom has already shot and nobody has been paid for. Suck up all the money by finishing Poky Stick wrong and Dance Wolf is dead in the water.
2) Some of us haven't been paid in full for our work on Poky Stick. We are holding off on Dance Wolf until we are fully remunerated, which adds to the distrust.
3) All June's available cash is wrapped up in Poky Stick II, which finished filming two weeks ago, and which was such a terrible script I advised Tom not to direct it. As a consequence, Harry directed it (his first). And, because June is so cash poor, Tom rolled tens of thousands of dollars - his sum profits so far from Fishing Days - into it as a "soft money lender." (Tom does not know I know this, because Dick has been admonished not to tell anyone)
4) The editor June hired on Poky Stick has been incapable of delivering a final negative that lacks sync issues, which means you (me) have to conform to the new negative, which will invoke your "grevious forced error clause" which you injected into your contract, which will cost June tens of thousands of additional dollars.
5) June's level of distrust has mounted to the point where she has employed an independent sales agent who is attempting to get June to agree to tens of thousands of dollars more work in hopes that Poky Stick will get sold at Berlinale THIS WEEKEND.
SO:
- If left to her own devices, June will bankrupt her company, taking with it the thousands of dollars owed you, the thousands of dollars owed Dick, the tens of thousands of dollars owed Tom and kill two films before they can even be finished.
- June's lack of trust and inexperience with the market has led her to this juncture, so illustrating that she lacks experience only increases her distrust
- Because everyone distrusts everyone else, the only person who can clear the air is you, except your first conversation with June is going to be about the sync issues that are going to cost her tens of thousands of dollars to your benefit.
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How do you keep June afloat without spending any of your own money, costing anyone else theirs, and return everyone to a position of trust? Three of your friends stand to lose upwards of $50k if you fail, and a producer that has already paid you substantial sums of money (with two more projects already waiting) is likely to go bankrupt and never make another film.
I pulled it off. We're back on track. Let's see what you can come up with.
April is a key figure. Her mother's motives and ambitions all include her daughter, as she has starred April in all her films. She may be the one person her mother would trust to hear difficult truths from. I don't recall any mention of April seeming oblivious to the fact that things may not be going well, that her mother may be being taken advantage of, or in danger of being taken advantage. Or that her relationship with her mom isn't close... It's not clear though if you have worked with her personally if you are doing post production, or how well she may or may not know you. It would be to your credit to approach April and layout the problems, and given the fact that you actually would (in the short term) personally gain from her mother's mistakes, that an effort to try and enlist her help to prevent her mother from making the mistakes which you would financially gain from, could gain some trust. A plus would be if you don't also hit on her. :) Once the problems or current obstacles are laid out (you may have needed to leave out some of the prior detail that may put her mother in too terrible light and make her feel defensive for her mother) you then discuss possible solutions. Together you come up with (even if you lead her, she'll need buy in and ownership in the choices) at least two reasonable options to present to her mom. This she will talk to her mom alone, but bring you in to help when her mom is ready to hear more details about what she can do to begin to stop the train wreck. The mother is able to listen to her daughter, and you, and possibly put aside the rush job, concentrate on getting an appropriately edited version (so you ultimately forgo your short term gain in favor of the groups's needs). The internist producer gets a more sober and realistic view of the present circumstance that can only help the outcome now and in the future. Trust is strengthened rather than further strained. You don't always have to let people go over the brink for them to learn. Sometimes you just have to point out to them, that they
really are on the very edge, and hope to god they listen. Am I close?
You have just outlined why I spent fifteen minutes attempting to come at it through April. That was, in fact, my first, best instinct. April actually lives closest to me (a short bike ride away). April was also a part of the proxy conversation Tom had with her (at my behest): "do you want to keep making slasher movies? Does your mother understand that the only way you can advance at this point is to get nekkid?" Being on the post side of things, I've been in the same room as April exactly once - and we didn't even speak to each other. She was definitely in the room while Dick and I proceeded to school her mother about the realities of distribution six months ago, but she was not a participant in the conversation. In other words, she knows who I am, she knows what I know, she's aware of what I'm about, but we have no rapport whatsoever. Dick and I spent ten minutes evaluating whether or not Tom had enough rapport to come at April and determined that as theirs was not a relationship based on respect, and as they had no larger relationship outside the film, and as Tom "mostly hits on her" there was no realistic way to make that work. I spent an equal amount of time with Harry trying to determine if he could come at her to make the same points, but Harry is mostly employed by June because he's a non-threatening gay man whose screenplays invariably involve dire punishment for heterosexual sex. His relationship with April is worse than Tom's - beside the fact that it took me an hour to get Harry on board in the first place. Long story short, I wanted to go that way but judged that I didn't have the framework to pull it off.... and building it ad-hoc ran the possibility of further clouding the waters.
