Jean-Luc Martin

Made in Oregon

2010-06-27T23:10:00.000-07:00

By Todd Longwell

Say what you want about Oregon's gloomy slate-gray skies, but producer Dean Devlin says they are crucial to setting the mood for his TNT series "Leverage," which films on location in Portland.

"We shoot the show digitally and that cloud cover is almost like hanging a beautiful silk above our lights," he says of the action-drama, which stars Timothy Hutton as the leader of a gang of high-tech crooks who steal from the wealthy and corrupt. "It really gives us rich and beautiful colors."

Atmospheric skies are just some of the advantages of shooting in the Beaver State that "Leverage's" producers have discovered since the show relocated there from Los Angeles last year to take advantage of Oregon's production incentives.

The state also offers a wide variety of geographic looks. Portland doubles frequently for Boston, where the show takes place, and various locales have stood in for Washington, Nebraska and even Kiev, Russia. The state has also proved a rich source for acting talent, thanks in part to the presence of the renowned Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland.

"When we got up there we were expecting to fly in three or four cast members an episode, but we average about one or two," co-creator/executive producer John Rogers says. "Some of the (local) actors have been so good, we've made them recurring characters on the show."

Oregon has hosted a number of notable productions over the years, from studio films like "Animal House" (1978) and "The Goonies" (1985) to numerous works by Portland-based director Gus Van Sant. But it wasn't until the state upped its total labor incentive in 2005 to 16.2% that it became a regular destination for Hollywood films such as "Twilight" (2008) and "Extraordinary Measures" (2010). Last year, Oregon enjoyed its biggest year ever, attracting more than $62 million in film, television and commercial production.

At first glance, the state's incentive isn't overwhelming when compared with those offered by states like Michigan, which boasts a 42% tax credit. But looks can be deceiving

"When I ran the numbers, based on the amount of local crew that was available, Oregon was very competitive," says Nan Morales, producer of "Extraordinary Measures" and the Jennifer Aniston-starrer "Management" (2008), which also shot in Oregon.

The majority of crew are in the Portland area, and there are others in Bend and elsewhere who come in and work as locals, which saves money on lodging and per diems, says Morales. "There are also people in Seattle who can come down and work as nearby hires, which is really inexpensive. The hourly rates for the IA crews and Teamsters are also lower than places like Detroit or Boston," she says.

Traditionally, Oregon's crew base has been supported by TV commercial shoots, many generated by the Portland ad agency Wieden+Kennedy, whose clients include Beaverton-based Nike.

The state is also a popular destination for car commercials, drawn by Oregon's concentration of diverse terrain, from rocky coastline and rain forests in the west, to arid high deserts in the east, with the snow-capped Cascade Mountains in between.

So if the Beaver State is this great, why hasn't it snatched up a larger portion of the production pie from places like Louisiana, New Mexico and Vancouver? The answer: The incentive's annual $7.5 million cap can easily be tapped out by a single film whose budget is in the $40 million range.

"We currently have half of that incentive money still available for the rest of the year," says Vince Porter, executive director of the Oregon Film and Video Office and a former vp production at Showtime. "But when we have 'Leverage' and then another big project like 'Extraordinary Measures' (in the same year), there's just not the incentive available left over for other major productions. We compete very well with features in the $5 million-$20 million range and basic cable shows that don't do 22-episode orders." ("Leverage" has 16-episode seasons.)

If the incentive is too small for the state to be co-opted by the entertainment industry and turned into a Hollywood North -- or even a Vancouver South -- that's probably OK with most Oregonians.

"The Oregon psychology -- it's largely an indie mentality," says Travis Knight, son of Nike founder-owner Phil Knight and the CEO of LAIKA, the Portland-based stop-motion animation studio responsible for the Oscar-nominated "Coraline" (2009) and commercials for clients ranging from Apple to Arby's. "We're strange people. We do have this progressive urban center, but you go outside of Port land and it's clod-hoppin' hillbilly territory. Anytime you have that kind of push and pull, you have the opportunity for a really great creative tension and fertile ground for artistry and innovation."

Actor Bruce Campbell agrees. "In Oregon, there are no rules about how you make a movie," the recent Oregon transplant says. He shot the 2008 horror spoof "My Name Is Bruce" on the property surrounding his home in hills of Jackson County and at Land Mind Studios, a converted pear-packing facility in downtown Medford.

"Half the lumber for my backlot came from one rancher who had a sign out in front of his property that just said 'stuff for sale' and his number," Campbell says. "This guy had ridiculous supplies of sheet metal and 1-by-12 barn wood. In L.A., I would have paid top dollar for fresh lumber and then had somebody make it look old." Campbell got a good deal and in return pumped an estimated $250,000 into the local economy.

That's peanuts compared with a weekly series like "Leverage," which pays its crew per diems in rarely circulated $2 bills to demonstrate its economic impact to the locals. Not to say, of course, that anyone is asking the show to justify its presence.

"From top to bottom, it's a very friendly state without an agenda," "Leverage's" Rogers says. "On a Los Angeles location, people start honking their horns and turning up the music in their house, hoping to get some kind of pay-off. You show up at a location in Oregon and people come out of their houses with trays of cookies and milk."

Does Marketing matter

2010-06-12T20:23:00.000-07:00

Analysis suggests that big spending on tentpoles pays off

Hollywood Reporter: By Larry Gerbrandt

June 10, 2010, 08:42 PM ET

When a movie hits big, almost no one cares what was spent; when a release fails to make opening-weekend estimates or has a 60% drop-off during its second week, everyone begins pointing fingers.

Consider MGM's $30 million to tub-thump "Hot Tub Time Machine," which cost about $35 million to make: First-week gross was $20 million, dropping 60% the following week and winding up with $50 million in domestic gross. Or Disney's $200 million production "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time," which has raked in $63 million domestically to date against a prints-and-advertising spend stateside of $75 million.

On the other hand, Disney's "Alice in Wonderland," similar in cost and marketing budget to "Prince," has grossed $334 million domestically and $1 billion worldwide.

In short, there might not be a more daunting challenge than opening a major motion picture: Create an internationally recognized brand name that lasts a lifetime, and do it in a couple of weeks with no second chances to course-correct. It's little wonder that the average P&A spend for major releases last year topped $37 million, according to Baseline Intelligence, the highest number since 2003, when the MPAA estimated that the six largest studios spent an average of $39.5 million on domestic P&A. Sometimes it works, sometimes not.

We've assembled a cornucopia of data that break down P&A spending by media category, release pattern and major studio, but the most interesting and consistent ratio to emerge is the relationship between negative cost and domestic P&A spend.

For the past seven years, domestic P&A has accounted for 34%-37% of combined production and domestic-releasing costs for movies released by the six largest studios.

In fact, after taking a big jump in 2003, the combined negative plus domestic P&A has hovered around the $100 million-a-film mark, with last year hitting $102.3 million, up from $87.9 million in 2008, according to Baseline Intelligence. (The MPAA stopped releasing six-studio stats in 2007.)

Looked at another way, for every dollar spent on producing a major film, the studios have been spending 51 cents-58 cents to release and market it in the U.S. and Canada. Assuming distributors get an average of 55% of domestic ticket sales, the average 2009 release had to generate $186 million in domestic boxoffice gross to recoup production and domestic-releasing costs -- an unrealistic goal for all but a handful of titles -- which is where the international brand-building challenge kicks in.

The connection between production budgets and P&A spend is repeated at the individual studio level.

Last year, Paramount had the highest average negative cost ($87.7 million) and highest P&A average ($50 million a release). Universal had the lowest average negative cost ($51.7 million) and lowest P&A ($30.4 million).

The "P" portion of prints and advertising represents less than 10% of the overall spend, and with digital distribution becoming more widespread it is heading downward. The actual cost of a print can vary widely depending on the volume of prints ordered, the film-release stock chosen, length of the movie and quality-control considerations. Prices can range from less than $1,000 to more than $3,000, but what the majors pay is based on volume deals cut in aggressive negotiations between high-level studio and lab executives and might include rebates from such film-stock manufacturers as Kodak and Fuji.

Through the years, there have been periodic attempts to control escalating P&A spending, which can soar to the $85 million range on tentpole releases involving 4,000 screens.

This includes finger-pointing at ego-driven demands by actors and directors to blanket major-city skylines with giant billboards and lavish creative campaigns, but Nielsen Ad*Views data suggest that the overwhelming portion of the spend is on television advertising. Last year, Nielsen estimates that of the $26.5 million in media spent on the opening weekend of a 2,000- to 5,000-screen release, 80% went to network, cable and spot TV buys.

In contrast to just about every other product release, a movie faces a singular challenge: It must create near-instant national brand-name recognition within a span of a few days to a couple of weeks. The only way to do this, especially with a highly visual product like a film, is with a well-crafted TV spot campaign.

While overall TV viewership is at record levels, it also is increasingly fragmented across dozens of channels. Spending on network TV actually has increased, from 35% of opening-weekend budgets in 2006 to 41% last year, in addition to an increase from 26% to 28% in cable-network spend. These increases have come largely at the expense of spot TV, down from 18% to 11%, and newspapers, down from 12% to 9%, Nielsen said.

At various points along the way, especially with the ascent of social media, there have been calls to shift a larger portion of media budgets to the Internet, especially given that medium's lower ad rates, massive inventory and ability to target key demographics.

This certainly has happened with limited- and medium-release movies. Those bowing on fewer than 500 screens have seen online-media spend jump from 5% in 2006 to 12% last year; 500- to 2,000-screen releases allocated 6% to the Web last year, double the 3% mark in 2006.

Industry peer pressure and second-guessing also play a part in keeping P&A spending trending upward.

"When a studio like Disney tries to rein in these costs, they are second-guessed and doubted for trying a new media mix and paradigm," says Jim Lukowitsch, product manager at Baseline Intelligence.

Web-delivered over-the-top (OTT) television might open additional opportunities for movie marketers, but at present the Internet remains a text-driven medium, and usage is so fragmented across tens of thousands of sites that it is difficult to buy in the massive tidal wave needed to create overnight brand awareness -- which is where TV outshines all other media, albeit for a premium price.

Indeed, TV spot rates are likely to rise as the economy improves and midterm elections, which could draw record TV campaign spending, further drive up spot pricing.

The big question facing movie marketers is how to deal with the declining DVD window.

Conventional wisdom has been that the massive spend around the opening theatrical window could be justified by the "afterglow" effect lasting into the DVD and even PPV/VOD windows. This was further justified by steady shrinkage of the theatrical-to-DVD window, lessening the need for a second big spend to promote the home video release. With Google TV entering the OTT fray -- all of which have movie rentals and subscriptions as core offerings -- it would be logical to see a further shift of ad spend to online.

What isn't likely to happen is a change in the need to create that initial brand awareness in the theatrical window. Although a small-budget release might bet on multiple Golden Globe and Oscar noms to give it a promotional push, that type of strategy is simply too risky for larger-budget movies.

It might be the ultimate example of that old adage, "You never get a second chance to make a first impression." With movies, it is an impression that lasts a lifetime.

It’s been a slow death, but Miramax dies on Thursday.

2010-01-29T13:40:00.000-08:00

What has come of things ... Miramax has one of the films I produced 9 years ago (Now You Know) with Keven Smith and Jeff Anderson ... I wonder what ever happen with my points ...? Oh well .. it was fun. RIP Miramax.

Jean-Luc Martin

The New York and Los Angeles offices of the arthouse movie studio owned by Disney will close.
Eighty people will lose their jobs. The six movies waiting distribution -- "Last Night," "The Debt," "The Tempest” among them -- will be shelved, to gather dust, or win a tepid release.
It’s not clear that anyone at the studio will care.
But a lot of other people around the movie business mourned the impending loss of a label that once set the bar for taste and artistry. (Update Thursday: A Disney spokeswoman called to protest that Miramax is not 'dead.' "Miramax will consoldiate its operations within Walt Disney Studios, and will be releasing a smaller number of films than in previous years. But it will continue to operate within the Walt Disney Studios," she said.)

Over 31 years, the movie company that for most of its existence was led by founders Harvey and Bob Weinstein brought the public enduring stories that plumbed the depths of human emotion (“My Left Foot”) and pushed the boundaries of cultural barriers (“Reservoir Dogs”).
When we think of the movies that defined the latter part of the 20th century -- the movies that mattered, that stories that hit pop culture like a hammer and left a dent -- more often than not they came from Miramax.
“The Piano.” “Pulp Fiction.” “Sex, Lies and Videotape.” “Clerks.” “The English Patient.” (See slideshow.)
All too often, we may find ourselves saying: Why doesn’t Hollywood make those movies anymore?
Maybe the movie industry doesn’t know how to. Miramax, for well over a decade, was something special.
“Miramax wasn't just a bad-boy clubhouse, it was a 20th century Olympus,” filmmaker Kevin Smith wrote to TheWrap. “Throw a can of Diet Coke and you hit a modern-day deity. And for one brief, shining moment, it was an age of magic and wonders.” (Read Kevin Smith's full Hollyblog.)
With these in the vault: “Shakespeare in Love” (Oscar: Gwyneth Paltrow). “The Crying Game” (Oscar, Neil Jordan). “The Talented Mr. Ripley” (5 noms). “Chicago” (6 Oscar wins).
“If there was any company that contributed more to the shaping of a generation and a sensibility -- I don’t know it,” said veteran publicist Fredell Pogodin, lamenting the closure.
There were lots of overambitious flops, or movies that tried too hard -- “The Aviator.” “The Shipping News.” “The Four Feathers.” “Cold Mountain.”
But there was also lots of plain audacious filmmaking, movies that nobody else would dare make, much less ride to awards glory: “Kill Bill I and II.” “The Ciderhouse Rules.” “Good Will Hunting.” “Swingers.”
The story of Miramax has been told and retold: Scrappy New York brothers name the studio after their parents, wheel and deal to hold their movie company together, bully business partners, seduce filmmakers and spend loads of money on Oscar campaigns.
Then came the sale to Disney. The success, the hubris, the Oscars, the overspending. The loss of identity, the desperate attempts to reconcile with Michael Eisner followed by the bitter divorce, and the quiet takeover by Daniel Battsek.
The final chapter has been short and bitter.
Battsek was squeezed to a smaller and smaller size by Disney, despite releasing some respectable movies including “The Queen,” “Tsotsi” and “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.”
The studio endured endless rumors of its impending closure. On Oct. 2, Disney announced that “Miramax Films will reduce the number of films it releases annually while consolidating certain of its operations.”
Dick Cook, the former chairman of the studio, told me last summer that while reduced in size, the studio would continue.
But by year-end , Dick Cook was gone, and Rich Ross had taken over. Soon after, Daniel Battsek was gone, too.
Remained the final sweep-up -- the firing of the remnant staff as part of the Ross reboot of the larger Disney studio, focused on a digital future with great, big, global brands.
I asked Harvey Weinstein how he felt on Wednesday. He wrote:
"I'm feeling very nostalgic right now. I know the movies made on my and my brother Bob's watch will live on as well as the fantastic films made under the direction of Daniel Battsek. Miramax has some brilliant people working within the organization and I know they will go on to do great things in the industry."
The Weinsteins have tried to buy the name of their former company back. Disney has not responded. But Bob Iger has made it known that he would be willing to sell Miramax outright -- for about $1.5 billion.
Too rich for the Weinsteins, and probably anybody else.
So on Thursday, one more arthouse film outlet goes away.
Some in this business just can’t believe it.
“I refuse to believe it will go away forever,” said Amanda Lundberg of 42West, who spent eight years of her life at the company.
“I think Miramax is too strong a brand to not exist in some incarnation. Maybe not this year or in five years, but the library is huge and the brand is big. I can’t imagine it will disappear.”

'Avatar' is king of the world

2010-01-26T06:59:00.000-08:00

Hello All,

I remember when a lot of my friends were working on Titanic and all the stories of the craziness that was going on at the time. At that time it had the smell and feel of a "Water World" situation. With Avatar everyone knew it was going to be BIG but this BIG so quickly. It is going to hit 2.5B within 2 years if not more.

Have a great day

Jean-Luc Martin

Film trumps 'Titanic' as the all-time grossing title worldwide
James Cameron has conquered the worldwide box office, again.

As of today, 20th Century Fox and Cameron's "Avatar" surpassed previous record holder "Titanic" to become the highest worldwide grosser of all time.

Fox said final figures won't be available until Tuesday, but with weekend numbers for "Avatar" totaling $1.838 billion worldwide, pic's expected $15 million domestic earnings should give the pic enough steam to sail past "Titanic" with a global cume of $1.842 billion.

This latest record comes just after "Avatar" made history over the weekend, grossing $1.29 billion at the international B.O. to tackle "Titanic's" $1.24 billion.

"Titanic" still reigns Stateside with $600.8 million, but as "Avatar" maintains a heady lead over its competition -- pic fell only 16% in its sixth frame -- holdover should continue to close the gap, having already earned $551.7 million as of yesterday.

Movie Production Incentives: Blockbuster Support for Lackluster Policy

2010-01-16T08:05:00.000-08:00

Very interesting article!

Jean-Luc Martin

This is from:"The Tax Foundation"
Movie Production Incentives: Blockbuster Support for Lackluster Policy

Introduction
In the last decade, state governments have "gone Hollywood," or tried to, by enacting dozens of movie production incentives (MPIs), including tax credits for film production. Hollywood might be expected to wield influence in the California state legislature, but it is more surprising to see movie and TV executives throwing their weight around in Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, and South Carolina. All these states and most others have enacted MPIs. Those who were quickest and most generous have landed productions. Other states are left empty-handed despite having offered embarrassingly generous tax abatements to attract filmmakers.

Based on fanciful estimates of economic activity and tax revenue, states are investing in movie production projects with small returns and taking unnecessary risks with taxpayer dollars. In return, they attract mostly temporary jobs that are often transplanted from other states. States claim to boost job training with MPIs, but these tax incentives often encourage individuals to gain skills that are only employable as long as politicians enact ever larger subsidies for the film industry. Furthermore, the competition among states transfers a large portion of potential gains to the movie industry, not to local businesses or state coffers. It is unlikely that movie production incentives generate wealth in the long run. Most fail even in the short run. Yet they remain popular.

Florida Governor Charlie Crist (R), Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm (D), New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson (D), Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski (D), Ohio Governor Ted Strickland (D), and Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) in particular have strongly pushed for MPIs to encourage film production in their states. In California, a state that avoided offering credits until very recently, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger hopes that they will lure back productions now moving to other states. In the rare case when the executive branch rejects the use of MPIs, as Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels (R) did in 2008, or strongly questions them as Iowa Governor Chet Culver (D) and Rhode Island Governor Don Carcieri (R) have done recently, their concerns are overridden with resounding support from the state legislature and incentive beneficiaries.

Politicians are not alone. While the occasional letter to the editor warns otherwise, most citizens view state-funded film production in a positive light, a win-win for everyone. This report describes the various incentives that states have enacted, explains their undeserved popularity, and makes an argument for their immediate discontinuance.

Key Findings

• Forty-four states now offer significant movie production incentives (MPIs), up from five states in 2002, and twenty-eight states offer film tax credits.

• In the face of state budget pressures and preposterously generous incentives in Louisiana and Michigan, states may curtail or even terminate their MPI programs. Kansas and Iowa have suspended theirs, Kansas for two years to save revenue and Iowa briefly to investigate corruption.

• MPIs have often escaped routine oversight about benefits, costs and activities.

• Spurious research is common in campaigns for film tax credits, often featuring dramatic job creation claims. A recent study concluded that Pennsylvania'

s film tax credit produces net benefits of $4.5 million by assuming that any business interacting with the film industry would not exist but for the credit. MPIs create mostly temporary positions with limited options for upward mobility.

• The MPI experience demonstrates that a politically connected industry can grow if the state greatly reduces its taxes, but states should have a tax system that operates as a welcome mat to all industries, not just those politicians have picked.

Los Angeles location production drops in '09

2010-01-16T07:39:00.000-08:00

California and Tax incentives - We need them or else

Los Angeles location production drops in '09
Film permits off 30%, reality TV down 49%

The industry erosion continues: On-location production in the Los Angeles area slid 13% in the fourth quarter, yielding a 19% plunge in such shoots in 2009.

Production permit service FilmLA on Thursday unveiled yearly stats showing the sharpest decline since tracking began in 1993. The non-profit group recorded 37,979 permitted production days in 2009, compared to 47,117 in 2008.

"This annual report reinforces the need for the positive steps being taken by the Los Angeles City Council and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to attract more filming to the city," FilmLA president Paul Audley.

City officials recently pledged to step up efforts at easing bureaucracy for locally based productions and to investigate other means of reversing so-called runaway production.

Film production increased in the fourth quarter by 14%, and 21% more commercials were shot on location, but the bigger category of TV shoots were off 33%. Some 35% fewer TV dramas received on-location permits in the latest quarter than a year ago, while sitcom activity fell 11% and on-location reality shoots were off a big 49% and TV pilots 41%.

For the year, film production fell 30%, television 17%, commercials 12% and miscellaneous other categories 21%.

FilmLA said the declines would have been worse if not for California's recent tax-based production incentives.

Digital blurs designing roles

2010-01-15T19:33:00.000-08:00

Production designer vs Art director ...very interesting

Digital blurs designing roles
ADG clears up art director, prod. designer
By JACK EGAN

In Hollywood, where titles and credits count for a lot, the line differentiating the role of the production designer and that of the art director has always been a bit fuzzy. But to the multitude of art department professionals who work behind the scenes to create the visual world that the actors inhabit, it's an important distinction that involves both turf and tradition.

In simplest terms, the production designer, working in tandem with the director, designs not just a coherent physical look, but is also key in creating the emotional atmosphere of a film. Beyond artistry, the production designer has to hew to a film's strict shooting schedule while also dealing with the allotted budget.

The art director, in turn, is second in command, responsible for executing the plan down to the smallest details so it is camera-ready. As right hand to the production designer, the art director marshals the resources of the art department, from scenic designers to set painters.

Production designer is not just an empty title. The first time someone gets hired as a production designer, a committee of the Art Directors Guild -- a union that is a part of IATSE -- reviews paperwork to determine if the person qualifies.

"Clearly we've also (contributed) to the general confusion," says ADG president Thomas Walsh. His organization, after all, is called the Art Directors Guild, not the Production Designers Guild. And the Oscar for best art direction goes to a film's production designer along with the set decorator, a key collaborator.

To provide some clarity, the ADG has prepared a short film that will kick off the group's annual awards dinner next month. "A core message will be to define (what) the production designer does," Walsh says. "We're not trying to be exclusionary, but we do take great pride in what the production designer title represents."

In the heyday of the studio system, when movies were churned out on an assembly-line basis, there were no production designers, only art directors. The title of production designer was first conferred on art directing legend William Cameron Menzies by David O. Selznick to more accurately describe his sweeping contributions to the look of "Gone With the Wind" and his dramatic use of Technicolor.

Hidebound Hollywood wasn't ready to accept the new moniker, and the 1939 Oscar for best art direction went to Lyle Wheeler, the supervising art director on the Civil War epic. As if to rectify the omission, Menzies received an honorary Academy Award in 1940 for his experiments with color. He had already won Oscars for best art direction in 1928 and 1929, the first two years they were handed out.

The production designer credit, however, didn't come into its own until the end of the '40s when the studio monoliths began to crumble. No longer full-time employees, they in effect became freelancers who signed onto individual projects, assembled art department teams and assumed responsibility for the results. The title, however, didn't become official until the late '70s.

The upshot of Menzies' innovations, which included storyboarding every scene, was to advance the idea that the production designer's job is to provide a coherent, unified vision. "It works best when there are fewer cooks in the kitchen," Walsh says. "Otherwise you would have a film constantly being reinvented from early conception to final realization in post."

With the advent of digital imagery and computer graphics as essential ingredients in more and more movies, the role of the production designer is again being redefined. The freshest and most notable example is in "Avatar," helmer James Cameron's billion-dollar blockbuster. Here the real and digital worlds have been seamlessly integrated, requiring the close collaboration between veteran production designer Rick Carter and Robert Stromberg, who oversaw the look of the virtual world of Pandora. As a result, both have received a very rare double credit as production designers on the film.

"The double credit was something I felt strongly about," says Carter, who over the last two decades has himself been at the cutting edge of evolving digital technologies, working as the production designer of choice for directors Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis on such films as "Jurassic Park" and "The Polar Express." "I felt Rob and I had made equal contributions. It took a lot of work, but I walked the Art Directors Guild as well as the Motion Picture Academy through the process and got them to accept that both of us should get production design credit." The only precedent was on "Polar Express," where Carter also made a successful pitch to get digital designer Eric Chang a production designer credit. Both Chiang and Stromberg have since gone on to be sole production designers on films.

"There will be more of this in the future," Carter says. "I think digital technologies have given production design a whole new lease on life."

Drac Studios segueing into film producing Effects/makeup house in preproduction on 'Dead in the Water'

2010-01-15T08:28:00.000-08:00

Good Morning!

This is great news! Way to go Baton Rouge ..and Drac! Great company and a huge asset to Louisiana Producers and Projects!

Jean-Luc Martin

Line-Producer, Production Manager

Special effects and makeup house Drac Studios is segueing into motion picture producing, opening up Drac Studios Louisiana and going into preproduction on its first live-action feature, "Dead in the Water."

Si Dunn wrote the script, which will be directed by Rob Walker and produced by Drac president Harvey Lowry.

"With all of the indie and studio films being shot in Louisiana, it was an easy decision to open a facility in the state," Lowry said. "Now we can offer other producers the Louisiana tax incentives for our special effects and makeup effects as well as take advantage of them ourselves for our own productions."

The company is leasing space in Baton Rouge's Raleigh Studios Celtic Media Center.

The creative team behind Drac -- Lowry, Todd Tucker and Ron Halvas, with creative direction by Greg Cannom -- has won Oscars for "Bram Stoker's Dracula," "Mrs. Doubtfire" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and been nommed for "Titanic," "The Passion of the Christ" and other productions.

Drac had been supplying effects to Louisiana productions -- "The Mortician," directed by Gareth Maxwell Roberts, and "Area 51," being produced by Courtney Solomon and Moshe Diamant, are in preproduction in the state -- but "Water" will be its first all-in movie.

Tucker and Lowry recently completed production on their first feature, "Monster Mutt," under their Green Pictures production banner.

Paramount to produce more micro-budget films

2010-01-07T15:48:00.000-08:00

"Studio will spend $1 million annually to develop 10 to 20 films"

Hello all,

Of course a studio will want to tap in on this concept and exploit the bottom line! Who or what is the bottom line? Well .. that would be the crew. The folks who will benefit will be the director, producers and a couple of the no name actors. Pay the crew fairly and no name actors and shoot it for 600K and exploit it with P & A capital and make 300% on your ROI .. but have a good story.

have a great day!

Jean-Luc Martin

Line-Producer, Production manager, Producer (in no particular order) I enjoy what I do!

Seeking to replicate the stunning success of "Paranormal Activity," Paramount's launching an initiative that will spend $1 million annually to develop and produce microbudget films.

Move, unveiled Thursday, is designed to place between 10 and 20 projects in development by the end of next year, with no individual budget topping $100,000.

Paramount Film Group prexy Adam Goodman, promoted to the slot in June, cooked up the plan in the successful wake of "Paranormal," made for $15,000 and grossing more than $100 million domestically.

Goodman indicated the funds, which will come out of the studio's overall production budget, will be targeted at both unknowns and established filmmakers, with the goal of increasing the studio's ability to find new voices and ideas. In addition, the initiative's aimed at giving Paramount a more diverse portfolio of titles at a time when Hollywood's devoting most of its resources to megabudget pics, such as Par's "Transformers" and "Star Trek" franchises.

The studio hasn't set a target of how many projects would receive a theatrical release. The microbudget projects could also conceivably be remade with conventional budgets.

Paramount originally planned to release "Shutter Island" in early October but, citing costs, decided in late August to push that title back to February and opted for "Paranormal Activity" instead.

Par was able to make effective use of a low-cost grassroots release strategy, starting with a dozen midnight screenings of Oren Peli's horror-thriller in college towns before launching a gradual rollout that built on strong word of mouth.

'Avatar' blasts past $1 billion worldwide

2010-01-03T21:17:00.000-08:00

Well ... it happened and I thought it would take 30 days!
Jean-Luc

James Cameron's 3D epic hits the mark in just 21 days

"Avatar" started the new decade dominating the foreign circuit by grossing an estimated $133.5 million on the weekend -- down just 13% from the prior stanza -- from more than 13,500 screens in 110 markets.

Worldwide in just 21 days, director James Cameron's mega-budget epic has rolled up total boxoffice of $1.022 billion (comprising $670.2 million offshore and $352.1 million domestic).

Only five films in motion picture history have exceeded worldwide boxoffice of more than $1 billion, and "Avatar" now ranks No. 4 on that all-time list.

Preceding it are Cameron's own 1997 smash "Titanic" ($1.843 billion) from 20th Century Fox, the distributor of "Avatar"; 2003's "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" ($1.119 billion) from New Line Cinema; and 2006 's "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" ($1.066 billion), from Disney. Trailing "Avatar" is 2008's "The Dark Knight" ($1.001 billion), from Warner Bros.

"At the current pace of business," adds Fox, "Avatar" could claim the No. 2 all-time spot this week "even with school holidays ending in many markets."

Top "Avatar" territories overseas were France ($21.3 million on the weekend for a $84.5 million), Germany ($12.3 million, cume $57.2 million), Spain ($10.1 million, cume $47.1 million) and the U.K. ($9.3 million, cume $53 million).

No. 2 foreign on the weekend was Warner Bros.' "Sherlock Homes," director Guy Ritchie's adaptation co-starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law of the venerable Sir Arthur Conan Doyle detective series. Second weekend on the foreign circuit detected $37.6 million from 4,600 screens for an early cume of $88.3 million. "Holmes' " No. 2 finish in the U.K. provided $5.2 million from 762 sites for a market cume of $19 million.

Finishing third was Fox's family-oriented title "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel," which grossed $32 million from 6,105 locations in 54 markets. Overseas cume stands at a hair under $100 million ($99.1 million). A No. 3 U.K. finish generated $3.8 million from 492 spots for a market cume of $20.3 million.

Opening at No. 4 on the weekend in Russia, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania is Universal's release of "Black Lightning," co-produced by the studio and Russian wunderkind producer-director Timur Bekmambetov." Being touted as "the Russian response to 'Transformers' and 'Batman,' " "Lightning" drew $9.7 million from 800 screens.

In Russia, the weekend tally was $8.9 million from 698 locations, sufficient for a No. 2 ranking behind "Avatar." Universal ranks "Black Lightning," directed by Alexander Voytinsky and concerning a mild-mannered student-turned-flying superhero, as the distributor's fourth-biggest opening in the market. Openings in Israel and Bulgaria loom this week.

Winding up at No. 5 was Disney Animation's '"The Princess and the Frog," which drew $9.5 million from 2,929 screens in 17 territories for an overseas cume of $45 million. A third Italy weekend provided $2.9 million from 550 sites for a market cume of $12.9 million.

Universal's "It's Complicated," a comedy from writer-director Nancy Meyers co-starring Meryl Streep, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, drew $5 million in its second weekend on the foreign circuit from 1,053 sites in 13 territories. Overseas cume stands at $13.8 million.

Sony's "Did You Hear About the Morgans?" generated $3.6 million from 575 locales in just seven markets, nudging its total overseas gross thus far to $6 million. The romantic comedy co-starring Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker finished the weekend in the No. 4 spot in the U.K., taking in nearly $2.1 million from 318 screens.

"2012," Sony's top-grossing picture of 2009 overseas, pushed its offshore cume to $595.2 million thanks to a $4.9 million weekend at 3,265 sites in 72 markets.

Still generating boxoffice in Japan at 618 situations was Pixar/Disney's "Up," which has grossed a total of $422 million offshore. Weekend tally was $3.1 million. Disney's "Old Dogs," a comedy with John Travota and Robin Williams, generated $3 million from 1,264 locales in 20 markets for an overseas cume of $25 million.

Other international cumes: Universal's "Couples Retreat," $52.9 million; Sony's "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs," $83.6 million (after a $2.8 million weekend at 910 screens in 21 markets); Pathe's "Loup," $7.8 million (France only); Universal's "Public Enemies," $116.2 million; EuropaCorp. Distribution's "Arthur et la vengeance de Maltazard," $31.6 million (over five frames, France only); Sony's "Zombieland," $23.1 million; Studio Canal's "R.T.T.," $7.7 million (France only); and Focus Features/Universal's "9," $7.1 million (seven Universal territories only).

New focus for film marketing --- Internet, mobile grab more studio spending

2010-01-01T16:54:00.000-08:00

Great Article on marketing within the studio system.

Happy New Year!

Jean-Luc Martin

Production Manager

Just a few short years ago, when studio marketers were looking to get the most bang for their buck, the basic questions were simple: How much can we spend on TV? And which of the old reliables -- billboards, newspaper ads in top markets -- get the rest?

Today, marketing mavens are still building their promo plans around TV, but the old reliables are anything but.

Marketing remains as shrouded in secrecy as the inner workings of the CIA. And while studios are cutting costs across the board -- slashing talent salaries, reducing the number of movies they finance and produce, and laying off staffers -- they fork over as much as ever on marketing. But where they're spending that money is shifting.

If a studio thinks a film has a chance at grossing north of $150 million domestically, it will lay out $100 million or more for a worldwide campaign. For a film that's hoping to gross $50 million or more domestically, a studio will spend $30 million-$40 million.

In the first two quarters of this year, $1.7 billion was spent to promote theatrical releases, a 1.2% gain vs. the same period in 2008, despite the economic crisis, according to Nielsen Monitor-Plus. (Other sectors, including automotive and pharmaceuticals, were down by double digits.)

Television and radio remain the cornerstones of pic marketing spends, gobbling up 60% to 70% of a promo campaign's budget. But with auds dipping into everything from text messages to Facebook to TV and the Internet -- often simultaneously -- the studios are spreading their marketing moolah wider, across multiple venues, with multiple trailers, multiple approaches and specific demos in their sights.

There are no longer general-interest campaigns. Studio promo efforts have become more targeted, looking to engage core audiences in key demos more directly and actively.

And film marketers have revived an old Hollywood showman's tradition, the roadshow, in which stars and filmmakers make stops in multiple cities around the globe to tubthump their upcoming releases.

While the money spent on digital marketing has increased, it's almost surprising the totals aren't higher. In 2002, an estimated 1% of a film's marketing budget was allocated to digital. A few years later, that figure rose to 4.4%, according to a 2007 MPAA report. Today, 8%-12% of the marketing budget is devoted to new media, such as Internet and wireless promotions.

And while studios spent about 14% of a film's marketing budget on newspaper ads in 2004, and 10% as recently as 2007, they now allocate maybe 4%, according to studio insiders.

It's a sign of the times that for "Avatar," perhaps the most expensive movie ever made and a major year-end release, 20th Century Fox devoted at least 10% to promotion on the Web, while buying just a single full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times on opening day -- significant, but modest relative to the movie's size and scope.

Similarly, Paramount last summer took out only one full-page ad on opening weekend in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times for the debut of "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen." When rival studios saw that "Transformers" wasn't hurt by having virtually no newspaper presence -- the film grossed $200 million in its first five days -- they took note. Warner Bros. quickly cut back on its print campaign for "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince," which bowed two weeks later and grossed $158 million in its first five days.

The downward shift in ad placement has huge ramifications for big-city newspapers, already pinched by declining readership and the loss of other key advertisers. Not long ago, the usual practice was to take out full-page or two-page (double-truck) ads on the Sunday preceding a film's bow, then on opening day, and once or twice each weekend for the next few weeks. The Friday editions of major newspapers were stuffed with pages and pages of movie ads.

Today, the number of print ads touting films has dwindled sharply, even in the mainstay New York Times (where a double-truck ad can cost $175,000, while a full-page ad goes for $95,000) and Los Angeles Times (where rates are somewhat less than at the Gray Lady).

There is one demo that studios do still rely on newspapers to reach: older adults. In particular, prestige titles that are review-driven continue to use newspaper ads. Recent examples include "Fantastic Mr. Fox" and "The Lovely Bones."

"Newspapers aren't a decision-making medium anymore, except for older audiences and movies that are really review-driven," one studio topper says.

Other marketing traditions, like static movie billboards, also have become an endangered species or have been shifted to supplement online campaigns, as Sony did with "District 9." Studios still devote 8% to 12% of their total marketing campaigns on outdoor, but the number used to be closer to 20%.

It's a reflection of the increasingly cluttered media environment that building awareness of a movie now demands more than just delivering a message passively to prospective audiences. It's now about engaging them more directly.

Besides allocating more marketing money to new areas, studios are using fresh takes on old ones, such as the revived practice of the "traveling roadshow."

With its relaunch of the venerable "Star Trek" film franchise this past summer, Paramount faced a key hurdle: overseas audiences weren't traditionally "Trek" fans.

So the studio rolled out high-profile advance screenings of the J.J. Abrams film both domestically and abroad. It created splashy showcases in various countries from Austria, Belgium, Holland and Spain to New Zealand, and brought the filmmakers and stars along to do local media interviews. Director Abrams even traveled to Kuwait to show the film to U.S. troops. Par also held a handful of official "Star Trek" premieres around the globe, in Australia, Germany, London and the U.S.

The costs of such ground efforts vary quite a bit, depending on the scope of the campaign and the movie's heft.

With a lower-budget marketing effort, aiming for less-splashy events, as was the case with "Paranormal Activity," each city can cost about $15,000. But on a bigger-scale film with more talent participants, such as "Star Trek," the cost of each leg of a roadshow can run to $100,000 or more. That adds up to better than $1 million overall for such multicity tours, be they international or domestic.

The payoff, though, is evident: "Star Trek" grossed $127.7 million internationally, considered a huge victory. (Domestically, where the franchise has a loyal following, the pic cumed $257.3 million).

Warner Bros. faced an equally tough challenge in taking "The Hangover" overseas, as American comedy is often a tough sell. Drawing from the same playbook that Paramount did, Warners held special "Hangover" screenings around the globe in many of the same spots "Trek" visited. "Hangover" became the top grossing R-rated laffer of all time, both domestically and overseas.

Back in the U.S., the studios are doing more word-of-mouth screenings and local promos, such as cable TV campaigns -- an effort that one marketing exec refers to as "geo-targeting." Such focused approaches make more sense than spending big money on newspaper advertising and big network TV, says the exec.

For veterans of the marketing game, such localized efforts recall Hollywood's roots back -- way back -- in the silent-film era; it's the old mantra of "hit 'em where they live." What is new is that studios -- after years of false starts -- are also finally learning how to harness the Internet and social networking to their advantage.

The 2009 box office saw an unusual number of films climb to unexpected heights, and several of them -- including "Paranormal Activity," "District 9" and "The Hangover" -- were helped by innovative, viral marketing campaigns.

With "Paranormal Activity," the microbudgeted horror film that DreamWorks picked up for $350,000, Par built buzz with midnight screenings in select markets and then sent fans to online site Eventful to petition for the pic to go wide when it hit 1 million requests.

The pic gradually widened with the slogan, "You demanded it!" reinforcing the idea that the audience was actively participating in the film's bow. The pic has grossed $104.2 million domestically.

"There are so many ways for people to communicate instantaneously," a Par exec says. "One person who comes to a screening tells lots of people about the movie, or (tweets) about it, or posts something."

Such of word-of-mouth is invaluable, but its actual cost is relative to expectations. One exec estimates the marketing budget for "Paranormal Activity" at something less than $20 million. That's very low considering other films' marketing budgets and the horror pic's eventual gross, but it's pretty high considering that the pic's production budget was a mere $11,000.

With its marketing campaign for sci-fi thriller "District 9" this past summer, Sony was the envy of rival marketing execs. The studio paired a barrage of creative content on the Internet with an innovative outdoor campaign. Cryptic billboards and bus-stop ads drove consumers to the film's website. The website then gave partial explanations as it promoted the film. Audience members had to be versed in both the old and new marketing realms to piece the full concept together. "District 9," an inexpensive pickup for the studio for which it spent roughly $20 million on marketing, turned into a phenom, grossing $115.6 million domestically.

While Internet ads do cost appreciably less than traditional media, studios are still spending as much as ever in two traditional areas: television ads and trailers.

Thursday-night television remains an oasis for movie ads because studios want to woo viewers to their Friday pic launches. Go-to shows on Thursday include "The Office" and "30 Rock," both on NBC, and "CSI" on CBS."CSI" is especially key for a movie that needs support from the middle of the country, vs. the two coasts.

Shows airing on other nights of the week also carry plenty of movie spots these days, and sports and reality programming get plenty of the ad action. According to a recent survey by AdAge, Fox's upcoming season of "American Idol" is fetching $360,000 to $490,000 for a 30-second spot. That's more even than NBC's Sunday Night Football ($339,700) commands. Among scripted shows, ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" gets a price of $240,462 and ABC's "Desperate Housewives," $228,851.

"There are only a few places left that get a huge audience, like the Super Bowl. Marketing has become a more complicated science," one studio topper says.

As for trailers, that staple of the moviegoing experience, they're still the chief means by which a studio introduces a new film to the public. In 2007, 4% of a pic's marketing budget went to trailers. The thinking is that if you've already got 'em in the seats, in a film state of mind, why not tout your upcoming pics as well?

At a minimum, there are two trailers cut for most movies: the "teaser" and the "payoff." For some titles, there are three or four different trailers.

One former studio exec says studios are still spending too much on trailers, sometimes commissioning three to six companies to create separate trailers, then picking one or two of the best from among the choices. While studios used to produce trailers inhouse, trailer production is now routinely outsourced, with costs ranging between $100,000 and $300,000 to produce each one, according to estimates.

Such considerations of cost and impact will continue to confront the majors as they face increased pressure from their parent congloms to reconcile the bottom line.

Marketing spends must be accounted for in the quarter a film is released, even though box office returns might not come in until the following quarter. This can drag down an earnings report, and raise eyebrows up and down Wall Street.

"The landscape is shifting. We're sort of betwixt and between," one studio marketer laments. "While everyone is clearly focusing on the Internet, we're just not at a place yet where we can do less television. That's why it's such a confusing, interesting and scary time."

Disney plans to build major production facility near Santa Clarita

2009-12-30T14:38:00.000-08:00

Old news as of October but wanted to pass it on ..
Jean-Luc

Bucking a trend toward 'runaway production,' the company proposes creating a 56-acre complex that would include soundstages and other facilities for film and TV projects.

The Walt Disney Co. said Wednesday that it would build a 56-acre production facility in northern Los Angeles County, casting a ray of light on an otherwise gloomy film economy that has hemorrhaged thousands of jobs in the last decade.

The Burbank company said the proposed Disney/ABC Studios at the Ranch would occupy a corner of the Golden Oak Ranch, a sprawling 890-acre parcel off California 14 that has been the setting of such classic films as "Old Yeller." Plans call for 12 soundstages, production offices, a commissary and other facilities that could be used for film, television, commercial and new media projects.

Hollywood back from the brink Entertainment dealmaking poised for a comeback

2009-12-23T21:48:00.000-08:00

What a difference a year makes.

When Variety ran its Dealmakers Impact Report last September, the financial world was on the brink of collapse. This time around, it seems to be on the verge of recovery.

But although dealmaking has slowed down, it has hardly ground to a halt, as shown by the activity chronicled in this report.

Nevertheless, "The volume of deal flow is off," says an entertainment financier, "and several banks have left the market, especially satellites of foreign banks."

One casualty has been the coin available for pre-sales, which over the years has been a major source of funding for indie films. "A chasm has opened up between pre-sales proceeds and film budgets," says this financier.

On a broader level, a dealmaking environment that was once awash in money and easy credit is now seeing its economic underpinnings shrink. Talent that had grown accustomed to lucrative remuneration is finding it more difficult to command the multifigure fees of the recent past.

"Look at the amount of money that came into the film industry from private equity and hedge funds," says Jay Cohen, head of film financing and packaging at the Gersh Agency. "When the stock market crashed and the economy took a hit, they pulled out from the film business and focused more on core investments. That affected the domestic product supply because the studios didn't have all that outside money. It shrank the market."

Talent agencies have been caught in the middle. "The cost structure of the business has decreased, but producers are telling us that the agencies still haven't gotten with the program with respect to their clients," says another financier.

Last year, Variety's Dealmakers issue focused on how agencies -- in the face of the WGA and SAG strikes, de facto and otherwise -- were diversifying into such strike-resistant areas as music, publishing, reality TV and digital. This year their story is not one of diversification but of consolidation.

It now looks like the market will improve, but it won't return to its profligate ways anytime soon. "There was more liquidity from 2004 to 2007 than probably at any other time in the history of our country," says Stephen Prough of investment bank Salem Partners. "In the future, standards will be higher. Investors are demanding a greater return on their money."

But one thing Hollywood has always had going for it -- in both good times and bad -- is its glamour. For years it has attracted outside investors who enjoy rubbing shoulders with showbiz types. And while any investment or acquisition is based on certain financial expectations, companies will sometimes pay something extra to make a deal.

"When buyers become desperate to buy something for competitive reasons, it creates a premium in the bidding process," says Mark Patricof, co-founder of Mesa, a merchant bank. "In the entertainment business, that transaction … is more emotional. (There's) a level of passion (that can lead to) an incremental price for the deal."

Patricof believes things are about to pick up. "You're going to see a lot of big deals happen in the next 12 months," he says. "There will be cable deals, … digital deals, and the IPO market will really open up."

And now Comcast is making the game-changing acquisition of 51% of NBC Universal.