Yeah...I dropped out of film school halfway through my "Strategies for Independent Producing" Class. This would've been the first real-world application to an utterly wacky class. Too bad. :(
I don't have any answers for this hypothetical but I will point out that June is in the right for celebrating the lesser losses from her second film. If she's bankrolling these films and is progressively losing less money, she likely assumes that she'll one day reach a break even and be profitable. -at this rate it may take 20 movies, but hey... she's committed to being in the industry. Now, you work in a highly subjective industry and obviously such projections are dangerous but still, I can see why she considers it a "success" -perhaps not "resoundingly" so. But if I were someone working for her, I would fight for my money without losing site of the fact that this women clearly has unwavering aspirations, seems to be losing less money each film and may one day prove a viable revenue stream for me. But then, even a blind squirrel can lose slightly less money than they did the first time. Long story short, I've had a few drinks and the words are wobbly :) You're a smart guy, you don't need my advice.Poky Stick, the 2nd of June's films, was made for approximately $150k and managed to sell in the US market for $50k. Because June's first film was made for approximately $400k and sold for $5k, this was a resounding success as far as June is concerned.
Oh, certainly. One can certainly see where she's finding reason to celebrate. Even more important, "Dance Wolf" is basically their Great White Hope - it looks the best, it sucks the least, and is most likely to actually turn a profit. The problem from the other side of the equation is that Poky Stick sucks less than her last film because Tom and I put serious time into it, and that Dance Wolf is going to be vastly better because it has the entire post team from "Fishing Days." In other words, the reason for her optimism is us - so we all get a little cranky when our expertise in the matter is selectively ignored. The other major aspect is that Junes efforts, far from allowing her to asymptotically approach profitability, are threatening an "extinction-level event." She's making mistakes of a magnitude that she could easily blow herself out of the industry forever without ever being able to claw her way out of the hole... and as I said, conditions had worsened to the point where she was no longer willing to hear us when we raised red flags.I don't have any answers for this hypothetical but I will point out that June is in the right for celebrating the lesser losses from her second film. If she's bankrolling these films and is progressively losing less money, she likely assumes that she'll one day reach a break even and be profitable.
More than anything I want to figure out who they all are... but that would take a lot more sleuthing than I have time for... ;-) My only thought after looking though this is... is it possible for you to do the work and get paid on the back end of it? The whole scenario seems rife with incompetence. In any business, film or otherwise, incompetence costs. Eventually she needs to get burned to learn some lessons.
So this is what they mean when they ask if you have "people skills". Two quetsions: what's an intern or internist do with regards to a film production and what does selling a 400k film for 5k mean? (I would've assumed that was a bad thing)
"internist" means that she practices internal medicine. As in, she's an MD. Which is okay - so was George Miller. "Selling a 400k film for 5k" means that they spent four hundred thousand DOLLARS making the film, and then, when it came time to recoup that money by selling the film to a distributor, received a mere $5000 for their trouble. It does, in fact, reflect a $395,000 loss. June has, by our calculations, invested approximately $700k in movies and earned a return (so far) of $55k. No, that's not a track record to aspire to.
I think I would involve Harry. From your story it seems he is unable to intercede because he doesn't know how, so if you give him a hand, I would think he could be instrumental since he is friends with June and she trusts him. Otherwise they would not be in this together. Could you confirm that this is true? I really want to find a solution now and am really curious how you pulled it off. Interesting problem to say the least (less fun if you are in this situation).
I can confirm that making a run at Harry was definitely part of my solution. In order to "soften up" June for my eventual move it was necessary to switch Harry's allegiances from "I don't want to make trouble" to "If someone doesn't make trouble we're all sunk." It took an hour on the phone to turn Harry around to the point where he was useful, at which point I think he called June, who called me, which allowed me to fix everything.
I've very curious as to what you said to June to resolve this (and I really enjoyed this mystery story-esque approach of giving a hard problem and asking what the solution was). If I had to guess, I'd say you brought up the independent sales agent and the sync problems as part of the same discussion. I don't know enough about film to say whether it would be cheaper to pay out your contract clause or to have a new edit done, but either way she's out a fair bit of money. My suspicion is that you first brought up the independent sales agent issue, and convinced her that there was too much to do for him to be a viable option. Once you'd conveyed that fact, you claimed his dismissal as a savings, then brought up the new sync-ing costs so that everything stayed effectively cost-neutral for June. Having done this, you've solidified your rapport with June by defining your team (the exclusion of the sales agent solidifies a sense of "us" for the rest of you), then offering her a way out of the sound problem that doesn't increase her total expenses. You've also talked her out of a bad decision by highlighting that there are hurdles she didn't know about, without insulting her. This brings you on as a planning member of the team fairly naturally, and allows you to segue into "There was one more thing I wanted to get your thoughts on..." while guiding her to keep things afloat. Close?