Any business recovery, however, will occur against a backdrop of permanent technical change. There is no going back to the predigital era, when physically distributed films drew patrons to theaters and appointment TV viewing lured advertisers into auds' living rooms without challenge or question.

"Traditional media are in a state of dire retrenchment as a prelude to complete collapse," says Bob Garfield in his new book "The Chaos Scenario." He backs this up with shocking examples of shortfalls and fiascos among media companies failing to understand the impact of new technology not just on the means of production and distribution but -- more significantly -- on consumer behavior.

But the good news is that those consumers will always want to be entertained and the creative community will always fill that need. And where there's entertainment, there are deals.

`Princess and the Frog' hops to No. 1 with $25M

2009-12-13T20:24:00.000-08:00

Hello all,

Take note towards the end of this article .... With nearly three weeks left in the year, 2009 domestic revenues already have set a new record of $9.79 billion, surpassing the previous high of $9.68 billion in 2007,......... etc

Jean-Luc Martin

By DAVID GERMAIN, AP Movie Writer David Germain,

LOS ANGELES – "The Princess and the Frog" earned a big wet kiss from family audiences as the animated musical leaped to No. 1 with $25 million in its first weekend of nationwide release, according to studio estimates Sunday.

The Disney musical is the studio's first hand-drawn animated tale in five years, a contrast to the computer-animated films that now dominate the cartoon world.

"I've always believed that when you start with great storytelling, then the format aside doesn't mean anything," said Chuck Viane, head of distribution for Disney.

The movie also is a return to Disney's reinvention of classic fairy tales, offering a 1920s New Orleans twist on the Brothers Grimm story "The Frog Prince," following the adventures of a young woman turned into a frog by a kiss from an amphibian.

Despite its No. 1 finish, "The Princess and the Frog" drew modest crowds compared to many big animated tales, which can open with two or three times as much business. Those films typically open during the busy summer season, though, and Disney is counting on the long shelf life that many films manage during the holidays.

"The Princess and the Frog" took over at No. 1 from the inspiring sports tale "The Blind Side," which slipped to second-place with $15.5 million. Released by Warner Bros., "The Blind Side" raised its total to $150.2 million.

A surprise box-office sensation, "The Blind Side" is on its way to a domestic total of about $230 million, said Dan Fellman, Warner Bros. head of distribution.

"The Blind Side" chronicles the real-life story of Baltimore Ravens rookie lineman Michael Oher, who had been a homeless teen taken in by a wealthy couple (Sandra Bullock and Tim McGraw).

"It's the heartland that's pulling the strings of the movie," Fellman said. "While it's performing well everywhere, the response in smaller marketplaces and Christian communities has been outstanding."

The film opened the same weekend as "The Twilight Saga: New Moon," but with only a fraction of that movie's blockbuster business. Audience word-of-mouth has kept crowds coming for "The Blind Side," while "New Moon" has waned to the No. 4 spot with an $8 million weekend, raising its domestic haul to $267.4 million.

Warner Bros. also had the No. 3 film with a $9.1 million debut for another inspirational sports drama, Clint Eastwood's Nelson Mandela saga "Invictus," featuring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon. Freeman stars as the South African leader, who uses an underdog World Cup run by the country's rugby team to help unite the racially divided nation.

Though it had a modest start, "Invictus" debuted in the range of Eastwood's sober drama's "Mystic River" and "Million Dollar Baby" in their first weekends of wide release. Eastwood's films draw older audiences and tend to have a long life at the box office, Fellman said.

"The Lord of the Rings" creator Peter Jackson had a strong opening in limited release for "The Lovely Bones," which pulled in $116,000 in three theaters.

The Paramount Pictures release features Saoirse Ronan, Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz and Stanley Tucci in an adaptation of Alice Sebold's best-seller about a murdered girl looking back on her grieving family from the afterlife.

The Weinstein Co. drama "A Single Man" also started well with $216,328 in nine theaters. The film stars Colin Firth as a gay academic in the early 1960s who's planning to end his life amid grief over his lover's death.

Hollywood is poised for a big finish to its record box-office year, with James Cameron's science-fiction epic "Avatar" opening Friday, followed Christmas week by the family comedy "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel," Robert Downey Jr.'s action tale "Sherlock Holmes" and the nationwide expansion of George Clooney's comedy "Up in the Air."

With nearly three weeks left in the year, 2009 domestic revenues already have set a new record of $9.79 billion, surpassing the previous high of $9.68 billion in 2007, according to Paul Dergarabedian, Hollywood.com box-office analyst.

Domestic grosses should top $10 billion for the first time within the next 10 days or so. Dergarabedian estimates that Hollywood will finish the year with $10.5 billion domestically.

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Final figures will be released Monday.

1. "The Princess and the Frog," $25 million.

2. "The Blind Side," $15.5 million.

3. "Invictus," $9.1 million.

4. "The Twilight Saga: New Moon," $8 million.

5. "Disney's a Christmas Carol," $6.9 million.

6. "Brothers," $5 million.

7. "2012," $4.4 million.

8. "Old Dogs," $4.39 million.

9. "Armored," $3.5 million.

10. "Ninja Assassin," $2.7 million.

Hollywood back from the brink

2009-12-11T22:35:00.000-08:00

Entertainment dealmaking poised for a comeback
By PETER CARANICAS

What a difference a year makes.

When Variety ran its Dealmakers Impact Report last September, the financial world was on the brink of collapse. This time around, it seems to be on the verge of recovery.

But although dealmaking has slowed down, it has hardly ground to a halt, as shown by the activity chronicled in this report.

Nevertheless, "The volume of deal flow is off," says an entertainment financier, "and several banks have left the market, especially satellites of foreign banks."

One casualty has been the coin available for pre-sales, which over the years has been a major source of funding for indie films. "A chasm has opened up between pre-sales proceeds and film budgets," says this financier.

On a broader level, a dealmaking environment that was once awash in money and easy credit is now seeing its economic underpinnings shrink. Talent that had grown accustomed to lucrative remuneration is finding it more difficult to command the multifigure fees of the recent past.

"Look at the amount of money that came into the film industry from private equity and hedge funds," says Jay Cohen, head of film financing and packaging at the Gersh Agency. "When the stock market crashed and the economy took a hit, they pulled out from the film business and focused more on core investments. That affected the domestic product supply because the studios didn't have all that outside money. It shrank the market."

Talent agencies have been caught in the middle. "The cost structure of the business has decreased, but producers are telling us that the agencies still haven't gotten with the program with respect to their clients," says another financier.

Last year, Variety's Dealmakers issue focused on how agencies -- in the face of the WGA and SAG strikes, de facto and otherwise -- were diversifying into such strike-resistant areas as music, publishing, reality TV and digital. This year their story is not one of diversification but of consolidation.

It now looks like the market will improve, but it won't return to its profligate ways anytime soon. "There was more liquidity from 2004 to 2007 than probably at any other time in the history of our country," says Stephen Prough of investment bank Salem Partners. "In the future, standards will be higher. Investors are demanding a greater return on their money."

But one thing Hollywood has always had going for it -- in both good times and bad -- is its glamour. For years it has attracted outside investors who enjoy rubbing shoulders with showbiz types. And while any investment or acquisition is based on certain financial expectations, companies will sometimes pay something extra to make a deal.

"When buyers become desperate to buy something for competitive reasons, it creates a premium in the bidding process," says Mark Patricof, founder of Mesa, a merchant bank. "In the entertainment business, that transaction … is more emotional. (There's) a level of passion (that can lead to) an incremental price for the deal."

Patricof believes things are about to pick up. "You're going to see a lot of big deals happen in the next 12 months," he says. "There will be cable deals, … digital deals, and the IPO market will really open up."

And now Comcast is making the game-changing acquisition of 51% of NBC Universal.

Any business recovery, however, will occur against a backdrop of permanent technical change. There is no going back to the predigital era, when physically distributed films drew patrons to theaters and appointment TV viewing lured advertisers into auds' living rooms without challenge or question.

"Traditional media are in a state of dire retrenchment as a prelude to complete collapse," says Bob Garfield in his new book "The Chaos Scenario." He backs this up with shocking examples of shortfalls and fiascos among media companies failing to understand the impact of new technology not just on the means of production and distribution but -- more significantly -- on consumer behavior.

But the good news is that those consumers will always want to be entertained and the creative community will always fill that need. And where there's entertainment, there are deals.

The costs of H’w’d spending ---- Who benefits when filmmakers raise the tentpole?

2009-11-27T11:18:00.000-08:00

Peter Bart speaks again!
Jean-Luc Martin

Who benefits when filmmakers raise the tentpole?

James Cameron was quoted in the Wall Street Journal not long ago arguing that "when a studio goes crazy and spends a lot of money, it's the consumer who benefits."

Translated, that means that if Jim Cameron decides to reinvent the lexicon of filmmaking in a mind-bogglingly expensive movie like "Avatar," the filmgoer will enjoy the thrill ride -- and won't pay more for it. Much more, anyway.

With the world awaiting "Avatar's" release, we shall soon see if Cameron has performed that re-invention. In any case, having poured $300 million into the movie (or $400 million if you run the numbers differently), it's Fox that's waiting nervously to find out whether "the King of the world" again will earn all the ka-ching in the world.

Whatever the outcome, I would argue that the move to ever bigger and more extravagant movies will hurt the filmgoer long-term, not benefit him. Here's why:

Fueled by burgeoning foreign grosses, the studios are intent on making fewer movies at more grandiose budgets and at the same time diminishing their investment in "risky" low and mid-range dramas. The result: A numbing succession of tentpoles that may all but drive indie-style films out of the multiplexes.

Further, the era of the "big spend" will increasingly contaminate the few dramatic movies being made. "Lovely Bones," the Paramount-DreamWorks Christmas release from Peter Jackson, is an intimate film that cost almost $100 million to produce. Will the massive special effects improve or diminish the impact of the basic narrative? One key reason for the setbacks suffered by both Miramax and Paramount's Vantage division was the impulse to pump up spending both in production and marketing.

I remember the off-the-cuff commentary of Mike Nichols some years ago in describing the budget crunch on arguably his best picture, "The Graduate." When a young director finds his budget shrinking, recalled Nichols, he is compelled to not spend more, but invent more. The result often is a better movie.

In an economy where the big companies are under pressure to cut costs, filmmakers paradoxically feel the pressure to amp up their budgets. Audiences overseas want big-canvas action pictures that offer more effects and less dialogue. Simultaneous releases around the world may diminish piracy, but they expand marketing costs. The distributors demand instant gratification and are willing to pay for it.

I hope "Avatar" is a big hit and that the always modest and understated Cameron once again proves his techno-smarts. Even if that happens, however, the average filmgoer will still emerge the long-term loser.

Is Tom Cruise overpaid?

Like most people, I've always been intrigued by Forbes' lists of the "wealthiest" and "most powerful," but I've never figured out quite how they line up with their numbers.

Now, however, Forbes has a list I can relate to -- the most overpaid stars in Hollywood. The individual rankings, Forbes says, are based on a return-on-investment formula involving each star's compensation and each movie's gross. Forbes, of course, believes it has reliable data on star paydays, even though those numbers remain obscure to the rest of us.

The upshot: Will Ferrell, Eddie Murphy, Ewan McGregor and Tom Cruise are on the top of the "overpaid" list. Inclusion of Murphy and Ferrell is understandable, but Cruise apparently is vulnerable due to "Lions for Lambs." As for poor McGregor, he's apparently made too many classy movies like "Trainspotting" and thus represents a bad buy compared with, of all people, Shia LaBeouf, who by Forbes standard is the best buy for the buck among actors. Go figure.

Hollywood rethinks use of A-list actors --- Films are showing that a good concept trumps star power

2009-11-15T19:42:00.000-08:00

A producing partner on a film we are working together on (thanks Bill Rogin) brought this article to my attention. Although Condemned (horror) and many other projects don't have the budgets that this article is addressing - the issue still remains .. "talent quotes" and are they really as much a factor as the market requires for a positive ROI? Logic would say .. good script and amazing director and strong actors (focused production team .. lets not forget that FACT). There are so many talented actors out there .. but the market / audience dictates ticket sales! I could go on .... but it is time to get back to work!

Have a great week everyone!!!

Best,
Jean-Luc
Producer, Line-Producer, UPM (in no particular order)

Hollywood studios are now thinking twice about splurging on A-list movie stars and costly productions in reaction to the poor economy, but also because of the surprising success of recent films with unknown actors.

After buddy comedy "The Hangover," a movie with a little-known cast, made $459 million at the global boxooffice this past summer, several films have shown that a great concept or story can trump star appeal when it comes to luring fans.

"District 9," a low-budget movie in which the biggest stars were space aliens treated like refugees and the lead actor was South African Sharlto Copley, made $200 million. Thriller "Paranormal Activity," starring Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat, has cash registers ringing to the tune of $100 million.

Next up, on Nov. 20, comes Summit Entertainment's relatively low-budget ($50 million) franchise movie "The Twilight Saga: New Moon," a sequel to 2008 hit vampire romance "Twilight" which made global stars of Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart. Online ticket sellers report "New Moon" is one of their highest presale movies of all time, and boxoffice watchers expect the film to have a smash opening.

"Nobody says that a big wonderful movie needs to be expensive, it's just that that's been the trend, and perhaps the trend is misguided," said USC cinema professor Jason Squire.

Last weekend, "Disney's A Christmas Carol," featuring the voice of comic actor Jim Carrey, became the latest celebrity-driven movie to stumble at boxoffices, opening to a lower-than-expected $30 million.

Aside from Carrey and "Carol," which cost at least $175 million, A-listers who suffered boxoffice flops recently have included Bruce Willis ("Surrogates"), Adam Sandler ("Funny People"), Will Ferrell ("Land of the Lost"), Eddie Murphy ("Imagine That") and Julia Roberts ("Duplicity").

"The (major movie) machine didn't fly last summer, if you look at the movies and the names, they were not star-driven movies, they really weren't," said Peter Guber, chairman of Mandalay Entertainment and former head of Sony Pictures.

Hollywood insiders say A-listers are having trouble with salary demands in the $15 million range or participation approaching 20% of gross profits -- deals that were once somewhat common for top talent. Instead, they are being asked to take less money upfront and greater compensation only if a film breaks even.

In "New Moon," Pattinson and Stewart rekindle their romance between an immortal vampire and a high school girl that they brought to silver screens in last year's adaptation from Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" books.

At the time, Pattinson and Stewart were unknown stars but that did not hurt "Twilight," which made $384 million at global boxoffices and gave Summit a bona fide franchise.

It's not unusual for franchises like the "Harry Potter" movies to begin with unknown actors, but as the films' popularity takes root, production budgets relax and actor, producer and other salaries soar.

But in recent years, Hollywood has been racked by the recession, competition from video games and the Web, declining DVD sales and fewer licensing deals with television networks

This week, Disney chief Bob Iger said in a conference call that the sluggish DVD market is one reason the major studio has altered its moviemaking. "It causes us to really reconsider not only what we're investing in our films, but how we market them and how we distribute them," he said.

For its part, fledgling Summit has positioned "Twilight" as a franchise for the recession era by keeping the pressure on the costs for "New Moon," and Hollywood producers are praising them for it.

"Good for them, they are really keeping the costs down. It is unusual," said Lauren Shuler Donner, a producer on the "X-Men" films and 2008's "The Secret Life of Bees."

Summit, whose executives declined to be interviewed, took a page from the playbook of "The Lord of the Rings" by shooting the second and third films back-to-back this summer.

When director Peter Jackson made his three "Lord of the Rings" films simultaneously 10 years ago, it was a novel idea that reduced costs because actors, sets, costumes, locations and other items only had to be assembled and paid for once.

Similarly, by shooting the next two "Twilight" movies together, Summit kept the cost of the third film, "Eclipse," due June 30, around $60 million, one source said.

"What I like is they didn't have a long window (between films), they went in to make a franchise, they didn't go in to see if they had a franchise," said Warren Zide, producer on the "American Pie" and "Final Destination" movies.
Hollywood rethinks use of A-list actors
Films are showing that a good concept trumps star power

By Alex Dobuzinskis, Reuters

Nov 13, 2009, 09:20 PM ET
Hollywood studios are now thinking twice about splurging on A-list movie stars and costly productions in reaction to the poor economy, but also because of the surprising success of recent films with unknown actors.

After buddy comedy "The Hangover," a movie with a little-known cast, made $459 million at the global boxooffice this past summer, several films have shown that a great concept or story can trump star appeal when it comes to luring fans.

"District 9," a low-budget movie in which the biggest stars were space aliens treated like refugees and the lead actor was South African Sharlto Copley, made $200 million. Thriller "Paranormal Activity," starring Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat, has cash registers ringing to the tune of $100 million.

Next up, on Nov. 20, comes Summit Entertainment's relatively low-budget ($50 million) franchise movie "The Twilight Saga: New Moon," a sequel to 2008 hit vampire romance "Twilight" which made global stars of Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart. Online ticket sellers report "New Moon" is one of their highest presale movies of all time, and boxoffice watchers expect the film to have a smash opening.

"Nobody says that a big wonderful movie needs to be expensive, it's just that that's been the trend, and perhaps the trend is misguided," said USC cinema professor Jason Squire.

Last weekend, "Disney's A Christmas Carol," featuring the voice of comic actor Jim Carrey, became the latest celebrity-driven movie to stumble at boxoffices, opening to a lower-than-expected $30 million.

Aside from Carrey and "Carol," which cost at least $175 million, A-listers who suffered boxoffice flops recently have included Bruce Willis ("Surrogates"), Adam Sandler ("Funny People"), Will Ferrell ("Land of the Lost"), Eddie Murphy ("Imagine That") and Julia Roberts ("Duplicity").

"The (major movie) machine didn't fly last summer, if you look at the movies and the names, they were not star-driven movies, they really weren't," said Peter Guber, chairman of Mandalay Entertainment and former head of Sony Pictures.

Hollywood insiders say A-listers are having trouble with salary demands in the $15 million range or participation approaching 20% of gross profits -- deals that were once somewhat common for top talent. Instead, they are being asked to take less money upfront and greater compensation only if a film breaks even.

In "New Moon," Pattinson and Stewart rekindle their romance between an immortal vampire and a high school girl that they brought to silver screens in last year's adaptation from Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" books.

At the time, Pattinson and Stewart were unknown stars but that did not hurt "Twilight," which made $384 million at global boxoffices and gave Summit a bona fide franchise.

It's not unusual for franchises like the "Harry Potter" movies to begin with unknown actors, but as the films' popularity takes root, production budgets relax and actor, producer and other salaries soar.

But in recent years, Hollywood has been racked by the recession, competition from video games and the Web, declining DVD sales and fewer licensing deals with television networks

This week, Disney chief Bob Iger said in a conference call that the sluggish DVD market is one reason the major studio has altered its moviemaking. "It causes us to really reconsider not only what we're investing in our films, but how we market them and how we distribute them," he said.

For its part, fledgling Summit has positioned "Twilight" as a franchise for the recession era by keeping the pressure on the costs for "New Moon," and Hollywood producers are praising them for it.

"Good for them, they are really keeping the costs down. It is unusual," said Lauren Shuler Donner, a producer on the "X-Men" films and 2008's "The Secret Life of Bees."

Summit, whose executives declined to be interviewed, took a page from the playbook of "The Lord of the Rings" by shooting the second and third films back-to-back this summer.

When director Peter Jackson made his three "Lord of the Rings" films simultaneously 10 years ago, it was a novel idea that reduced costs because actors, sets, costumes, locations and other items only had to be assembled and paid for once.

Similarly, by shooting the next two "Twilight" movies together, Summit kept the cost of the third film, "Eclipse," due June 30, around $60 million, one source said.

"What I like is they didn't have a long window (between films), they went in to make a franchise, they didn't go in to see if they had a franchise," said Warren Zide, producer on the "American Pie" and "Final Destination" movies.

AFM News 2009: Better buzz on film funding: Lending universe will expand for industry

2009-11-09T07:42:00.000-08:00

Hello All,

I have been keeping up with AFM and after reading several articles and speaking with more than a few distributors, I truly believe that our market will get better and so will the material. Investors in general are playing more of an active role in understanding their ROI.

Have a great week!

Jean-Luc Martin

While Hollywood's prospects for foreign financing is downbeat, the situation should slowly brighten, according to film biz honchos at the American Film Market on Friday.

"A year ago, lenders were sitting on their hands," said Jason Sklar, VP of the entertainment industries group at J.P. Morgan. "The lender universe will expand in the next year or two." But, he admitted, "It's going to take some time. There are other opportunities for investors that have a higher yield for less work."

Sklar made the remarks as part of a panel at the Fairmont Hotel on financial markets and liquidity issues, sources of equity investment, tax incentives and foreign investment. About 800 attended the session, sponsored by KPMG and moderated by KPMG managing director Benson R. Berro.

His fellow panelists said the $825 million investment by India's Reliance into DreamWorks is a strong signal of the direction of investments into the U.S. film business.

"For the time being, the equity will come from emerging markets," said Emmanuel (Manny) Nunez, motion picture agent at CAA.

Nunez also noted it's unlikely that any hedge fund money will return to Hollywood any time soon, pointing out that the "perfect storm" that attracted the funds -- huge amounts of money looking for investments in an industry hungry for funds -- won't take place again.

Instead, foreign investors will have far more strategic goals, according to Adam Leipzig, president of National Geographic Films. "Non-U.S. investment is smart money, not dumb money, that's looking for companies that have a track record," he added.

Hyde Park Entertainment topper Ashok Amritraj -- who signed a $250 million deal with Abu Dhabi's production banner Imagenation last year to develop and distrib up 20 feature films over seven years -- noted that Hollywood has a poor image in terms of how it treats investors. He urged attendees to be more attentive to those bringing the funding.

"If the first one works out, that's so important, because then there's more to come," Amritraj added.

Nunez also warned that more consolidation will likely come among the Hollywood majors, pointing to declines in DVD revenues. "That's a lot of dollars that have been taken away from the bottom line," he added.

The panelists agreed that use of government incentives remains essential in financing, with Leipzig saying that's the key reason he's shot only three of his 28 films in the Los Angeles area.

Amritraj noted that incentives in Louisiana, Michigan and North Carolina were a key reason why recent Hyde Park pics have been shot in those states. And he asserted that despite budgetary pressures on governments, it's unlikely incentive programs will disappear.

Industry slowly embracing new media --- Promising gizmos banking on being biz's next killer app

2009-11-07T17:05:00.000-08:00

Hello all!
The Digital Revolution that is changing our landscape as producers.

Jean-Luc Martin

Hollywood seems stuck in first gear when it comes to the race to embrace the Digital Revolution.

After more than a decade of dithering over how to release film and TV content over the Internet and other new-media platforms -- and how aggressively to do so -- the industry remains tentative in its approach to digital distribution.

"Studios are feeling their way through," says Rick Bolton, CEO of digital downloads company Film Fresh. "On the one hand, they have the cautionary tale of the music industry before them, and on the other, they have the relatively positive example of the TV side's relationship with iTunes. But the consumer is going to decide where this all is going, not the corporate side."

With that in mind, the brave few continue to pop up with bright ideas they hope will capture public fancy and studio support.

Take Digiboo, a business startup by home entertainment veteran Richard Cohen. Digiboo would place digital touch-screen kiosks in airports and other heavily trafficked public spaces where consumers can plug in a flash drive and instantly download movies and other content.

Discussions are under way with studios and retailers ahead of a proposed market-by-market rollout nationwide. The concept's premise is simple: Downloading movies would be more popular if the downloads didn't take so long.

Digiboo gets around that problem by storing films onsite, so the transmission is almost instantaneous.

"Digiboo's technology has taken portability and convenience to another level entirely," Cohen says. "We think this is exactly what the consumer wants and exactly what's been missing from other models."

Indeed, horror stories abound of inordinate wait times on many film downloads, and the download time for season sets of TV series can be measured in days, not hours. Meanwhile, wireless remains the key means for connecting computers to television screens when viewing downloaded content, but studios remain squeamish about security concerns.

The combination of business challenges and wary consumers has exacerbated studio executives' natural hesitancy about pushing too hard for digital schemes that could undermine traditional distribution and existing revenue models.

"Digital sucks," one industryite says. "Of all the companies doing digital distribution, only Apple is making money. The volume of business is too low, and the main reason for it is that the consumer experience is so bad."

Consumers demand lower pricing on digital content, so studios make significantly less profit per consumer transaction despite higher cost efficiencies compared with packaged-goods releasing. "So whenever I switch to digital, I better get twice the volume to stay even," the digital skeptic says.

Bolton's Film Fresh shares the downloads terrain with Apple's iTunes and CinemaNow. Film Fresh uses a DivX, iTunes a proprietary player and CinemaNow the WindowsMedia platform, with a possible addition of DivX capabilities in the offing.

Then there is digital streaming.

Essentially the digital equivalent of traditional home entertainment's rental market, there are two approaches to offering films and TV shows online: subscription- and fee-based models offered by Blockbuster, Netflix, Vudu and others, and ad-supported sites including Hulu and YouTube. YouTube still offers mostly clips of films and shows but has been negotiating for a possible move into feature content.

"There are all sorts of buzz about digital and downloading and all these things, but it's still in reality a small portion of the overall business," says Bruce Anderson, the Los Angeles-based GM of Blockbuster On Demand, which incorporates the former Movielink service acquired by the DVD-rentals giant in 2007. "From our perspective, that's a great thing. It tells us there is a great opportunity for business growth."

Digital entertainment in all forms contributes $2 billion in industry revenue, according to consensus estimates. That compares with an estimated $22 billion in rental and sales revenue of DVDs and Blu-ray Discs.

A download-vs.-streaming debate has raged for years among content companies seeking a revenue sweet spot in the digital space. But a shakeout of optimum business applications for the two approaches continues.

How's this for an experimental gambit: Mobile entertainment startup mSpot has begun streaming movies through several cell phone carriers. Content deals at launch this fall included pacts with Paramount and the Weinstein Co., and mSpot says an agreement with Universal is "pending."

Underscoring the belief that consumers care about watching more than just clips on tiny phone screens, Showtime recently launched an iPhone application through which the cable network occasionally will offer entire episodes of shows. The move continues a trend in which select episodes and occasionally newly created webisodes are used to promote key TV series.

Qualcomm has introduced a handheld device dubbed a Personal Television that syncs with FLO TV to offer content similar to its offerings via mobile carriers' AT&T and Verizon's respective Mobile Television and V Cast subscription services.

Eventually, studios may give consumers the opportunity to purchase film-viewing rights spanning all home and mobile platforms.

Disney and Sony have launched separate, multi-studio efforts to develop related technology for a possible market rollout during the next couple of years. But it's unclear how studios would price such schemes and thus impossible to know whether mass consumers will be interested.

Meanwhile, the concept of TV pay-per-view seems almost old-school compared with watching movies on computers or TV shows on mobile devices. But PPV via cable and satellite providers, aka VOD, represents another still-evolving area of digital distribution.

Several studios allow their titles to be distributed via VOD simultaneously with release on DVD and Blu-ray. But don't expect the simultaneous release of major movies on VOD and in theaters for years to come as the fear of revenue cannibalization and content piracy have executives clinging to the status quo.

Theatrical revenue is a key consideration, but the packaged-goods side of the home entertainment business is another area where caution is the watchword.

Heck, "Titanic" isn't even available on Blu-ray yet. Executives deem the current installed base of Blu-ray players too small to warrant its HD debut until more consumers embrace the format.

The situation makes it worth recalling: Survivors of the music biz also know a thing or two about the perils of hidden icebergs.

5 Mind Blowing Web Stats:

2009-11-05T14:57:00.000-08:00

Hello all ... this writeup today does not have anything to do with the business of making film or TV projects .. or does it. I have very much enjoyed having a web presence and sometimes 300 folks visit my website a day and other times only 15 but every day I try to give out interesting information. Take a read on this article - it is amazing what has happen in 15 years .. ha ha .. do you remember dial-up or floppy disks!

Have a great day ... Jean-Luc Martin

From Anthony (Tony) Tjan is CEO and founder of Cue Ball:

Mind-Blowing Web Stat #1:
40,000-fold increase in the number of websites in 15 short years. If the number of approximately 5000 websites in 1994 is correct and that we are now part of some 200 million plus websites today, then we’ve experienced a stunning 40,000-fold increase in number of websites. How’s that for a growth rate? It also helps explain why Kevin Ham, a Canadian Internet entrepreneur, is minting money from the domain names he owns. Mr. Ham owns some 100,000 domain names worth hundreds of millions and that generate estimated ad revenue of $70 million annually. Great foresight, on Ham’s part, to see that good domain names are like scarce waterfront property. This is the chart copied from Netcraft:

Mind-Blowing Web Stat #2:
It feels like it was only yesterday that Evan Williams coined the term, “blogger” as founder of Blogger.com before taking the head post at Twitter. Today, the blogosphere is doubling between once and twice a year and there are over one million blog posts daily.

Mind-Blowing Web Stat #3:
Speaking of Evan and Twitter, there have now been more than five billion tweets. I admit it: I was a pretty big Twitter skeptic, but now I’m a pretty big Twitter fan. My guess is that Mr. Ham and others are trying to find ways to squat on as many Twitter handles as possible as it will become increasingly difficult to get the twitter alias you want. I stumbled across this “gigatweet” counter on the web. I don’t know the accuracy of the source but this is a pretty cool real-time counter of the numbers of tweets — it is worth clicking through.

Mind-Blowing Web Stat #4:
Not to leave out some of the other obvious big web names of our day, here are two stunning stats on Google and Facebook. Google still owns the search market. Sources estimate that the search goliath receives about two billion queries per day. That said, I think I’m more impressed by InsideFacebook.com’s estimates that the social network is adding 700,000 new users per day.

Mind-Blowing Web Stat # 5:
Okay, this is as much of a predictive statement as a stat. For some time, I have periodically checked which sites are in the top ten, as task made much easier now with the likes of Alexa. What is amazing is that whether you look at the global top ten or US top ten websites, about half of the sites are five- to six-year-old companies (e.g. YouTube, Blogger, and Facebook). The implication is that we’ll continue to see a pretty high-rate of churn amongst the top ten. What other industry do you know where so many in the top ten market share positions are companies that are younger than a first grader? Big names that may be top of the world today are being bombarded by the threat of new Internet start-ups every day. Twitter was born in 2006 and has already hit #13 on Alexa’s top global list and #12 on its U.S. list. How long will it take to break into the top ten? The answer: not long at all. And this is what continues to make life interesting in the world wide web of disruptive change and unpredictable innovation.

Now consider this data and put it into perspective. The web has just begun and the advent of social technology will accelerate growth exponentially. Are you behind or ahead of why the web is growing?

What do reality TV stars make, anyway?

2009-11-04T17:28:00.000-08:00

Hello all,
I knew that our reality starts were making a good living and honestly this does not surprise me: supply and demand!
Jean-Luc

From the (The Frisky) -- After the premiere of VH1's "Sex Rehab," I found myself thinking one thing: How much did folks get paid to be on this show, because I certainly hope it's a whole heck of a lot.

Ask and ye shall receive -- a day later, I have my answer.

Comedian Artie Lange, a former heroin and cocaine addict, has revealed to the NY Post that he was offered $200K to go on "Celebrity Rehab." He turned the offer down. "They said it was about me getting better, but if I relapsed, they're not going to air that?" he said. "My mother knows I've done coke, but she's never seen me do it." Still, that is a lot of dough we're talking about. Let's see how that compares to what others get for starring in reality shows.

* European production company, Eyeworks, has supposedly agreed to pay the 14 children of OctoMom Nadya Suleman $125,000 for 36 days of shooting their forthcoming reality show.

* "American Idol" judge Simon Cowell allegedly banked $36 million last year. And this year he's said to be negotiating for an extensive raise.

* MTV reportedly paid Ozzy and family $5K each per episode for the first season of "The Osbournes." For the second, they each got a ginormous raise to $5 million per episode. Aw, I miss that show!

The Frisky: 10 celebrities and their cocktails of choice

* Kristin Cavallari supposedly gets $63K per episode of "The Hills." Meanwhile, Heidi Montag denies making $100,000 per episode.

* "The Real Housewives of New York City" stars were reportedly negotiating for six-figure salaries for the upcoming season. That just doesn't seem fair though, because they have all those fabulous New York sample sales that save them money already.

The Frisky: Match these celebs with their party invitations!

* The unit that is composed of Jon and Kate Gosselin earned about $75,000 per episode, for "John and Kate Plus 8," and I guess most of that should go to buying school shoes.

The Frisky: These biracial stars make us want to diversify!

* "Dancing With the Stars" contestant Shawn Johnson got $125,000 for signing on for the show. She seemed to think that the base pay, plus $50K bonuses, was worth her time, unlike Nick Lachey.

The Frisky: Rihanna talks to Glamour about Chris Brown assault

What do you think -- are they all getting what they're worth?

California is golden again --- 50 projects approved for production perks

2009-10-28T07:35:00.000-07:00

Well .. this is good news and I hope this is not just a band-aid.
--Jean-Luc

Touting the state's new production incentives, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger confirmed Monday that 36 film and TV productions are set to shoot in Hollywood's home state during the current quarter as a direct result of the program.

The governor said Monday 50 projects have been approved for the program to date. The projects have a combined budget of at least $467 million.

"Productions that were slated to film outside the state have shifted gears and are now shooting in California because of our film and television incentive," Schwarzenegger said in a statement. "This is not only great news for our production workers but for the thousands of small businesses that support film and television production in California and our state's economy as a whole."

The announcement noted that Sony Pictures Television's new drama for FX, "Lawman," will begin production shortly in Santa Clarita -- even though the show's set in Kentucky and the pilot episode was lensed in Pennsylvania.

Other incentive-backed projects slated to begin production this quarter include Screen Gems' "Burlesque," Sony's "Social Network," DreamWorks' "Dinner for Schmucks" plus indies "Beginners," "The Raise," "Answers to Nothing" and "Max Rose," starring Jerry Lewis.

The California Film Commission, which administers the program, said 50% of the approved projects are indie features, 22% are studio features, 8% are direct-to-DVD films, 14% are telepics and 6% are TV series. Fourteen projects have already begun lensing, and 22 more will begin shooting before the end of the year while the remainder will begin filming early next year.

The state's five-year, $500 million tax credit program covers 20% of below-the-line expenses for productions of up to $75 million. It can be sweetened to 25% of expenses for indie feature productions of up to $10 million -- and for all existing TV shows that relocate to California.

The state Legislature approved the production incentive program in February as part of a massive package of $12 billion in tax hikes.

New AFM buyers swarm, sellers drop off - More acquisitions execs to sift through less product

2009-10-27T14:07:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

Personally I have always felt that there was/is to much sub-standard product in the market which drives the market value down for all products. Change is happening and we are all trying to keep up with that change.

Have a great week

Jean-Luc Martin

Line-Producer / UPM

The upcoming American Film Market could see a surprising spike in buyers, while sales stands and the number of films screening are on a downward trend.

In the run-up to the market, AFM managing director Jonathan Wolf reports that the number of accreditation requests for new buyer companies has doubled. "More than 80 new companies in the last three months have asked to come to the AFM for the first time," he reports. "We've never had that many companies asking to be accredited as new buyers. And it's from all over -- from more than 30 countries."

Normally, AFM sees about 40 new buying companies. (Last year, individual buyers reached 1,527 from about 671 companies.)

Wolf suspects that many of these acquisitions execs will be seeking product for TV and homevid platforms. "It's less likely for people to pop up on the scene for theatrical than homevideo."

AFM puts buyers through a strict vetting process before they're granted access to the mart. "If a company wants to get accredited as a buyer, it has to name IFTA member companies that it's done business with," the market topper ensures. "Then we confirm that."

Wolf also didn't expect the number of films screening to be as high as it is this year -- 445. "Next year, I think we'll see that number at 410 or 420," he predicts. When the market's supply and demand was in sync, Wolf says, AFM unspooled about 400 films.

On the sales side, AFM has seen a reduction of about 29 companies as of Oct. 20. That's a drop of 7% over last year. The dip was anticipated, says Wolf. "There was a bubble in filmmaking, and we're now contracting back to equilibrium.

"We were not excited about the AFM growth," Wolf admits, noting that it meant pricing went soft. "We are not going to build a business model around a bigger AFM. It was like a life raft -- someone had to be pushed out."

So this year, it means that the sales-floor creep into Le Merigot hotel will subside a tad. Market stands will be spread across Le Merigot's first floor and half of the second, in addition to the main AFM space at the Loews hotel. At the height of the boom years, in 2004, the Loews filled up and three full floors of Le Merigot were needed for sales stands.

"We're still above those levels of five to six years ago," Wolf adds. "The thing about the AFM is that we've never had huge tectonic shifts in one year. It's always been gradual."

Pros pick best places for filmmaking --- Industry insiders choose world's greatest locations

2009-10-24T19:17:00.000-07:00

Hello Friends!

I was actually part of this survey and for the US & I chose California (Los Angeles) as #1 and Louisiana (New Orleans) as #2. Texas (Austin) did not make the list but that was my third choice.

Work hard and follow through!

Jean-Luc Martin
Line-Producer / UPM

Variety recently conducted an online poll among several hundred location managers, unit production managers, cinematographers, directors and assistant directors asking them to rate their favorite locations according to visual appeal, incentives, film-office support, production resources, and ability to substitute for another location.

The top five North American locations and the top five international locations, ranked here by overall excellence, are regions or cities that scored high on most or all of the criteria. Following these top 10 locations is a list of places cited by the polled pros for excelling in specific categories.

TOP 5 NORTH AMERICAN LOCATIONS

#1 California

Los Angeles and environs, San Diego, San Francisco and spots throughout the state

While California reels from the double whammy of a lousy economy and continued runaway production, it's easy to forget just how much the state has to offer. It still has the deepest talent pool -- both in front of and behind the camera -- and the largest and most technologically advanced production infrastructure and equipment in the world.

Plus, the state offers varied outdoor locations, including snow-capped mountains, sandy beaches, rolling vineyards and misty forests -- not to mention the hilly streets of San Francisco and palm-fringed urban landscape of L.A. The state's coast has hosted such films as "Sideways" and "Pirates of the Caribbean 3," its arid stretches have doubled for Iraq and Afghanistan, and at the center of the action is Hollywood, the longtime center of the global entertainment industry, with its backlots and studios.

Now, for the first time, California has taken steps to stem runaway production. The state enacted a 20%-25% tax credit -- in a bill signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who made his name in Hollywood -- that went into effect July 1.

#2 New York

Manhattan, the rest of New York City plus upstate locations

Filmmakers have flocked to the Big Apple since the early days of cinema, drawn by its restless energy, its world-famous skyscrapers and backdrops that range from the mansions of Fifth Avenue to the gritty back alleys of Hell's Kitchen. There's no more authentic place to capture a New York street scene, as Oliver Stone is currently doing in "Wall Street 2," or to create a mythical New York, as Woody Allen has done.

The city boasts an abundance of skilled crews and major studios like Silvercup, Kaufman-Astoria and Steiner -- plus the facilities of the TV networks headquartered there.

Outside the city, filmmakers have long explored locations ranging from Long Island, the Hudson Valley, the Catskills and other picturesque regions. Helping the state attract productions: a 30%-35% refundable state tax credit on qualified expenses.

#3 New Mexico

Albuquerque, other cities and remote areas

Known for scenery that ranges from white desert sands to forested mountains, New Mexico also offers a 25% tax rebate on all production costs and local labor payments. This aggressive incentive has spurred a heavy production slate, promoting growth in studio and stage space. This year alone has seen 15 major feature film productions as well as various TV series. The newest facility is the giant Albuquerque Studios complex, joining Albuquerque-based Rio Grande Studios. But while Albuquerque remains the center of gravity, production is also moving to remoter areas like Deming ("Indiana Jones 4"), Clovis ("Believe in Me") and Las Cruces ("Transformers"). The state claims the largest crew base outside the coasts -- more than 3,000. A new studio complex is being built in Santa Fe.

#4 Chicago

Prototypical urban America

With its iconic downtown skyline, mix of traditional and radical architecture, historic neighborhoods and modern city life -- all fronted by Lake Michigan -- the Windy City exerts a powerful pull over filmmakers. Add in the 30% transferable tax credit and it's clear why the Illinois Film Office has been successful. Since the late '80s, more than 800 feature films and television projects have made use of local soundstages (the Chicago Production Center, Chicago Studio Center, NBC Studio) and the city's cinematic locations, including "Public Enemies," "Traitor," frequent visitor "ER" and "The Dark Knight." Chicago, a center of advertising and TV commercial production, also boasts a deep crew base, high-end post facilities and multiple equipment-rental houses.

#5 Louisiana (Jean-Luc's side note: If you need any help with brokering your incentives please go to http://ransackfilms.com/ and email them.)

New Orleans, other cities and parishes

Louisiana isn't just the boisterous Big Easy, soggy bayous and graceful old plantations draped with Spanish moss. The northeast has pine forests, rolling hills and small towns that can double for many other places. But the state's main attraction may be its 25% transferable tax credit coupled with large studio and stage facilities. These include Raleigh Studios Baton Rouge, StageWorks in Shreveport and Louisiana Film Studios in Elmwood. Shreveport also boasts the Louisiana Wave Studio, with a 750,000-gallon tank originally built for Disney's "The Guardian." New Orleans has bounced back post-Katrina; Tony Scott and Jerry Bruckheimer got the ball rolling by shooting "Deja Vu" there soon after the disaster. Shreveport has positioned itself as a production center ("Mad Money," "True Blood," "Premonition"), and local locations doubled for Washington, D.C., in Oliver Stone's "W."

TOP 5 INTERNATIONAL LOCATIONS

#1 Morocco

Cities and landscapes

A short list of filmmakers who've shot in Morocco reads like a Who's Who of Old Hollywood: Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, John Huston, Henry Hathaway and David Lean. More recently, Morocco was the location for Martin Scorsese's "The Last Temptation of Christ" and "Kundun"; Oliver Stone's "Alexander"; and Ridley Scott's "Gladiator," "Black Hawk Down," "Kingdom of Heaven" and "Body of Lies." Other high-profile productions include "Babel," "Troy," "The Mummy" franchise and "Prince of Persia," currently filming. The country's locations range from Mediterranean coastline to mountains and desert, and uniquely Moroccan skylines in Casablanca, Tangiers, Marrakech, Fez and Rabat.

The country boasts a solid cinema infrastructure. Thanks to their long experience, Morocco's film companies have developed a full gamut of production services, including location scouting, equipment and office rental, crew hiring, shooting permits, transportation, catering and accommodations. Local crews are often bilingual and accustomed to working with foreign productions, and location fees are low. Film companies also coordinate the use of the Moroccan military for the use of tanks, helicopters and aircraft in battle scenes -- assets that might be prohibitively expensive elsewhere.

#2 France

Paris, Provence and the Dordogne region

For an atmosphere of romance, fine cuisine and visual splendors, it's hard to beat France. The iconic cityscapes of Paris -- the Eiffel Tower, Montmartre, the Seine -- have long provided backdrops for films about love and food ("Julie & Julia" being the latest) as well as actioners ("Rush Hour 3"). And in the south and west, Provence and the Dordogne region offer filmmakers a different kind of beauty, with lavender fields, sleepy villages, ruined castles and the spectacular cliff-hugging roads of the Riviera where James Bond raced his Aston Martin.

France has a network of 40 film commissions, experienced crews, deep infrastructure and a long history of filmmaking expertise and foreign production ("G.I. Joe," "The Bourne Ultimatum," "The Da Vinci Code," "Ocean's 12" to name just a few recent examples). The nation's new tax rebate, which the French Parliament enacted last December, created a credit for foreign productions shot in France.

#3 Prague

Center of Central European filmmaking

Prague's long, rich tradition of filmmaking didn't begin with Milos Forman and Saul Zaentz's "Amadeus," but that production helped put the visually beautiful and culturally rich capital of the Czech Republic back on the international stage. Since then, such high-profile films as "Mission: Impossible," "Casino Royale" and "Hannibal Rising" have taken advantage of the city's locations and film-friendly atmosphere. Prague also boasts some of the largest stages in Europe in the Barrandov complex; recent productions include a Disney "Narnia" sequel and "The Illusionist." The latter also used local post/vfx house Universal Production Partners (UPP) for all the effects. Since its establishment in 1994, UPP has worked on shots for Tom Tykwer's "Perfume" and Ron Underwood's "The Year Without Santa Claus," among others.

#4 Spain

Madrid, Barcelona and the Canary Islands

An extensive coastline, desert scenery, high mountains and a culturally rich and diverse architecture have long helped Spain's cinematic development. The country has doubled for the American West (Sergio Leone's "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"), the Muslim Middle East and many other world locations. Helped by Spain's fledgling incentives, Madrid and Barcelona have attracted filmmakers such as Woody Allen and have also grown into major production centers, supported by homegrown talent including Pedro Almodovar. The cities of Zaragoza and Aragon formed the backdrop to Guillermo del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth," Malaga is busy with features and commercials, and Alicante now boasts the Ciudad de la Luz studio complex. Spain's Canary Islands offer the rugged, volcanic locations seen in Stanley Kubrick's "2001."

#5 U.K.