Since you asked: 1) Broach the same subject to everyone First Dick, then Harry, then Tom got the "it's a shame things are too muddled because we aren't properly coordinating things. In the same discussion, Dick and Tom were reminded that June and Harry are nice people, they just don't know what they're doing and Harry was reminded that Tom and Dick are nice people, they're just doing what they're doing because they don't want Harry and June to get burned. In the same discussion, establish with Tom and Dick that if June doesn't pull it together, June busts out of the industry and everybody loses and establish with Harry that Tom, Dick and I all agree that if June plays her cards exactly wrong this is an Extinction Level Event. Everyone is hearing the same thing and the focus shifts from "he/she is trying to cheat me" to "if we don't figure this out we are all fucked, individually and together." 2) Pick a villain that can't fight back It's much easier to get people behind a "global war on Terror" than "let's shoot Osama bin Laden." This would all be much easier if we were just talking to each other instead of playing telephone was said to each participant, followed by I'm going to call X to let them know what we just talked about. In this way, the problem isn't the edit, the problem isn't Tom or Dick, the problem isn't June or Harry, the problem is miscommunication. Further, kleinbl00 is setting forth to slay the dragon. 3) Congratulate June on her successes while shoring up her abilities I'd been fortunate in that I'd made a call to June before the sync issue came to light, which meant when she was calling me back, it was to discuss other things. And, since I'd already had a good, long conversation with Harry, he immediately relayed that I was proactively doing something about it. As a result, June was really thankful to get me on the phone, rather than trying to dodge me. I was meticulous not to throw anyone under the bus but quick to point out that when communications have been sullied it's hard to get things across the right way (to my advantage, June had been sending emails to Dick for weeks... to the wrong address). I inquired about Poky Stick II (pretending I hadn't heard about the trainwrecks, to which she was decidedly oblivious) and discussed deadlines related to the problem, rather than funding related to the problem, which allowed me to determine what the impetus was. 4) Put the problems in real terms Rather than focus on the fact that June shouldn't be going off half-cocked, I focused on the fact that any editor given two days to cut a trailer is not going to cut a good trailer and the fact that any sales agent who wants rush trailer work likely isn't paying for it themselves. Rather than focus on the fact that June is in danger of racking up tens of thousands of dollars in charges against the film, I pointed out that any work anyone wanted done on the film could be quoted ahead of time so that June would know what she was looking at. And rather than pointing out that Tom and Dick's prices weren't lining up with the quotes she was getting from somewhere else, I pointed out that Tom and Dick aren't interested in getting into the finishing business and the only reason they're doing it is to keep June's fat out of the fire... and that Tom often over-volunteers to do stuff rather than delegate because he sucks at confrontation and that neither of them really wanted to do it in the first place. 5) Demonstrate that the working relationship is not working I highlighted the fact that June retained Tom and Dick for these services not because they advertised them to her, but because she trusted them enough to ask and that if she is no longer trusting them, it's not because of anything anyone has done, but because the relationship has been clouded by money. Further, if June can't trust Tom and Dick to do this stuff, June needs to employ someone as knowledgeable as Tom and Dick to advocate for the project against all comers (including Tom and Dick, if need be) such that the project's wallet is protected from pickpockets. 6) propose a pump-fake punitive step Suggest that if Tom and Dick don't want to be a finishing agency, and if June doesn't want Tom and Dick to finish the film, the best move would be to 'fire' Tom and Dick as the finishing agents and 'hire' them as independent consultants to manage the process rather than provide the deliverables. The end job is exactly the same - Tom and Dick are doing precisely what they were doing - only now they're doing it for a pre-negotiated flat fee. This removes June's distrust, it puts money in Tom and Dick's pockets, and it allows Tom, Dick and June to be on the same side of the table in any discussion, rather than staring uncertainly at each other. And that's about the size of it. The sync issues still haven't been solved, but I'm going to call June in a few minutes to let her know that me and Dick have spent serious time on it only to discover that not only do we think the file we got is weird, but that it doesn't matter anyway because the director is still playing "final cut" games with the Edit so we can't even figure out what's up until she attacks that other villain that isn't us and that none of us like. So far, I'm pleased... even if it did take 6 hours on the phone and an hour on two separate edit suites.
The best part is, I found out about Hubski because a friend on here mistook you for an account of mine. Now I'm here to usurp your position!