London, Edinburgh and elsewhere

The U.K. has a deep pool of acting talent, extensive infrastructure and great crews and facilities -- including the Ealing and Pinewood studios -- that can handle all levels of production, from the biggest sets of the James Bond and Harry Potter franchises to the smallest indie pics. The U.K. also offers an aggressive rebate program. For films budgeted at less than £20 million ($31.8 million), filmmakers can earn up to a 25% tax credit. Add in the natural beauty of the countryside, a widely spoken world language and the architectural appeal of cultural hot spots such as Bath and Edinburgh -- and the advantages become apparent. Contributing to the industry's health today: a plethora of productions from overseas and the solidly booked post and vfx industry in London's Soho

HONORABLE MENTIONS, PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Best Visual Appeal

Croatia, Hawaii, Panama

Croatia boasts World Heritage sites (Dubrovnik's Old City, Split's Palace of Diocletian), the stunning Dalmatian coastline and Plitvice Lakes National Park with waterfalls and 16 azure lakes. Hawaii is U.S. soil and offers good infrastructure, plus jungle, rain forest, towering cliffs, waterfalls, beaches and sunsets -- and beautiful weather. With its relative proximity to the U.S. and more than 30,000 square miles of terrain, Panama presents filmmakers with a variety of locations, including tropical rain forest, Caribbean beaches, volcanic areas, islands and a cosmopolitan skyline.

Best Incentives

Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina

Michigan grabbed the tax-break spotlight with its pumped-up package of a refundable, assignable credit that ranges from 30% to a whopping 42% of a production's eligible expenses. And the required minimum in-state spend is only $50,000. Georgia offers a transferable tax credit of 20%, with a possible further 10% if a state promo logo is included in the finished production. Minimum spend is $500,000. North Carolina recently upped its incentive to the level of a 25% tax credit on a minimum $250,000 in-state spend.

Best Film-Office Support

Connecticut, Utah, Vancouver

Connecticut's film office offers an online production guide, location gallery and information on local crews, casting and infrastructure. It also serves as a clearinghouse for tax-break information and production services. Vancouver long ago earned the title "Hollywood North," and the British Columbia Film Commission recently celebrated its 30th anniversary of helping productions such as "Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian" and "Watchmen" find locations, crews and post facilities. The Utah Film Commission helps filmmakers deal with permitting, local government agencies and locations that range from "John Ford country" backdrops to alpine meadows and woodlands.

Best Production Resources

Sydney, Montreal, Toronto

Sydney's Fox Studios Australia is a major world destination for film and TV production, and the city has experienced crews and deep infrastructure. Montreal offers expert vfx work, spurred by tax breaks. High-profile films including "The Golden Compass" and "Indiana Jones 4" might shoot elsewhere but still use Montreal's talent pool for effects. Toronto, long home to a strong film and TV production community, is known for facilities, crews and a range of post, animation and vfx services. The first phase of its ambitious FilmPort studio complex opened last year.

Best Doubles for Other Locations

Buenos Aires, Iceland, Arizona

With its handsome, Eurocentric architecture and ambiance, Buenos Aires has long been known as "The Paris of South America" and can also double for London, Berlin, Rome -- even Mumbai (taxis and the train station are virtually identical). Iceland is home to spectacular, almost otherworldly locations that are surprisingly versatile, which is why Clint Eastwood used it to double for the South Pacific's Iwo Jima in "Flags of Our Fathers." It's not just Arizona's famous canyons, deserts and lakes that can twin for foreign lands: Although set in the Middle East, Universal's "The Kingdom" was primarily filmed in the Phoenix area.

Some studios stop abiding by the laws, and are better for it (Indie Produced Films)

2009-10-21T11:10:00.000-07:00

With this weekend seeing the “Paranormal Activity” train roll on and “Law Abiding Citizen” overperforming for Overture, a curious mini-trend is taking hold: studios are going into the finished-film rough and coming out with gems.

Or, put another way, studios are creating hits by doing exactly the opposite of what their machinery is designed to do: develop from within.

Both Paramount and Overture, the respective distributors behind those two weekend winners, acquired rights to their films after the pics were pretty much through production by their indie producers (at a fraction of the price than it would have cost to make them). With “District 9,” the in-production diamond Sony unearthed last year and turned into $100+ million in boxoffice bling, that means three of the biggest sleepers of the year were all developed outside the studio system and only released within it.

That may not seem like a tectonic shift. But with every passing weekend at the box-office — a bargain acquisition breaks out here, a studio-developed pic flops there — the balance of power moves slightly away from the development world and toward acquisitions and marketing.

That balance will never move too far in the other direction; studios still have plenty of investment in and infrastructure for development. But with this hat trick, it’s now fair to ask if there’s at least a new model creeping in to rival the old one, a model in which development and production are, in essence, outsourced.

The move to acquire in-production and finished pics, after all, dovetails nicely with a few other studio trends. The biggies around town are already cutting back on development, as they slash budgets, producer deals, blind writer deals, etc.

There is, at the same time, a sudden abundance of available commercial pics, thanks to a shift on the independent financing side. Over the past year there have been a number of financiers willing to fund low-budget genre movies instead of what they once happily financed — star-driven dramatic ones.

In other words, there’s a lot more out there that might interest the studios than there was even a year ago.

Maybe most importantly, at a time when penny-pinching studios are trying, for better or worse, to stamp the risk out of the business (see under: The Remake Craze), the opportunity to watch a film before one decides to invest in it may be most appealing of all. And if that pic is a star-less one with a good concept — meaning it’s marketable but can be bought at a price — all the better.

There’s no guarantee that any of the other titles studios have bought or will buy will break out similarly; “Paranormal Activity,” with a low budget even by low-budget standards, is certainly an anomaly.

But if nothing else, the weekend shows that it may be the right time to start handicapping other prospects, whether it’s the dark superhero high-school tale “Kick-Ass” (acquired for a few million by Lionsgate several months ago, after it was finished), the deluded superhero tale “Defendor” (acquired by Sony, “District 9″ style, for a similarly low price out of Toronto), or the high-concept underwater adventure “Sanctum” (which Relativity and Universal teamed to buy for just above $10m, and which as a 3D pic with Jim Cameron’s imprimatur, has many of the right earmarks).

One consequence of all this is that the upcoming American Film Market, where Sony of course picked up “District 9″ last year, may have a different feel. The Santa Monica gathering usually conjures as much excitement as a trip to a used-car dealership. This year may up the intrigue level.

More broadly, with all the other changes creasing the movie business, you can add this wrinkle. Indies are now making commercial movies, and the commercial world is following an indie approach. Things truly are paranormal.

The upside of a DVD and VOD day-and-date release Strategy worked for 'Twilight,' more titles to follow

2009-10-21T08:51:00.000-07:00

The upside of a DVD and VOD day-and-date release
Strategy worked for 'Twilight,' more titles to follow

Is "Twilight" the dawning of a new era for video-on-demand?

When Summit Entertainment released the vampire hit simultaneously on DVD and video-on-demand, it broke the oldest taboo in home entertainment: No other studio had released a pic grossing more than $100 million at the domestic B.O. that way, fearing VOD transactions would cannibalize disc sales.

As the entertainment biz inevitably moves toward a day when discs will give way to product delivered directly to TVs and computers, the business is poised somewhat uneasily on a tightrope. Summit and some majors like the day and date VOD and DVD release strategy; others are worried it will cut into DVD sales.

But that didn’t happen with "Twilight": The March release became -- and still is -- the year’s top home entertainment title. Almost 8.5 million copies have been sold on disc or via download on sites such as iTunes, while rentals have exceeded 14 million transactions on all formats, with VOD accounting for a healthy portion of that.

Summit Home Entertainment prexy Steve Nickerson is convinced the release strategy paid off in greater overall coin.

"We’re pleased with the approach of offering consumers different ways to watch movies," Nickerson says. "We were able to create a broader market and take advantage of marketing synergies."

Indie suppliers such as IFC use the even more radical strategy of releasing mostly foreign and arthouse pics simultaneously on VOD and in theaters, but some majors are reluctant to condense the DVD window further. The stakes are higher for the majors, which is why --"Twilight" and some other titles notwithstanding -- they are still hesitating to launch their biggest hits simultaneously on VOD and DVD during the all-important fourth quarter.

The day-and-date "Twilight" release fit Summit’s home entertainment strategy -- make it simple for consumers to watch movies however they want -- and served as a real eye-opener for rivals. Even Warner Bros., the most bullish studio proponent of simultaneous DVD and VOD releases, hadn’t tried it on a movie grossing more than $100 million before "Twilight."

But in the wake of Summit’s success, the majors have begun stepping up their relationship with VOD. Warners released "Gran Torino"; the June release edged out "Twilight" as the top cable VOD title for the year. The studio will release "Four Christmases" and "Terminator: Salvation" simultaneously on both formats this fourth quarter.

Sony will release "Angels and Demons" that way Nov. 24 as part of a four-title test that also includes "Julie and Julia" and "The Ugly Truth."

Universal, which began releasing smaller pics simultaneously in January, will bow "Bruno" on both platforms Nov. 17; Warners will also release "Orphan" simultaneously Oct. 27. The DVD-VOD windows of other major holiday titles range from one week to one month.

"Definitely, there are more studios experimenting with day-and-date releases than in the past," says Kristie Fortner, VP of syndication for Rentrak’s Advanced Media & Info division, which tracks cable and telco VOD transactions.

According to Rentrak, in 2007, 10 movies were released day-and-date on DVD and VOD, a figure that more than tripled in 2008. That number already has been exceeded this year, with months to go. The average VOD window between DVD release and VOD availability is 21 days and dropping. That’s a considerable decline from the 45-day windows of the past.

There’s a good reason for the compression: Studios are trying to maximize coin at a time when the home entertainment biz has grown more fragmented. DVD sales are on the decline, Blu-ray has yet to take off, and Internet downloads are still tiny.

Studios don’t want to hurt DVD sales, but they also recognize that VOD fits into the trend toward consumers renting rather than buying. Studios vastly prefer VOD to disc rentals because they get a bigger cut of each transaction.

Studios also would much rather consumers watch movies on VOD than pay $1 for a Redbox rental, for example. Part of the reason several studios tried to impose revenue-sharing deals with the kiosk company was to ensure they got a bigger piece of each transaction.

Another reason to pump up the VOD: to harness marketing across distribution platforms. In the past six months, cable companies have begun to step up their VOD marketing in a bid for Blockbuster’s business, and to take advantage of new cable boxes installed during the digital TV conversion.

According to Rentrak, cable and telco VOD transactions are up 14% year over year. The research org has begun to track the much smaller Internet biz but does not release that data yet.

"If you consolidate that spending in all those markets, now it’s only up to consumers to decide how they want to purchase it, or if they want to rent instead of buying," a studio exec points out.

To test how much this marketing might affect disc purchases, Warners recently tested pre-DVD releases of "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" and "Observe and Report" with Comcast in Atlanta last month, and is considering another "try before you buy" VOD test with "Four Christmases" next month.

Warner will release "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" on VOD Dec. 15, one week after its DVD debut, and "The Hangover" will go VOD Dec. 22, one week after its bow on disc.

Fox, which released "Bride Wars" simultaneously in April, will launch "Night at the Museum 2" on VOD 10 days after its early December DVD bow. The Mouse House maintained a 15-day window for "The Proposal." And Paramount slotted "Transformers 2" and "Star Trek" on VOD a month after their disc debuts.

However, companies like Summit question whether this old-fashioned window between DVD and VOD release does more harm than good in this fragmented media landscape, confusing consumers who want to see movies in myriad ways. Nickerson says his company believes in true content ubiquity.

This is why the studio continues to sell discs to Redbox and Netflix, and plans to stick with its day-and-date strategy -- happily pocketing growing VOD coin in return.

Paranormal movie succeeds with abnormal online marketing

2009-10-15T17:46:00.000-07:00

Hello,
I am sure everyone has heard about the marketing behind Paranormal ... Every project needs to find its strategy.
Jean-Luc Martin

Cnet
I once asked a happy couple I knew why they loved horror movies. "It's exciting to be scared," the wife explained. So I suggested three large henchmen would be arriving shortly with all sorts of farming implements in order to slice them both into small, but even pieces. They didn't seem to find that exciting at all.

Still, people seem so able to divorce their fantasies from their realities that one should not be agog that "Paranormal Activity," a movie whose sole purpose seems to be to part your nervous system from the solar system, is a success.

However, one might offer a little agogness to the socially networked marketing methods that helped it along its way.

You see, the makers of this movie, which CNN reports cost around $11,000 to produce, didn't bother making something you might describe as a conventional trailer. Instead, they made a little clip largely about how defibrillators were inadequate during test screenings in college towns.

The initial victims seem to have enjoyed leaping out of their vintage Levi's so much that they began to Twitter about the experience. And that gave the movie studio some online marketing ideas.

Originally, the movie fell into the lap of Dreamworks (part of Paramount Pictures) after its success at the 2008 Slamdance Festival (which is, I believe, an event where a lot of people get drunk and frighten each other with fire extinguishers).

After seeing the startling amount of word-of-mouth buzz the movie was getting, it seems that Paramount's first inclination was to pat writer/director Oren Peli on his head and bottom and reshoot it with, you know, famous and expensive people. However, Steven Spielberg suggested this might not be necessary since the movie was already resonating with early viewers. Hence, after a little editing and the addition of a new and, guess what, scarier ending, they organized some midnight college town screenings.

Once the college town tweeters began to champion its cause, Paramount launched ParanormalMovie.com, a cheery little site that encouraged thrill-seekers to threaten their local movie theater owners with phantasms, limb severance, and immolation if they did not agree to screen "Paranormal Activity".

OK, I might be slightly exaggerating about the limb severance and immolation. But, with the same kind of dexterity employed by British Prime Minster Tony Blair when, upon the death of Princess Diana, he described her as "the People's Princess," this lovely little film became the People's Movie.

ParanormalMovie.com claims that it received more than 1 million demands from moviegoers, which is why "Paranormal Activity" is, according to the site, "the first-ever movie release demanded by you." (This is obvious nonsense as I and several of my friends and former amorous consorts demanded another idiotic Nicolas Cage "searching for treasure" movie and it appeared almost before we had finished speaking.)

Still, CNN reported that the online buzz created such a haunting atmosphere that "Paranormal Activity" frightened $7.1 million out of the public's pockets last weekend, while only gracing some 200 theaters.

So a movie that enjoys innovations such as inviting you to tweet your scream appears set to swamp your screens with its happy happenings. The Paranormal folks are equal opportunity social networkers, of course. You can also express your screams on Facebook at Facebook.com/paranormalacitivity.

Paramount's Josh Greenstein offered CNN some fun marketing speak to describe the online groundswell that was, well, very cheap: "When people saw the movie, they loved it so much and there is such a slow build of terror that you have to sit through to experience the full effect of the movie, so we changed the marketing techniques in advertising and online to make it more experiential."

Should you choose to partake of this slow build of terror, please be warned of the effect it might have on you. As Facebook screamer Phil Osher declared: "had to crawl into bed with my friend."

If the potential of this behavior doesn't put you off, please let me know how it was. As I would rather remove my body hair with a chisel than watch this no doubt highly enjoyable movie.

'Paranormal Activity' has not-so-normal rollout -- Studio is expanding horror pic while 'Saw VI' hits theaters

2009-10-15T15:31:00.000-07:00

Hollywood Reporter
Paramount appears committed to an abnormally aggressive expansion of its suddenly hot "Paranormal Activity."

Betting heavily on fan fervor for the microbudgeted ghost story, the studio is expected to send "Paranormal Activity" into a boxoffice buzz saw on Oct. 23. That's when Lionsgate will release its horror sequel "Saw VI," and Par will broaden "Paranormal Activity" to 2,000 playdates.

Promoted largely via viral marketing, "Paranormal Activity" posted an otherworldly $7.9 million from 160 playdates last weekend. The inexpensive Slamdance film fest acquisition totes a $9.1 million cume including prior midnight-only engagements.

Par will expand the film to roughly 800 engagements on Friday and appears on track for the teen millions this weekend. But the distributor hopes to get "Paranormal Activity" more than 2,000 runs this month, and the early word has Par feverishly seeking exhib commitments for a week from Friday.

The situation has some recalling the out-of-nowhere theatrical surge of another Little Horror Pic That Could -- 1999's "The Blair Witch Project."

Whether Par can mimic Artisan Entertainment's $140 million-plus domestic success with "Blair Witch" remains to be seen. But as with that film, there is a wide array of opinion on the ideal distribution strategy for "Paranormal Activity."

Par is playing its cards close to the vest. But the studio appears to be splitting the baby by avoiding an immediate expansion into wide release, while committing to as wide an expansion as possible in two weeks.

An immediate wide release might have prevented the inevitable backlash from critics and others, though to date reviews have been largely positive. It also would avoid an overlap with the "Saw" sequel, whose prerelease tracking suggests the Lionsgate pic will bow as big as its franchise predecessors.

But even the coming weekend features an unfortunate audience overlap with Sony Screen Gems' horror thriller "The Stepfather," though "Paranormal Activity" carries an R rating and "Stepfather" is rated PG-13. The session will likely be topped by Warner Bros.' PG-rated fantasy "Where the Wild Things Are," and Overture also will unspool Jamie Foxx starrer "Law Abiding Citizen" in wide release.

"Everybody has an opinion on what they should be doing," a distribution exec at a rival studio said Tuesday. "But there's no question that it's a nice problem to have for Paramount."

The Brazilian city, host of the 2016 Olympics, is courting film productions to gain jobs and polish its image as a tourist destination. Hoping to be a star

2009-10-13T09:50:00.000-07:00

Hello All,

A friend who is from Brazil and a partner with an insurance firm here in the US and Brazil has always asked why I have not considered shooting there (If you need international insurance let me know and I will make the introduction). Well here may be a reason as per a recent article in the LA Times.

Have a great week!

Jean-Luc Martin

Producer / Line-Producer / UPM

Rio de Janeiro woos Woody Allen movie project

The Brazilian city, host of the 2016 Olympics, is courting film productions to gain jobs and polish its image as a tourist destination. Hoping to be a star

Rio de Janeiro will host the Olympics in 2016 and part of the World Cup in 2014, but many businesses -- including film production services -- have fled the city in recent years because of its crime rate.

The Brazilian city has formed a new film commission, hired a longtime movie industry pro to head it and set an ambitious first goal: landing the next Woody Allen flick.

Taking a cue from Barcelona, the Spanish city that was the principal setting for Allen's last film, "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," Rio is dangling $2 million in subsidies to attract the director's as-yet-untitled next movie.

This month, Rio was named the site for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, and city fathers hope it's on a roll. It will also be one of several Brazilian cities hosting the 2014 World Cup soccer match.

Although nothing is signed, Allen's production company sent two top producers -- Stephen Tenenbaum and the director's sister Letty Aronson -- to Rio this month to scout locations. They made stops at landmarks including Sugar Loaf Mountain, the Botanical Garden and a park near the hilltop Christ the Redeemer statue.

Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes and Rio de Janeiro state governor Sergio Cabral agreed last month to merge the city and state film commissions. The new Rio Film Commission has been given a $45-million three-year budget that includes promotion and incentives.

The political allies see movies as a way of boosting tourism, creating jobs and polishing the city's image, which has been besmirched in recent years by rampant crime.

Steve Solot, the longtime Latin America chief for the Motion Picture Assn., was named to head the new commission. Although Solot said Rio is competing with "all the film commissions of the world" to attract Allen, he expressed confidence that the New York-based director's next movie would happen in Rio.

"It will be a postcard for the city and state and a step toward making Rio a real destination not just for filming but for tourists leading up to the World Cup and Olympics," Solot said.

Despite its exotic scenery and festive spirit, Rio's major film productions have been few and far between. They include Alfred Hitchcock's "Notorious" (1946); a James Bond film, "Moonraker" (1979); "Blame It on Rio" (1984), starring Michael Caine; "Moon Over Parador" (1988), with Richard Dreyfuss; and "The Expendables," a Sylvester Stallone vehicle slated to open next year.

Many businesses, including film production services, have fled Rio in recent years because of the crime rate. Although the city dominates in the production of soap operas, most commercial films and videos are shot in Sao Paulo, the country's business hub, said Bruno Barreto, an Oscar-nominated director and son of Brazilian producer Luiz Carlos Barreto.

Bruno Barreto said his native city had not been a "production-friendly town" and had done little to promote itself in recent years. That may be changing with the new political leadership and the increase in royalties that the city and state are receiving from offshore oil production.

Solot said Rio has adequate film production services to accommodate Allen and other filmmakers. One of the Rio-based production houses negotiating with Allen to help produce his next film is Conspiracy Productions.

In the U.S., most states decided long ago that hosting movie productions was good business. Forty-three states now offer subsidies covering up to 40% of a film's costs, with Michigan, New Mexico and Louisiana among the most generous.

Solot said studies have established that a typical U.S. film production pumps $200,000 a day into a local economy through spending on hotels, restaurants and technical and other services.

Spain gave Allen $2 million, or 10% of his budget, to attract "Vicky Cristina Barcelona." The movie's positive effect on tourism in Barcelona and Oviedo, the two primary cities used as locations, caught the attention of other cities in Europe and Latin America, Solot said.

"My job is to put the city and state of Rio on the map of the world of audiovisual communications," he said. "That includes film but is much, much more, from reality shows and video games to pay-per-view and video on demand. . . . Rio has been on the map for a few important films historically, but it's not on the map of the production community presently."

Kraul is a special correspondent.

Los Angeles takes baby steps to keep Hollywood at home

2009-10-11T06:00:00.000-07:00

Is Los Angeles finally trying to become a film friendly city?

Don't hold your breath. But the city council this morning unanimously approved a series of modest recommendations aimed at slowing the disturbing migration rate of TV and film production to other cities and states.
The 17 recommendations include having the city evaluate a business tax credit for building owners that make their properties available for filming at "reasonable rate," and a sales tax refund for purchases made for filming when at least 75 percent of the shooting is done within the city. The council also agreed to offer city parking lots for free to film crews that shoot after hours or on weekends to increase the availability of power nodes downtown that film production companies could use in lieu of generators.

The steps come amid mounting evidence that LA is losing jobs in film and TV to other cheaper locales. More than 40 states offer tax credits and rebates. The city's wake-up came last year when ABC moved its sitcom "Ugly Betty" from LA to New York, to take advantage of tax credits there. Earlier this year, California adopted its first ever film tax credits, which have helped keep some productions from leaving but are considered too narrow in scope to compete with what other states offer.

Local sales tax credits for filmmakers could help make LA more competitive, but it's unclear whether and how much the city is willing to subsidize the local entertainment industry given the city's severe budget crunch.

Councilman Richard Alarcon, who chaired the jobs and business development committee that crafted the recommendations, said the steps are long overdue.

"We are in competition with locations throughout the country as well as Canada and if we do not fight to keep filming in LA it could have a devastating effect on our economy,'' he said. "Some argue that it already has. It's critical that we recognized filming as significant part of our economy and that we need to grow and protect it."

The future of focus group testing ----- Biometric feedback measures viewers' physical reactions to TV shows

2009-10-06T13:54:00.000-07:00

Hello all ... this is focus groups on steroids!

Jean-Luc Martin

Traditional methods of evaluating a pilot or movie trailer have relied on focus groups expressing opinions by chatting, filling out questionnaires, pushing buttons or adjusting dials. But that’s all so 20th century.

Today, the options include a few of the space-age variety, like determining not just what people say they think, but how they subconsciously feel.

Innerscope Research was birthed just three years ago, but the company has already found various entertainment and advertising clients for its biometric research, which employs eye-tracking technology as well as EKG monitors to gauge subconscious response along four key criteria: heart rate, breathing, moisture levels (or sweat) and movement.

"It’s very hard for people to accurately reflect their internal world," says Innerscope CEO Carl Marci, noting that 75% of brain processing "is below conscious awareness."

A neuroscientist by training, Marci co-founded the Boston-based company with Brian Levine in 2006. Yet in that short time they have notched a number of entertainment clients looking to augment traditional research, including Fox, NBC and Discovery, along with a growing number of advertisers.

According to Marci, self-reporting is limited -- good at measuring extremes, but not so great in the middle. Biometrics thus provides a diagnostic tool, able to pinpoint physical reactions to specific moments that the viewer might not even realize.

Eager to see how this worked, I squeezed into the very slimming test vest at the Warner Bros. Media Lab, a state-of-the-art facility that the studio launched in 2008. The process included connecting three EKG nodes to my bare torso and a device to my hand to identify sweat levels. (The aforementioned nodes are good for testing, by the way, but bad for chest hair.)

As I watched programming on a computer screen, the researchers could monitor my reactions -- including eye movement -- in real time from an adjoining room. Moreover, this approach lets them test not just TV but online, print and radio, which is part of a multiplatform study that Innerscope is currently mounting.

The readout looked like a lot of squiggly lines to me, but Marci could see spikes that came at specific moments within the ads and programming snippets (including the "Dexter" trailer) viewed. Over the course of a longer screening -- say, a pilot -- the vest would also capture whether the test subject became fidgety, or when their gaze wandered.

Inasmuch as producers are still leery about the idea of bored tourists in Las Vegas deciding the fate of their pilots, Warner Bros. stressed that they were analyzing areas such as product integration and advertising interaction within programs, not specific beats in the shows themselves. Marci, however, noted that others have employed Innerscope’s testing to gather such data, which depending on the genre can provide "very specific examples and directions on how to change it."

"It’s a fine line you walk when you start to bring new technologies and new methods into the creative process," says Bruce K. Rosenblum, Warner Bros.’ exec VP of media research. "The purpose of what we’re trying to do is create a toolbox."

Innerscope’s findings have included the revelation that people exhibit emotional responses as they fast-forward through commercial pods, meaning that ads are still registering to those viewing via TiVo or another digital video recorder. The company can also pinpoint whether a movie trailer, say, is generating the sort of "emotional engagement" that marketers hope to achieve.

As "Total Recall"-ish as this might sound, the explosion of new avenues for consuming media has placed the need for accurate ratings -- and a more granular grasp of audience responses -- among the more pressing issues facing the industry. Those rapidly shifting dynamics require that research explore more elaborate (and potentially more intrusive) approaches in an effort to keep pace.

"This allows our clients to see what their audience is seeing and feeling, not what they say they’re seeing and feeling," Marci explains.

Marci did note that my biometric chart didn’t reveal the kind of wide fluctuations seen in some test subjects, suggesting a possible numbing based on the amount of programming that I regularly view.

Even so, after all these years of trying to externalize and articulate feelings about watching television, it’s nice to know that something -- hell, anything -- can still rock my "internal world."

Reality TV: Too much of a good thing? Supersized shows have big impact on schedules

2009-10-05T09:54:00.000-07:00

Hello All,

I am not a reality producer but have been circling around this type of programing because I have a well developed project that we are pitching the cable networks. So therefor when ever their is a reality buzz of info I am right there... or try to be. I thought this article would be of interest to others.

All the best and a great week to everyone!

Jean-Luc martin

Producer, Line-Producer, UPM

Here’s what network execs were crowing about after one week of the new TV season: The big opens for rookies like "Modern Family" and returnees such as "NCIS."

Here’s what they weren’t rushing to talk about: The big drops felt by reality skeins such as "Dancing with the Stars."

Despite strong ratings for new scripted fare this fall, overall numbers are down for the nets. And part of that is because primetime’s reality show pack is aging, and just about all of them are well past their peak.

If a lion’s share of scripted series are down as well, why is reality getting more than its fair share of the blame?

Part of it has to do with the tremendous footprint shows like these reality franchises have on the primetime sked.

When a scripted show starts to weaken, it reps just one hour in need of a little TLC. But when a reality series begins to crack, it’s a much bigger problem.

The networks have filled their primetime skeds with extended hours of their top reality franchises -- and when a franchise begins to fade, that might rep as many as three hours a week in need of fixing.

It’s not a new phenomenon -- ABC learned it the hard way earlier this decade, when "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" collapsed, turning the Alphabet’s schedule into a Swiss cheese-like mess.

But this time around, every network (save CBS) has at least one franchise that takes up multiple hours.

During fall-TV’s premiere week, ABC was riding high thanks to the boffo launches of "Modern Family," "Cougar Town" and "FlashForward." Yet the net was still down from last year -- and much of that could be blamed on "Dancing with the Stars," which repped a full 23% of its sked.

"One half-hour of ‘Modern Family’ isn’t going to help you if five hours of ‘Dancing with the Stars’ is starting to drop," one rival says.

Fox is serving three hours of "So You Think You Can Dance" starting this month -- and "American Idol" will once again gobble up a big chunk of the network sked come January.

Over at the Peacock, while most of the attention is focused on NBC’s over-reliance on "Jay Leno," the net has long aired two-hour editions of "The Biggest Loser," and has another two-hour "Celebrity Apprentice" set to return later this season.

Only CBS has bucked the trend, preferring to saturate its schedule with like-minded procedurals instead of like-minded reality. "Survivor" and "The Amazing Race" are still just one hour each.

For the first time in years, auds seem more interested in a host of new comedies and dramas, as new series like "Glee," "NCIS: Los Angeles" and "Modern Family" give industry execs something to get excited about.

It’s foolish to sound the death knell for the genre: When the dust settles this season, it will once again be reality TV that dictates the network scorecard. And more so than other genres, reality TV, because it’s a diverse genre, has proven to be incredibly resilient over the course of this decade.

But the ratings are providing a wakeup call to network execs.

Of the top 20 programs in adults 18-49 during premiere week, only one -- ABC’s "Dancing With the Stars" -- was a reality skein.

In truth, reality TV is mostly an afterthought for network execs at the start of the season. Fall has never been a breeding ground for new reality hits; rather, it’s the place where shows that launched big in the midseason or summer graduate to once their hit status is cemented.

Only one franchise is entering the fall for the first time, Fox’s "So You Think You Can Dance," but that show can hardly be considered "new."

It’s long been held true that network sales teams would prefer to see mostly scripted fare on the fall skeds, as they still fetch a premium over unscripted wares (save the big vets like "Survivor"). And most network execs -- and nearly everybody involved in the biz -- would rather see more comedies, because of added income from syndication and other benefits.

But when a reality show is a smash, the upside is enormous. "Idol" has made Fox a dominant demo player for much of the decade, even in years when its scripted stable was slumping. And it has fueled the News Corp. bottom line via albums, online music sales and concert tours.

As a result, the nets can’t resist doubling down on their veteran reality titles. For one thing, the second hour of a reality show will do better than almost anything else you might put behind that show’s first hour. Economically, it’s also much cheaper to extend one hour into two, rather than pay for a fully different show that would likely fail anyway.

Critics aren’t fans of reality series that milk every last drop. Usually they’re stuffed with moments of minutia, or those extra hours have morphed into ultra-padded variety shows (i.e., the "Stars" and "Idol" results shows). In this age of DVRs, viewers may gripe, but they’re also more willing to fast-forward through a two-hour episode in order to get to the good stuff.

For the nets, it’s mission accomplished. Until it’s not.

"When you devote a lot of hours to one asset, much depends on the performance of that asset," one network reality exec says. "You get more of a cratering effect if the show declines… These shows take up more space than a normal show. When it drops, it has an impact not only on its own rating, but on everything around it."

In setting aside mega blocks of time for vet reality shows, the nets also depend on those unscripted series to not only be self-starters, but springboards for the rest of their schedule. But when these shows start to decline, those benefits are lessened.

"There’s a real dependency on these things," an exec says. "Reality shows are always utilized to boost everything up, to make those numbers higher and hope to launch a new series behind it."

The CW hoped "America’s Next Top Model" would boost the opening of frosh drama "The Beautiful Life: TBL" -- but with "Top Model" eroding, fewer eyeballs were around to stay tuned and sample the new show. "TBL" was yanked after two weeks.

Part of the ratings erosion might be the fact that, critics argue, reality shows are all starting to look alike, whether it’s the tremendous number of studio-based talent contests with three judges or the elimination competitions that promise the "most shocking (blank) ever!"

"I do think people need to challenge themselves on what the next show should look like," another alternative exec says. "Viewers will watch five different cop shows, yet they won’t watch five different dance shows."

"Hell’s Kitchen" exec producer Arthur Smith says he’s anxious to see the networks start to take more chances on new concepts.

"If there’s a sameness to a concept or format it’s not going to break out," says Smith, CEO of A. Smith and Co. "What the industry needs is the networks to take more risks, and producers need to take more chances. But that’s easy for me to say. It’s difficult to do on both sides."

For now, despite their declines, shows like "Dancing with the Stars," "The Bachelor," "Survivor" and "The Amazing Race" still work, and continue to fill the slots that would otherwise go to new reality entries. Plus, as "The Bachelor" proved last year, these shows have a better shot at bouncing back to life – be it through new twists or better casting – than their scripted counterparts.

Execs and producers alike bemoan the fact that there hasn’t been a breakout reality hit in several years (although they’ve come close, with "Wipeout" and, briefly, "Moment of Truth," among others). Most of reality’s more recent hits have started out strong, but burned out quickly (see "Deal or No Deal").

But reality execs don’t buy the rationale that aging hits are blocking newcomers from coming in, noting that the same argument could be applied to dramas and comedies.

" ‘CSI’ is down, ‘Desperate Housewives’ is down," one exec says. "Every show on TV is down, barring ‘NCIS’ and ‘Big Bang Theory.’ There’s been no real breakout hit on network TV in any genre over the last five years. There have been just as many successful new reality shows at the same level as anything else. NBC would be off the map without ‘Biggest Loser’ right now. These are staples of network TV. Without them, network TV would be dead."

Indies still looking for Internet equation - Filmmakers consider sites like Netflix, iTunes

2009-10-04T09:28:00.000-07:00

Hello Producers,

I am working on several projects that require specific marketing strategies and I have been keeping track of all the usual trends and updates of which I try to share with others. Of course some are proprietary but others are common knowledge and require hours of work if not days and months to implement. BUT .. distribution is the reason for everything because that means money back to the producers and/or eyeballs. I found this article which is quite honestly common knowledge but still good information .. take a read and have a wonderful weekend.

Jean-Luc Martin

Producer, Line Producer, UPM

If only more indie filmmakers could sell as many Internet downloads as "Helvetica," the future of indie distribution might look more promising. Gary Hustwit's documentary about the ubiquitous font has taken in a six-figure sum from its showing on iTunes at $9.99 per download.

But while more success stories are starting to be seen, the indie download business is still having problems gaining traction. The power of the Internet was supposed to level the playing field on which independent filmmakers and studios compete for audiences. So what happened?

A decade after the dot-com boom, when the Web promised to make any piece of content globally accessible to any interested viewer, a dominant online destination for indie film has failed to emerge -- though many have tried.

Earlier this year, San Francisco-based Caachi quietly shut down, and world cinema purveyor Jaman let go most of its staff. Two of the first sites to try to connect cinephiles with streaming and downloadable indie films, GreenCine and Intertainer, have since exited that business.

And while Hulu.com, a site geared to mainstream TV and movie content, is reaching more than six million unique visitors a month, SnagFilms, a site dedicated to independent documentaries like "The Future of Food," is barely reaching 100,000, according to the Internet traffic-monitoring service Compete.com.

One thing the Internet has clearly changed, observes distribution consultant Adam Chapnick, is access to an audience. "But having easy access to the global audience doesn't get anyone to see your movie," he says. A solid marketing strategy, whether traditional or digital, is still essential.

But distributor Freyr Thor, of Vanguard Cinema says, "Just because these specialty indie platforms haven't succeeded, that doesn't mean one cannot succeed. There's a patience factor and a money factor that have been missing."

One of the newest contenders is the Auteurs, a Palo Alto-based site featuring films by Luis Bunuel, Roman Polanski, and Wong Kar-wai, launched in late 2008.

Other indie film sites that haven't succeeded "were not social enough," says Efe Cakarel, Auteurs CEO. "Our members not only can watch films online, but also discuss the latest films with their friends on Facebook and Twitter and meet others who share their taste in film."

But distributors, producers and indie directors today say that most of their Internet revenues comes from two places: the DVD rental service Netflix, which offers an online streaming service to its members, and Apple's iTunes. A few mention YouTube, Amazon.com and Massachusetts-based EZTakes as other online outlets with good revenue potential -- with the emphasis on "potential."

Brooklyn-based helmer Hustwit says that iTunes has generated the lion's share of digital income for his 2007 doc "Helvetica," which has been on iTunes' top-10 list of most popular docs for more than a year. Eric Lemasters, senior vice president of digital at E1Entertainment (formerly Koch Entertainment), says that tech-oriented docs like "Welcome to Macintosh" have done well on iTunes, but that iTunes and Netflix are close competitors. Vanguard, which handles digital distribution of titles like "Factory Girl" and "Raising Daylight," generates more money on a per-title basis from Netflix than from iTunes, Thor says.

Filmmakers complain that independent films can be difficult to find on iTunes. "Their navigation is just bad," helmer Joe Swanberg says. And Thor says that Apple has rejected all of the subtitled foreign films he has submitted for inclusion. (The service currently carries fewer than 30 foreign films.)

But while Apple offers a fairly straightforward 70/30 revenue split with most rights-holders (Apple keeps 30% of rentals and sales), Netflix's streaming terms are different. The site pays a flat annual fee to make a film available on its "Watch Instantly" streaming service, whether five people or five thousand choose to view it over that period.

Distributors say the annual fee for online streaming varies, depending on how popular Netflix predicts a title will be; part of that calculus is based on how many of Netflix's 10 million members have added the title to the list of DVDs they plan to rent. But the annual license fee, says Thor, has in general been rising over the three years his company has been working with Netflix.

Swanberg, director of the 2009 microbudget drama "Alexander the Last," says that San Francisco distributor Heretic Films had been offering some of his earlier films to Caachi -- but both the distributor and Caachi went out of business.

Swanberg says that although his own films aren't yet available on Netflix's streaming service, it's his preferred method of watching movies at home. He uses a set-top box from Roku to watch the digitally delivered content on his television.

YouTube is considering adding paid movie rentals to its ad-supported site, but documentary filmmaker Hunter Weeks says that wasn't offered to him as an option when "10 Yards," his 2008 doc about fantasy football leagues, started streaming on the site in its entirety last month. He expects to make "a couple grand" from YouTube's "partner program," which shares some advertising revenue with content creators. Weeks' doc quickly racked up 100,000 views after it was featured on YouTube's homepage.

Producer Ted Hope ("Adventureland," "The Savages") anticipates independent filmmakers who are willing to tinker with traditional release windows "absolutely could gain an advantage" in the online world. "I think we'll start to see more folks coming out of Sundance and other festivals trying new models, to make their films available in different digital formats when they're at the height of their media attention, rather than nine or 10 months later," he says.

Director Cory McAbee, who is showing his sci-fi Western "Stingray Sam" at festivals and limited-run engagements, says he hasn't felt resistance from festivals or other venues, despite the fact he is simultaneously selling the film in digital form on his website.

Vanguard's Thor is hopeful that "a true independent digital cinematheque" will emerge at some point. But "you need three things to make it happen: a long-term vision, an easy-to-use interface, and money," he says.

And those three stars have not yet aligned.

Internet influences film audiences - Study breaks down filmgoing habits

2009-10-02T21:23:00.000-07:00

Hello All,

Below you will find a must read! Enjoy!

Jean-Luc

If marketing mavens want to reach younger moviegoers when promoting their films, they need to embrace social networks or risk being ignored.

That was the overall message of Moviegoers 2010, the first report on moviegoing habits produced by Stradella Road, the entertainment marketing firm founded by former New Line Web guru Gordon Paddison that hopes to assist film marketers in determining how to reach consumers over the next decade.

The study found that teens and twentysomethings are especially focused on being able to customize entertainment and are quick to share their opinions with others digitally -- especially as usage of the Internet, mobile devices and DVRs has become more widespread. An estimated 94% of all moviegoers are now online.

The younger demo is especially key in spreading word of mouth, with 73% of moviegoers surveyed having profiles on social networking sites.

It's a point that's been made a number of times as sites like MySpace, Facebook and Twitter have grown in popularity. But the study is one of the few to break down specific age groups and how they consume movies and the marketing messages leading up to their releases.

    * Teens (age 13-17) are "all about sharing information and group thinking," the report said, with social networking a critical communication tool. They go to movies in large groups and are heavily influenced by their friends' opinions. They also prefer texting over having phone conversations. More than 70% also surf the Web and text while watching TV, and 67% of them socialize with friends online.

    * Twentysomethings (age 18-29) "are digital natives that have grown up with technology" and are more likely to go online for movie info and to share what they think about movies via social networks (58% socialize with friends online). They use the Internet to find any kind of information and place a high value on online consumer reviews and sites that aggregate reviews.

    * Auds in their 30s are time-constrained, with parenthood dominating their decisions. They split their moviegoing trips between their children and their spouses. They "spend the highest number of hours online and rep the highest use of technology (Internet, broadband access, DVR ownership and cell phone)." They also view the most recorded TV and skip the most ads via their DVRs.

    * Those in their 40s embrace traditional media like magazines and newspapers, with moviegoing dominated by special family occasions and influenced by teens.

    * And fiftysomethings avoid crowds, prefer matinees and "skip ads because they think there are too many commercials on TV."

Given the increased influence of websites on which consumers buy movie tickets, AOL, Facebook, Fandango, Google, Microsoft, MovieTickets.com and Yahoo were enlisted to supply data for the study.

Study was conducted by surveying 1,547 moderate-to-heavy moviegoers over eight days in July, with an additional 2,305 questioned by phone or online during July. Nielsen NRG managed the research fieldwork.

Although many moviegoers are going online to get info on upcoming releases, TV still dominates as the leading tool to generate awareness for films, with 73% of those surveyed saying they first heard about a movie by watching a 30-second spot. In-theater trailers were close behind with 70%, followed by word of mouth (46%) and the Internet (44%).

Most films are now considered critic-proof, especially among the younger set, with 84% of moviegoers saying, "When they make up their mind to see a movie, it doesn't matter what the critics say about it."

It may depend on who's giving them the thumbs up or down, however.

Of those surveyed, 75% said they trust a friend's opinion more than a movie critic; 80% said they were more likely to see a movie after hearing a positive review from other moviegoers, while only 67% said a thumbs up from a professional critic had the same weight.

Yet only 40% said negative reviews from their peers would dissuade them from seeing a movie, while an even lower 28% would be kept from theaters because of a critic's opinion, meaning that at the end of the day, negative word of mouth doesn't have as much influence.

While 62% now get their reviews online, only auds over 50 rely on newspaper reviews.

The results hardly give Hollywood anything to worry about. The box office is so far up this year and looks like it will be strong for years to come despite the current recession, the study said.

That is mainly because 79% of those questioned said, "Going to the movies is a good escape from everyday life."

OCTOBER INCENTIVES UPDATE -- IOWA INCENTIVES PROGRAM - R.I.P?

2009-09-30T16:23:00.001-07:00

The Iowa Production Incentives Program, as it was, is near death. The Governor has suspended approval of new applications, or issuance of tax credits for completed projects. The manager of the Film Office has been fired and two state officials, including the Director of the Department of Economic Development, have resigned. The state attorney general is now involved, and criminal charges are a possibility.

The Governor may lift his suspension in the future, but it appears that all existing projects will be subject to a complete audit. Some films planned for Iowa are moving elsewhere - to Louisiana, Michigan, and New Mexico.

Europe distributes first feature via satellite - 'La vida loca' to be digitally delivered to theaters

2009-09-28T21:10:00.000-07:00

It is happening ... and technology will keep changing and growing!

- side note ... what is up with the Hollywood Reporters data management for articles... what a mess!

Jean-Luc Martin

Christian Poveda’s documentary "La vida loca" will become one of the first feature films commercially distributed in Europe by satellite when it opens in France on Sept. 30. It’s a sign that digital distribution is finally open for business in Europe, according to Arts Alliance Media topper Howard Kiedaisch. "It’s here; it’s real."

Arts Alliance and Arqiva Satellite & Media handled the technical side of delivering "La vida loca" for Gallic distributor Cine Classics.

Digital cinema rollout in Europe has been slow compared with the U.S., with the region only now approaching 2,000 screens. Digital delivery has lagged even more. So far, exhibitors have been happy to receive digital prints on hard drives and to get alternative content via consumer satellite systems. Professional satellite systems capable of handling encrypted digital feature prints are less common, limiting commercial distribution opportunities. "People are hesitant to put in the equipment until they see there is the possibility of delivery," Kiedaisch says.

Talk of using broadband has also been a distraction. "It’s very difficult, particularly in Europe, to guarantee that you’re going to have a thick broadband pipe into a cinema.

"La vida loca" was beamed to 19 theaters belonging to the CGR Cinemas multiplex chain as a JPEG 2000 digital cinema package.

Exploring street gangs in El Salvador, the pic may sound like alt content, but it has considerable local buzz following the helmer’s murder in El Salvador this month. The size of the booking and CGR’s d-cinema commitment made satellite distribution an attractive option.

Online ad spending to grow to 15% 2010 to see increase from 13%

2009-09-26T20:22:00.000-07:00

I feel that online marketing is the 45% -60% of the future for all film makers and that includes the studios. This is an opportunity .. "no kidding" for indie film makers. Small article i found interesting.

Jean-Luc Martin

In another sign that marketers are devoting more of their ad dollars to the Internet, online advertising is expected to account for 15% of global ad spending in 2010, up from 13% this year, according to media buying agency GroupM.

In a new study covering 36 countries, the firm says it expects nearly $65 billion to be spent globally in online ads next year. Online ads made up 3.1% of global ad buys in 2001.

In the U.S., digital ads will grab 17% of total spending next year, or $24.5 billion, compared to 15.4% this year and 13.9% in 2008.

Many of those dollars will come in the form of search, video and mobile ads, while display ads will decline as supply has run ahead of demand. Display ads will account for 34% of online marketing buys in 2010, while search will rep 43%.

"Today, search remains a key driver of digital marketing as advertisers compete to capture a disproportionate share that search behavior represents," said Rob Norman, CEO of GroupM Interaction.

Spending on mobile ads will reach 6%, or $3.3 billion, up from $2.4 billion in 2008.

IOWA PROGRAM TEMPORARY SUSPENDED

2009-09-19T12:36:00.000-07:00

Citing irregularities in the film incentive program, Chester Culver, Governor of Iowa, temporarily suspended approval of new applications or issuance of tax credit certificates yesterday evening. Mike Tramontina, Director of the Iowa Department of Economic Development (DED), resigned. Tom Wheeler, Director of the Film Office, has been put on administrative leave.

The Incentives Office will provide additional information as soon as it is available.

MTV orders reality TV spoof

2009-09-17T09:28:00.000-07:00

Hello All,

Reality spoof helps scripted material! What will reality programing become in the near future?

Jean-Luc Martin

The Hollywood Reprter
'Warren the Ape' centers on unemployed actor/puppet

MTV has ordered a scripted series about an unemployed actor who tries to reclaim fame by appearing on a celebrity reality show.

The show is "Warren the Ape," about a cankerous out-of-work actor -- who happens to be puppet -- who appeared on the sitcom "Greg the Bunny." Warren goes on a reality show (like those on MTV's sister network VH1) to improve his image.

MTV has ordered 12 episodes slated to air in 2010 from Spencer Chinoy, Sean Baker and Dan Milano (who also portrays Warren).

"Comedy consistently resonates with our audience and we are building a diverse slate that brings an MTV twist to the genre," said Tony DiSanto, president of programming, MTV. "'Warren the Ape' is a live action scripted comedy that tells the tale of an ape trying to revive a career in Hollywood by any means necessary. This show truly has a unique visual style and tone as well as a creator-driven voice that is fresh and exciting."

Tough times for indie labels - Major studios rethink their specialty divisions

2009-09-13T13:29:00.000-07:00

Hello All,

Change is in the air!

Jean-Luc Martin

The studio specialty biz isn't looking so "special" anymore.

In a time of economic drought, a stand-alone division that markets and distributes its own films can't necessarily be justified.

Majors including Paramount and Warner Bros. have tossed aside or absorbed their indie labels, with the big studios now responsible for marketing and distributing arthouse pics, if any.

For those studio specialty arms that remain --Universal's Focus Features, 20th Century Fox's Fox Searchlight, Sony's Sony Pictures Classics and Disney's Miramax -- there have been some box office bright spots, but also clouds.

There are rumors that Disney is looking to downsize Miramax in some way, but so far, it's just chatter.

Amid U's thorny year at the box office, Focus' fate has also been the object of some speculation, though Focus seems to have fortified its foundation by merging with Universal Pictures Intl.'s production arm.

Searchlight has struck box office gold two years in a row, first with "Juno" and then with "Slumdog Millionaire" -- but the label also has seen change. Former topper Peter Rice moved to Fox's TV den earlier this year, with distribution chief Steve Gilula and marketing head Nancy Utley taking over as co-presidents.

These specialty divisions were created to service platform releases on tight marketing budgets. Eschewing pricey nationwide media campaigns, distribs rely on reviews and word of mouth as springboards. The ultimate goal: to stay in theaters long enough to cross over and find wide appeal, like "Juno" or "March of the Penguins."

But the private equity coin flooding Hollywood in recent years created a glut of indie titles that clogged the release pipeline, giving few platform titles the time to grow. Specialty units found themselves having to spend $20 million on a marketing campaign for an indie film that cost $5 million or $10 million to produce.

"It was supposed to be a low-risk business, but with five new movies coming out every week, people had to spend radically more," Paramount vice chair Rob Moore explains.

When specialty releases essentially became wide releases, some majors didn't see the need for a separate "indie" division.

Some studio specialty units tried to become arthouse/genre hybrids, figuring they could boost bottom lines with horror pics and other more commercial fare. If Lionsgate and Screen Gems -- and before them New Line and Dimension -- could do it, so could they.

But dabbling in genre, instead of firmly committing to it, didn't work out so well for newer entrants to the field. Par Vantage's genre run was short-lived, as was that of Searchlight's sister company Fox Atomic.

Paramount and Warners, meanwhile, insist they each are perfectly well-equipped to market and distribute smaller films without a special label.

Former Searchlight and Vantage exec Megan Colligan and ex-Miramaxer Josh Greenstein are now Par's co-presidents of domestic marketing, giving the studio a key advantage when it comes to execs who also know the specialty game.

Crossover prospects at Warners seem less so. When shuttering Warner Independent last year, studio execs didn't know what to do with leftover titles, including "Slumdog."

Rice, who has a longtime relationship with "Slumdog" director Danny Boyle, approached Warners about partnering on the film domestically: Searchlight would handle the marketing, and the studios would become 50:50 partners. But when it came to perception, "Slumdog" -- which went on to sweep the Oscars -- was considered a Searchlight release.

Big Warners did show plenty of acumen with Clint Eastwood's "Gran Torino," a limited release that went on to become Eastwood's top-grossing film of all time with $148.1 million domestically.

Warners has only one limited release scheduled through the end of the year: Rob Reiner's "Flipped," which goes out Sept. 17.

Par will platform a rejigged version of indie pickup "Paranormal Activity" later this month.

The upcoming months are going to be another critical test for those specialty units that remain. They're hoping for plenty of awards attention and an agreeable box office season to see them through the winter.

Showrunners: The green room

2009-09-11T05:40:00.000-07:00

Hello All,

I have worked a little in the television arena and have always had great admiration for show runners. Frank South (show runner) recently put on a one man show that was brilliant and we saw a glimpse of what he went through in his day. I throw out huge kudos to Todd Slavkin (a friend) who is SR Melrose Place (2) and has worked his way up.

Lots of folks have asked me - what in the world does a show runner do and this article shines some light.

Off to meetings .. have a great day!

Jean-Luc Martin
Producer, Line-Producer, UPM

Managing a television series for the first time can be a grueling, up-all-night indoctrination into TV's most exclusive club

By Nellie Andreeva

Matt Nix, took WGA classes in showrunning while in postproduction on his pilot for "Burn Notice"

Showrunners don't get much greener than Matt Nix. Before being handed the reins of USA Network's "Burn Notice" in 2007, he had never even set foot in a writers' room. When he convened his scribes for the first time, Nix walked up to the whiteboard and started writing down ideas.

At least, until one of his hires told him that was an assistant's job.

"The (network and the studio) are giving you the keys to the Porsche, and in that first year you're proving yourself," Nix recalls. "And you do that knowing that if you so much as bump another car when you parallel park, the keys will be out of your hand and you'll be back to riding the bus."

While TV series continue to be dominated by "name" showrunners with years spent in the trenches, increasingly networks -- particularly on the cable side -- are rolling the dice with first-time creator-showrunners. The two most-nominated series at this month's Emmys, AMC's "Mad Men" and NBC's "30 Rock," are run by newbies Matthew Weiner and Tina Fey, respectively. Sure, Weiner had deep roots at HBO's "The Sopranos" and Fey ruled NBC's "Saturday Night Live," but they also hadn't run series before.

And they're not alone. This year's drama series Emmy category features a majority of first-time showrunners, including Weiner; Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer (HBO's "Big Love"); Glenn Kessler, Todd Kessler and Daniel Zelman (FX's "Damages"); and Damon Lindelof (who co-runs ABC's "Lost" with veteran Carlton Cuse).

Letting the newcomers loose in the showrunners booth is a calculated risk by studio and network executives that can pay big dividends -- but often requires on-the-job training.

"All bromides are true: Being thrown to the wolves, always wear clean underwear, sink or swim -- that was our first year," Olsen says about his and Scheffer's rookie season of "Big Love."

Cuse goes even further: "It's trial by fire, which means you're placed on the third floor of a burning skyscraper and you have to get yourself 80 stories up to the roof and then somehow back down to the ground," he says.

First-time showrunners became more prominent in recent years as networks have moved away from classic procedurals and toward character-driven shows built around a creator's distinct voice. But procedural dramas remain pro showrunning territory: Both the "CSI" (CBS) and "Law & Order" (NBC) franchises are run by veterans, for example.

Many young writers landing their first series order -- regardless of genre -- tend to be paired with experienced showrunners. Josh Schwartz, who ran his first series ("The O.C.") at age 26, was teamed with Robert De Laurentiis.

"I didn't know anything about showrunning," Schwartz recalls. "The only part I ever thought about was writing, and in the beginning that was my primary focus and (De Laurentiis) had the showrunner abilities."

Some, like Lindelof, actively seek a partnership. Having worked on the Cuse-run "Nash Bridges," he knew he wanted to "get behind that closed door" where "all the moves were happening." He got his chance with "Lost," when co-creator J.J. Abrams left after the pilot to head into feature films.

"I said, 'Who's going to be behind that door with me?' Even though I know how this show runs, it's very unwieldy. We're shooting it 3,500 miles away (in Hawaii), the storytelling is different than a franchise model, we have no sets," Lindelof says. "So I was calling Carlton and crying every night and begged him to come aboard and partner with me. And thank God for everybody he said, 'Yes.' "

Not all showrunning mentorships, however, are successful. "Entourage" (HBO) creator-showrunner Doug Ellin was assigned a showrunner in his first year "but that didn't work out," he says. Instead, he found a "stabilizing" mentor in director Larry Charles.

"For any first-time person, you need someone around you who knows how to do it," Ellin says.

"Everybody Loves Raymond" creator Phil Rosenthal stood his ground when CBS tried to hand over the series to a more experienced showrunner, threatening to quit unless he had autonomy.

"I wasn't going to work for someone else on my own show," he says. "A lot of it was based on my own family, and nobody was going to know my family better than me."

CBS blinked, and Rosenthal flew solo -- a setup that worked well. But with most broadcast series stretching to create 22 (or more) episodes per production cycle, and with tens of millions of dollars on the line, many network executives continue to balk at putting series solely in the hands of first-timers.

Instead, several of this year's crop of new series are going the pairs route, including: creator Liz Heldens with Gretchen J. Berg and Aaron Harberts (NBC's "Mercy"), Jon Steinberg with Brad Kern (Fox's "Human Target") and Scott Peters with Jeffrey Bell (ABC's "V").

It wasn't always like that.

" 'Moonlighting' was done almost completely by instinct," "Medium" showrunner Glenn Gordon Caron says of his 1980s dramedy. "We made up the rules as we went along, and you felt that rebellious, almost gleeful feeling of, 'We're going to reinvent the way people do things.'

"A lot of that was stupidity and a lot was youthful exuberance and I think it helped," he adds. "That rebellious spirit isn't tolerated in the same way now, because the system isn't as forgiving now."

Nix feels like he beat the system with "Burn Notice." He came to TV from a slow-moving career in features. Manager Mikkel Bondesen pitched him to Fox Television Studios, which liked his take on a spy drama. But several networks passed before USA bit.

Without a clue as to how to write a TV script, Nix says he "wrote the pilot as a short feature, without act outs."

Following a lengthy development process, "Burn Notice" was picked up to pilot -- and studio brass suggested Nix sign up for the WGA showrunner program. He shot the pilot in Miami, then came to Los Angeles for the birth of his son -- and an interview for the program. Nix was taking classes in showrunning while also running post on his pilot.

Impressed by his managerial skills on the pilot, the network and studio stepped away from pairing him with an experienced runner and instead just had him hire a senior writer.

"At a certain point, it's actually better if the creator is the showrunner," Nix says. "There is a lot less opportunity for creating political tension."

The learning process has taught him where the rules can be bent a little. Early on, Nix consistently brought his scripts in by the first day of preproduction, per DGA rules. If he hit a snag, he just stayed up all night writing.

Then a director smiled and told him no one actually honored that rule -- scripts often trickle in as late as the sixth day of preproduction.

"I followed the rule more closely because I hadn't seen anybody break it," Nix says.

Going tapeless: 'Save money in post' has become the mantra for lean times

2009-09-08T19:33:00.000-07:00

I personally think shooting on film is over for me and has been for the past 3 years. But the minute I say this I will be surprised and ready. Very good article .. take a read

Jean-Luc Martin
Producer, Line-Producer, UPM

'Save money in post' has become the mantra for lean times"
By Debra Kaufman

Fotokem handles post on Showtime's "Californication"
When a rough cut of HBO's "Flight of the Conchords" arrived in the spring at Burbank postproduction house Fotokem, the mandate was clear: Producers wanted the tapeless treatment.

By now, the Fotokem wizards knew exactly what that meant: The footage was quickly digitized, and every post process -- editing, color correction, titling, visual effects and the final conform -- was finished in a single suite with an Avid Symphony for color correction and the Avid DS for painting and rotoscoping.

Not having to redigitize or record out to tape for every post task has become a huge time-saver for TV productions, which are increasingly looking to cut budgets without cutting corners.

"The Holy Grail of what I'm looking for with tapeless workflow is where you can edit, color and (add) titles in different suites at the same time," "Conchords" associate producer Jason Harkins says. "It'll save us time, and time is money when you're talking about being in a post bay."

Even in good times, the last step in a show's production process always runs up against depleted budgets and looming deadlines. But as the TV business struggles, a confluence of factors has made it imperative for post houses to help their clients trim costs.

"First you had the downturn in the economy -- advertising dollars are going down," says Bill Romeo, senior vp entertainment TV at Ascent Media's creative services group. "And then you had the threat of a SAG strike. It's been a perfect storm for productions to want to save money."

Producers are accomplishing these goals on the production end by moving to digital acquisition, avoiding the cost of film stock, processing and film dailies. Romeo says Level 3, Encore and Riot, the three Ascent Media facilities that handle TV productions, last year serviced 31 dramas, all of which were filmed. "This year, we're doing about 35 shows, and currently only 10 are filmed," he says. "The rest are on tape."

For tech facilities, the move to digital productions is a financial hit to their film-dailies units. But it provides an incentive to make their own workflow even more efficient. Fotokem, which handles 24 TV shows in-house, has been a pioneer in tapeless workflow.

"We've been playing with tapeless for four years now, starting with scanning the 16mm negative for 'Law & Order: Criminal Intent' and having it available in 2K for the rest of the process," says senior vp Rand Gladden, noting that several new fall shows will be tapeless.

Ascent Media acquired PostWorks L.A. in December to tap into that company's file-based workflow. Such shows as CBS' "The Unit," Fox's "Lie to Me" and ABC's "Lost" have made the switch via Ascent.

The tapeless workflow saves money in several ways.

"You're not spending money on the tape -- and it's $130 for a one-hour roll of HD SR tape," says Gladden, noting that dailies alone can use three tapes a night times seven or eight nights of shooting per episode. "You're also not spending money on the time it takes to create those tapes, whether it's in an editorial or a color-timing suite."

Although avoiding tape dubs might seem trivial, it adds up to a dramatic savings over the process of a 22-episode season. Gladden estimates that going tapeless can save at least $4,000 an episode. Romeo agrees, pegging savings at $2,000-$4,500 per episode.

Some companies have come up with their own proprietary systems for making postproduction more efficient. LaserPacific Media won an Emmy for its SuperComputer for automatic assembly, part of the company's R&D team that has won six Emmys over the years. SuperComputer version 2.0 now accommodates HD footage and integrates the Avid Nitris.

"With SuperComputer, the ingest speed is four times faster than digitizing in the Nitris," CEO Brian Burr says. AMC's "Mad Men" and USA Network's "Burn Notice" are among the shows that take advantage of the process. "So you have the full-time savings of the SuperComputer and have access to the creative tools in the Nitris."

Tapeless workflow also can offer the advantage of a shared storage infrastructure. With the show's footage all in the same digital storage, the editor, graphics artist and color grader can work on an episode concurrently. "Instead of doing an assembly and then a color correction and then titling, you can be in one room coloring the show and in another room be titling it at the same time," Romeo says. "The savings can be substantial."

Another way post houses are helping trim expenses is via digital networking with facilities throughout the world. Post Logic, which is owned by Indian conglomerate Prime Focus, has a seamless connection to facilities in Canada, the U.K. and India. The 400 visual effects for "The Storm," which aired this summer on NBC, were done at Prime Focus' VFX house in India.

"We can find the appropriate technology and talent in the right location at the right price point," says Larry Birstock, president of Prime Focus Global Integration. "Our goal is to build one global entity, not geographic silos that run independently."

Fotokem uses its Global Data network to send files to facilities throughout the world, as well as to its newly acquired post/VFX boutique Spy Post in San Francisco. Gladden describes how the CW's "Gossip Girl," which shoots in New York, takes advantage of Global Data: "The dailies are done at PostWorks in New York, they create an Avid DnX36 file and send it here. We distribute that to editorial and others who need to see dailies." As opposed to an FTP site or copper connection that takes three hours or more to travel across the country, "we can do it within an hour," Gladden adds. "So editorial is able to start work at 8 a.m. every day, and that saves a lot of time."

Post houses are even injecting themselves into the production process with the aim of making the transition to post as smooth (and cost-effective) as possible. For productions with digital cameras, LaserPacific Media sends two digital hard drive storage units, which enable instant ingest of footage back in post. Fotokem now works with studios and producers to ramp up office space and infrastructure with a turnkey solution. "This allows studios to be able to expand and contract efficiently," Gladden says.

Even VFX companies servicing the TV industry are getting into the game. Zoic Studios, which works on more than a dozen TV shows, has created Zeus -- a combination lipstick camera and Lightcraft tracking software -- that turns a days-long virtual set creation process into a real-time process. "There is instantaneous creative feedback for approval on set," says Andrew Orloff, Zoic creative director, episodic department. Zeus is being used on ABC's upcoming "V." "We don't shoot and then go back and see it in post."

The cost-cutting moves are new lyrics in an old song, but the difference now is that technology is increasingly creating an environment where less money doesn't necessarily mean lower quality.

Movie Studios See a Threat in Growth of Redbox

2009-09-08T08:47:00.000-07:00

Hello All,

Before going to Blockbuster I always pass by Vons and check out the small little kiosk and see what their selections. Rent a movie for 1.09 is a bargain. and what I like is the customer service from the customer. Several times folks have let others go in front of them because they could not find the movie they wanted to rent and I have done the same. People actually talk to each other and give recommendations.

Next will be a jump drive insertion into a machine.

Have a great day

Jean-Luc Martin
Producer, Line-Producer, UPM

A Redbox kiosk at a Walgreens in Villa Park, Ill. The company and its rivals have 19 percent of the DVD rental market.

LOS ANGELES — In 1982, just as the VHS tape was taking off, a “Star Wars” buff named Mitch Lowe had a radical idea. What about building a vending machine that could rent movies? He called his invention Video Droid.
Skip to next paragraph
Related
Digital Domain: When the Price Is Right, the Future Can Wait (July 12, 2009)
Enlarge This Image
Peter Wynn Thompson for The New York Times

Mitch Lowe, the president of Redbox. The company started with 12 machines in 2004 and expects to have 22,000 by December.
Enlarge This Image
Damian Dovarganes/Associated Press

Redbox says it processes about 80 transactions a second on Friday nights, and low overhead allows a fee of $1 a day, and tax.

It failed. People were not yet comfortable using credit cards for casual transactions, the tapes broke easily and the technology involved with manipulating their bulk proved too expensive.

But Mr. Lowe did not give up, and his moment seems to have finally come.

Mr. Lowe, 56, is now the president of Redbox, a fast-growing company in Illinois that rents movies for $1 a day via kiosks. By December, there will be 22,000 Redbox machines in spots like supermarkets, Wal-Mart Stores and fast-food restaurants.

Redbox’s growth — it started with 12 kiosks in 2004 and now processes about 80 transactions a second on Friday nights — has Hollywood’s blood boiling. Furious about a potential cannibalization of DVD sales and a broader price devaluation of their product, three studios (20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers and Universal) are refusing to sell DVDs to Redbox until at least 28 days after they arrive in stores.

Redbox is suing them on antitrust grounds. Leery of waging their own battles, two other studios, Sony Pictures and Paramount Pictures, have signed distribution deals with the vending company. Walt Disney permits third-party distributors to sell to Redbox but has so far shunned a direct relationship.

Redbox and its vending rivals now have 19 percent of the rental market, compared with 36 percent for rent-by-mail services (Netflix) and 45 percent for traditional stores, according to the NPD Group, a market research company. NPD estimates that vending will grow to a 30 percent share by the end of next year, at the expense of traditional stores.

Studios, aware that consumers are unlikely to pity their plight and muzzled by the lawsuits, are keeping quiet. Fox, Universal, Warner and Disney each declined to comment for this article. But Hollywood’s powerful public relations machinery is in motion behind the scenes to connect the news media with a group that is equally threatened by Redbox but much more relatable: mom and pop rental store owners.

“These machines are to the video industry what the Internet was to the music business — disaster,” said Ted Engen, president of the Video Buyers Group, a trade organization for 1,700 local rental stores.

Mr. Engen is enlisting lawmakers to attack Redbox for renting R-rated movies to underage viewers — the machines simply ask customers to confirm that they are 18 or older by pressing a button — and trying to rally the Screen Actors Guild and other unions.

“It’s going to kill the industry,” said Gary Cook, business manager for UA Local 78, which represents studio plumbers.

Mr. Lowe, meanwhile, is portraying the studios as greedy giants scheming to trample the little guy. “Don’t let a few movie studios prevent you from seeing the latest DVDs for an affordable price,” reads a headline on a new Redbox Web site, savelowcostdvds.com.

Redbox, formerly owned by McDonald’s and now part of Coinstar, is only the biggest of a host of DVD vending companies. DVDPlay, whose kiosks are also red, has been aggressive in California, while MovieCube is big in Canada.

Blockbuster is scrambling to introduce its own rental kiosks. There are now about 500 Blockbuster Express machines, and plans call for 2,500 more by the end of the year; the company expects to open 7,000 in 2010, a spokesman said.

The kiosk boom is fed by several consumer and business currents, all related to the recession.

For starters, the dismal economy has made people think twice about buying DVDs, especially as the likes of Redbox have made renting easier. Consumers are also tiring of the clutter: The average American household with a DVD player now has a library of 70 DVDs, according to Adams Media Research.

Over all, DVD sales are down 13.5 percent for the first half of 2009 compared to the first half of 2008, according to the Digital Entertainment Group, a trade organization. Studios say some new titles are selling 25 percent fewer copies than expected. Rental revenue is up about 8 percent over the same period, according to the group.

Retailers, struggling to keep people shopping, have realized that having a DVD kiosk in a store creates foot traffic, making it easier for companies like Redbox to sign wide-ranging installation agreements. Some partners, like Walgreens, have offered discounts that essentially make rentals free.

Redbox is also getting a hand because of Hollywood’s troubles. Analysts say Sony and Paramount signed agreements with the company in part because their home entertainment units are under pressure to meet financial targets, set before the DVD decline.

Sony’s five-year deal is worth about $460 million in DVD sales to Redbox. Paramount’s deal starts with a four-month test; if the studio decides Redbox represents a net gain to its home entertainment business, it can extend its relationship for five years and a guaranteed $575 million.

Paramount’s deal involves revenue-sharing, a rarity for Redbox. The kiosk operator primarily follows the mom and pop model: it seeks to buy discs wholesale and makes a profit with repeat rentals. (Revenue-sharing deals typically allow a rental store to buy discs for half the wholesale cost or less.) Redbox can price rentals at $1 and still make money because its machines eliminate so much overhead.

The $1 price is not the main issue for the studios, although they do not like that, either; it is the timing. New DVDs sell for about $25. Video-on-demand services price them at about $5. Multiday rentals of new titles cost $4.99 at Blockbuster.

Now there is a $1 option at the same time. That could put downward pressure on the industry’s price structure.

“Anyone whose business involves selling movies should be enormously concerned,” said Richard Greenfield, an analyst at Pali Research.

Analysts also see a threat to studios in Redbox’s practice of selling about half of its DVDs into the used market (after renting them about 15 times at an average of $2 a transaction). By signing deals with Redbox, Paramount and Sony got the kiosk operator to agree to destroy their discs rather than resell them.

“Our position is that this is a strong consumer trend, and we figured out a way to minimize the negative aspects and maximize the positive ones,” said David Bishop, president of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

Rob Moore, vice chairman of Paramount Pictures, said, “This trial gives us access to information that will allow us to make an informed decision about Redbox’s impact on our home entertainment business.”

Mr. Lowe dismissed worries about the cannibalization of sales. He cited internal research indicating that 20 percent of Redbox’s volume is additive — people who did not previously buy or rent DVDs — and that partners like Wal-Mart have had only a 1 percent decline in sales after Redbox machines have been installed at their entrances.

The kiosks hold about 500 DVDs and focus on new mainstream releases.

Customers follow a series of touch-screen prompts to use the kiosks, which vend from slots on the side. Once a selection is made, the customer swipes a credit card through the reader. The card is charged a dollar (and tax) for each DVD rented; the charges for additional days, if any, are added when discs are returned. The charge for lost DVDs is $25.

“If you make renting affordable and fun, people are going to watch a whole lot more movies than they did before,” Mr. Lowe said.

WGA report shows tough times for screenwriters

2009-09-05T10:16:00.000-07:00

Hello All,
Not sure what to say about this article in the LA Times because for one I am not a writer and have no intention of being one. Although some of the writer quotes I have been dealing with make me want to start writing yesterday. Now .. I could start arguing with myself because maybe the writer deserves the high quote and their reputation as a produced, high ROI speaks clearly and loudly and that is where negotiation starts. BUT and here is my issue ... a non-produced, no respectable ROI writer should be grateful for 1% of a non studio film. In reality I have always felt the writer knows what is fair but ..... then walks in the manager, the agent and the attorney and guess what they KILL the deal. Enough said ... before I really get myself in trouble. Our economy is fixing a lot - and that is across the board .. I hope

10% fewer writers reported earnings last year, and income fell 18%. The guild had a $5.1-million deficit.

To pen a living as a Hollywood screenwriter has always required fortitude and patience. Given the ratio between number of writers and available work, the odds of success are long.

Now it looks like the odds have become a whole lot longer.

Thanks to a recession-driven downturn forcing studios to make fewer movies and TV shows, coupled with a screenwriters strike last year that ground production to a halt, the wordsmiths of Hollywood have seen jobs and income evaporate.

That's the bleak take-away from the annual financial report of the Writers Guild of America, West, the union that represents about 8,000 movie and TV screenwriters. It has been the worst year for writers since at least 2003, with total earnings well below levels of five years ago. According to the WGA, only 4,163 writers reported earnings last year, down 10% from a year earlier, with the total earnings declining 18% to $801.4 million.

Not surprisingly, with a strike that paralyzed the television industry, TV writers took a big hit. Employment in 2008 declined 11% and total earnings dropped 3% to $437.5 million.

"For the second half of the year, we found that while WGA series rebounded, the companies responded to the economic downturn by reducing the size of TV series staffs," the report said.

Even harder hit were movie writers, who saw employment drop 14% and total income plunge 30% to $361 million. The guild blamed the sharp downturn on "pre-strike stockpiling" and a decision by the studios to release fewer movies in response to the weakening economy.

Although the WGA said declines in union dues were offset by improved collections and higher residuals from reuse of TV shows overseas, the guild ended the fiscal year with a $5.1-million deficit because of "investment losses caused by the struggling economy."

Hollywood's actors also have been buffeted by similar circumstances. The Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists both experienced deficits in the last fiscal year largely because of a decline in investment income. The actors unions, however, do not release earnings reports similar to the writers guild's.

The weak job market has deepened anxiety among the writers guild's members, who are getting ready to elect a new leader.

The heated election pits writer-producer John Wells, a former guild president, against the guild's secretary-treasurer, Elias Davis, who has the backing of outgoing President Patric M. Verrone.

Although members are divided over which candidate to support, they agree on one thing: Times are hard.

The erosion of scripted prime-time shows on broadcast networks, a result of the popularity of reality TV and NBC's shift of Jay Leno to prime time, has left writers with fewer job opportunities.

Cable television is expanding, but the pay often is lower and many shows aren't covered by union contracts.

Writers are having a difficult time getting bumps in their fees. And studios are hiring feature writers for shorter periods of time and paying for one draft of a script instead of two.

"There is a sense in the community, whether it's among agents, writers or even producers, that things have really tightened up -- and not in a good way," said former board member Craig Mazin, a Wells backer and co-publisher of the widely followed screenwriting blog "The Artful Writer."

Davis is on the same page. "John and I certainly agree that these are tough times," he wrote in a recent statement to guild members. "Every writer I know is feeling more than a little uncertain about the future of our business world and our place in it."

Movie Studios Discuss Ways to Rent Films Over YouTube

2009-09-02T18:30:00.000-07:00

Go Google .. rule the world. I just hope Google does not sell out the independent film makers. There is a big enough playing field for everyone .. I should hope!

Jean-Luc Martin

The Wall Street Journal
By SARAH MCBRIDE, JESSICA E. VASCELLARO and SAM SCHECHNER

Google Inc.'s YouTube is in discussions with major movie studios about streaming movies on a rental basis, a test of whether the online video giant can persuade its millions of users to pay for premium content.

For Hollywood, the move could represent a bold attempt to offset its dwindling DVD sales with online revenue.

YouTube is talking to Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., Sony Corp., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. and Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. about charging for new titles on the existing YouTube site. In some cases, these titles might be available on the site on the same day that they come out on DVD.

Some studios already make full-length movies available on YouTube free, though they tend to be older, lesser-known films. It is unclear to what extent older movies or television shows will be a part of the new agreements.

While details vary from studio to studio, generally speaking the agreements would allow consumers to stream movies on a rental basis for a fee. However, in some cases, the movies could be available in way that they have been previously -- free, with advertising.

Negotiations are continuing and there are no guarantees the deals will be struck. Many details remain in flux, including whether users will eventually be able to download movies. People familiar with the matter say that new movie rentals are likely to be around $3.99, the price Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store charges for new movie rentals. The companies hope to keep pricing on par with what consumers pay for video-on-demand for new titles, these people say.

In a statement, a YouTube spokesman said the company is always working to expand on "its great relationships with movie studios and on the selection and types of videos we offer our community."

The talks are a sign of how YouTube is emerging as a competitor to a broad spectrum of entertainment outlets, including Blockbuster Inc. and Netflix Inc. as well as iTunes and Amazon.com Inc. The Hulu LLC joint venture and Sony's Crackle allow users to watch full-length movies free, but don't generally include new releases. Hulu is a joint venture of General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal, News Corp. and Walt Disney Co.

YouTube began as a place for scrappy, home-grown videos, but it has become increasingly aggressive in striking deals to host television shows, movies and other professional content as a way to draw in advertisers and viewers. But movie studios and TV networks won't give up their most popular content for a share of advertising, which they complain isn't sufficient. The negotiations with the studios are part of an effort to open up new revenue streams by charging users themselves.

Hollywood has also been eager to distribute more of its films online -- as long as it can collect a reasonable fee. Though many studios now sell and rent movies online through services such as iTunes and Amazon.com, that has yet to produce meaningful revenue. By cutting a deal with YouTube, which had nearly 428 million global visitors in June, according to comScore, it can potentially reach a much wider audience.

Studios have been pursuing these kinds of deals with renewed urgency, as revenue from DVD sales has eroded more quickly than they had anticipated. Adams Media Research says studio revenue from DVD sales should fall by about $850 million this year to $12.9 billion.

However, YouTube users aren't accustomed to opening their wallets to watch videos. And the full-length movies that already exist on the service -- ranging from classics such as the 1940 "His Girl Friday" to more recent movies like the 1999 horror flick "House on Haunted Hill" -- have drawn a modest number of views compared to content like comedy clips and music videos. Many consumers balk at watching full-length films on a computer screen.

You Tube and the studios are still hashing out how to divide revenue from the new arrangement. For deals that involve advertising, YouTube is likely to give partners the majority of the revenue, as it has done with other partners in the past. Some deals may also guarantee the studio a minimum fee per title viewed, in some cases just under $3, according to people familiar with the matter.

YouTube is pressing studios to allow the movies to be streamed on mobile devices, but some of the studios are resisting, even though that is currently allowed under other online rental services such as iTunes.

Under current plans, 10,000 Google employees will test the service for a period of three months, people familiar with the matter said. The trial was supposed to start at the beginning of September, but was pushed back as studio negotiations dragged on.

Summer sets box office record: 2009 is highest-grossing summer ever

2009-09-02T09:07:00.000-07:00

It's not even Labor Day weekend yet, but 2009 has already become the highest-grossing summer ever at the domestic box office.

Through Sunday, summer B.O. revs were $4.17 billion, compared to $4.16 billion for summer 2007, the previous record holder for best summer sesh.

The Labor Day weekend should add another $100 million or more to the total tally, meaning the summer would be up at least 3% in grosses over 2007.

Three tentpoles lead the pack of top domestic performers: Paramount's "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" ($399.4 million), Warner Bros.' "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" ($294.3 million) and Disney/Pixar's "Up" ($289.6 million).

Pics performing significantly better than expected include Warners' comedy "The Hangover," which has run up $270.2 million in domestic ticket sales, by far the best gross for an R-rated comedy. Pic places No. 4 on the top 10 summer chart.

Auds were also in love with Disney's Sandra Bullock-Ryan Reynolds romantic comedy "The Proposal," which earned $160.2 million to become the highest-grossing summer romantic comedy of all time. Film is No. 9 on the summer domestic roster.

Several franchises got an infusion of fresh blood: Paramount's "Star Trek" grossed $256.7 million to come in fifth for the season, while Twentieth Century Fox's "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" grossed $179 million to rank No. 7.

Fox also took spots No. 6 and No. 8 with "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" ($193.3 million) and "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian" ($176.5 million).

Sony's sequel "Angels and Demons" rounds out the top 10 list at $133.4 million, although Paramount's "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" will likely overtake "Angels."

"G.I. Joe's" domestic cume through Sunday was $132.2 million after grossing $7.7 million for the weekend, its fourth sesh.

Avatar the movie, pre-sales marketing strategy

2009-08-29T10:06:00.000-07:00

The Movie Avatar (http://www2.avatarmovie.com/) is selling tickets four months in advance! Of course it is a studio tent pole film and has a huge gaming audience behind it. I wonder if this marketing tool will work.

It will create some hype.
This pre-sale will encourage people to feel special, in the know, and spread the word.
By selling tickets 4 months in advance they can pay back their P&A loans faster and have either a new P&A loan closer to the release or see their ROI faster
Gives the studio a better idea of how many screens to open in. If they presale 2000 screens then they could schedule more prior to release if the numbers are right and spend P&A wisely

Could too much buzz this early kill the film?
How could indie films capitalize on this logic?

All the best,

Jean-Luc Martin
Producer, Line-Producer-UPM
info@jeanlucm.com

'Avatar' tickets already on sale
James Cameron pic hits theaters Dec. 18

James Cameron's "Avatar" won't reach movie theaters for almost four months, but tickets for the much-hyped sci-fi actioner are already on sale.

Touted as a potentially watershed release -- displaying the creative possibilities both of 3D cinema and motion-capture production techniques -- "Avatar" is scheduled for a global bow on Dec. 18. Cameron's Lightstorm Entertainment is co-producing with distributor Fox, which has been stoking exhibitors' appetite for the release through screenings of extended clip reels from the film.

On Friday, the studio staged public screenings of a special 16-minute "Avatar" trailer at 100 Imax theaters. Now, AMC has decided to sell tickets to the movie's opening-day midnight performances.

Online ticketers MovieTickets.com and Fandango on Friday began ringing up sales of "Avatar" performances at more than 75 AMC locations, most of them Imax 3D venues.

"Tickets being put on sale for a film four months in advance is unheard of," MovieTickets exec vp Joel Cohen said. "The fact that tickets have already been sold really speaks to the tremendous buzz the film has already created and the power of James Cameron at the box office."

"Avatar" is Cameron's first dramatic feature since 1997's "Titanic," which is still the highest-grossing film of all time.

"Audiences are hungry for fresh fare with original storytelling," Fandango spokesman Harry Medved said. "And with 'Avatar,' you have no idea where the story is going to go."

Sales of the midnight tickets were said to be "healthy."

It was unclear if any other exhibs will follow AMC's lead in offering early advance ticketing on "Avatar." After all, the studio has yet to hammer out film rental terms with circuits -- though that didn't stop the nation's second-biggest circuit from suggesting the early ticketing.

"AMC came up with the idea," Fox senior vp distribution Chris Aronson said. "They said that if all these people are going to come to our theater to see 16 minutes of a film that doesn't open until December, let's give them an opportunity to buy tickets to the first performances of the show itself."

As a practical matter, no one can offer anything but tickets for the first midnight performances, as nobody knows what the final running time will be once Cameron finishes editing "Avatar."

"Avatar" is likely to tote a running time of between 2 1/2 and 3 hours.

Television -- As We Know It -- Is Finished -- - "It's the beginning of a structural tailspin. The total collapse of the model."

2009-08-26T20:47:00.000-07:00

Hello All, My brother Gerard Martin, a Camera Operator/AC sent this article to me and I read it with a harsh reality check - wow .... times are shifting ... on a lighter note: will Melrose Place survive? Jean-Luc Line-Producer, UPM

Network TV may be a cyclical business -- but for bruised and battered broadcasters battling the worst economy in a generation, there's little evidence to suggest a bounce back is in the cards anytime soon.

If anything, things could get a lot worse before they get better. Some observers are even beginning to question whether there will ever be a turnaround, predicting that the business model which has sustained broadcasters for close to 60 years has begun an irreversible decline.

The latest blow: A disastrous upfront advertising market that saw revenues plunge an estimated 15 percent from last year, dropping from $9.2 billion in 2008 to around $7.8 billion, according to estimates by several publications.

"This is a turning point," argues Bob Garfield, author of the just-released media doomsday tome "The Chaos Scenario" and the long-time critic for Advertising Age.

He believes networks will continue to bleed ad dollars, which will lead them to reduce original scripted programming, thus causing deeper ratings declines.... and even further drops in ad revenue.

"It's the beginning of a structural tailspin... the total collapse of the network television model," Garfield predicts.

In fact, Garfield -- echoing the feelings of multiple industry leaders interviewed for this article, most of whom spoke only on the condition of anonymity -- believes the current network landscape will look dramatically different by the middle of the next decade.

"I don't think we'll have four networks five years from now," he said. "One of the networks will drop out, maybe two."

If there's any silver lining in all this doom and gloom, it's that broadcasters aren't completely burying their heads in the sand and ignoring the looming crisis.

While their public pronouncements remain largely upbeat, their actions over the past months indicate they realize massive change is a must if they have any hope of proving the Bob Garfields of the world wrong.

The shifts range from draconian belt-tightening to stepped efforts to create -- or at least consider -- new revenue streams for network programming outside of advertising.

On the cost side of the equation, networks are playing hardball with studios when it comes to license fees for veteran shows.

Witness NBC's decision to walk away from "Medium" and "My Name is Earl" last spring rather than meet the fiscal demands of CBS Television Studios and 20th Century Fox TV, respectively. Or Fox's up-to-the-brink talks with 20th on "Bones," a successful drama which nonetheless almost proved too rich for the network's blood.

In years past, networks tried to get tough on costs but were stymied because there always seemed to be another buyer willing to spend "crazy money" for a series, pilot or piece of talent.

But now, "The 'idiots with money' don't exist," said one senior network executive. The same sense of realism holds in the actor, writer and producer markets. Overall deals with writers, for example, have become all but extinct.

Independent Filmmakers Distribute on Their Own

2009-08-17T09:52:00.000-07:00

LOS ANGELES — Quentin Tarantino never had to go through this.

New York Times

When “The Age of Stupid,” a climate change movie, “opens” across the United States in September, it will play on some 400 screens in a one-night event, with a video performance by Thom Yorke of Radiohead, all paid for by the filmmakers themselves and their backers. In Britain, meanwhile, the film has been showing via an Internet service that lets anyone pay to license a copy, set up a screening and keep the profit.

The glory days of independent film, when hot young directors like Steven Soderbergh and Mr. Tarantino had studio executives tangled in fierce bidding wars at Sundance and other celebrity-studded festivals, are now barely a speck in the rearview mirror. And something new, something much odder, has taken their place.

Here is how it used to work: aspiring filmmakers playing the cool auteur in hopes of attracting the eye of a Hollywood power broker.

Here is the new way: filmmakers doing it themselves — paying for their own distribution, marketing films through social networking sites and Twitter blasts, putting their work up free on the Web to build a reputation, cozying up to concierges at luxury hotels in film festival cities to get them to whisper into the right ears.

The economic slowdown and tight credit have squeezed the entertainment industry along with everybody else, resulting in significantly fewer big-studio films in the pipeline and an even tougher road for smaller-budget independent projects. Independent distribution companies are much less likely to pull out the checkbook while many of the big studios have all but gotten out of the indie film business.

“It’s not like the audience for these movies has completely disappeared,” said Cynthia Swartz, a partner in the publicity company 42 West, which has been supplementing its mainstream business by helping filmmakers find ways to connect with an audience. “It’s just a matter of finding them.”

Sometimes, the odd approach actually works.

“Anvil! The Story of Anvil,” a documentary about a Canadian metal band, turned into the do-it-yourself equivalent of a smash hit when it stretched a three-screen opening in April into a four-month run, still under way, on more than 150 screens around the country.

“I paid for everything, I took a second mortgage on my house,” said Sacha Gervasi, the film’s director.

Mr. Gervasi, whose studio writing credits include “The Terminal,” directed by Steven Spielberg, nearly three years ago, began filming “Anvil!” with his own money in hopes of attracting a conventional distributor. The movie played well at Sundance in 2008, but offers were low.

So Mr. Gervasi put up more money — his total cost was in “the upper hundred thousands,” he said — to distribute the film through a company called Abramorama, while selling the DVD and television rights to VH1.

The aging rockers of Anvil have shown up at theaters to play for audiences. Famous fans like Courtney Love were soon chattering online about the film. And an army of “virtual street teamers” — Internet advocates who flood social networks with admiring comments, sometimes for a fee, sometimes not — were recruited by a Web consultant, Sarah Lewitinn, who usually works the music scene.

The idea behind this sort of guerrilla release is to accumulate just enough at the box office to prime the pump for DVD sales and return the filmmaker’s investment, maybe even with a little profit. “Anvil!” has earned roughly $1 million worldwide at the box office so far, its producer, Rebecca Yeldham, said.

Finding even relatively small amounts of money to make and market a film is, of course, no small trick. “The Age of Stupid” raised a production budget of about £450,000 (about $748,000) from 228 shareholders, and is soliciting a bit more to continue its release, Franny Armstrong, its director, said.

“Money has simply vanished,” said Mark Urman, an independent-film veteran, speaking of the financial drought that has pushed producers and directors into shouldering risks that only a few years ago were carried by a more robust field of distributors.

Many of those distributors have either disappeared or severely tightened their operations, including Warner Independent Pictures, Picturehouse, New Line Cinema, Miramax, the Weinstein Company, Paramount Classics and its successor, Paramount Vantage.

Typically, the distributors have paid money upfront for rights to release films. That helped the producers recover what they had already spent on production, but it often left the distributor with most or all of the profit.

Mr. Urman’s own position as president for distribution at Senator Entertainment evaporated this year when financing fell through for a slate of films. So he started a new company, Paladin, to support filmmakers willing to finance their own releases.

In September, Paladin is expected to help the filmmaker Steve Jacobs and his fellow producers release “Disgrace,” a drama with John Malkovich that is based on a novel by the Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee.

The film won a critics prize at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, but no attractive distribution offers. One key to releasing it without a Miramax, said Mr. Urman, is to minimize expensive advertising in newspapers or on television and play directly to a friendly audience — in this case through extensive promotional tie-ins with Mr. Coetzee’s publishers.

“Everyone still dreams there’s going to be a conventional sale to a major studio,” said Kevin Iwashina, once an independent-film specialist with the Creative Artists Agency and now a partner at IP Advisors, a film sales and finance consulting company. But, he said, smart producers and directors are figuring out how to tap the value in projects on their own.

Some big companies will still be on the hunt in Toronto this year, where the annual festival is scheduled to begin Sept. 10.

“We’ll be there in full force,” said Nancy Utley, a president of Fox Searchlight Pictures, which last year acquired rights to “Slumdog Millionaire” and “The Wrestler,” both screened in Toronto.

“It’s a great opportunity for us,” said Robert G. Friedman, a chairman of Summit Entertainment, which acquired “The Hurt Locker,” directed by Kathryn Bigelow. The film was offered in Toronto last year and has already been mentioned widely as an Oscar contender.

But some filmmakers and producers pointed toward the festival have already started working for themselves, rather than waiting for the few remaining, and ever fussier, buyers to swoop in.

In fact, the next-wave Tarantinos are in Canada already — coddling not prospective buyers, but concierges, who just might steer people to promotional parties and screenings.

“These guys have figured it out,” Barry Avrich, a member of the festival’s governing board, said of the do-it-yourself crowd. “They’re into all the cool hotels, to get the concierges thinking about them.”

Hollywood summer school: Biz tries to learn lessons amid season of changes

2009-08-17T09:07:00.000-07:00

Hey Guys,

Very interesting article in Variety! This helps to understand the Studios methods.

Jean-Luc Martin

This summer is on track to equal, and maybe even surpass, the B.O. record. To date, tallies are running even with last year's summer numbers at $3.6 billion. And it could eclipse the record-breaking $4.3 billion earned in summer 2008.a

So in theory, studio executives have plenty to learn by studying what worked this summer -- and what didn't.

But, in fact, Hollywood has tried some daring experiments with the summer formula this year and the results are inconclusive.

There were whopping successes and embarrassing failures, and execs are scratching their heads to figure out why some succeeded and others didn't.

There are plenty of questions to be raised from these numbers.

Does a May bow assure longer playing times?
A few years ago, the studios opened three blockbuster titles in May: The third editions of "Spider-Man," "Pirates" and "Shrek," all had great bows, followed by long shelf lives. This year, the studios opened five pics in May and early June: Fox's "Wolverine,"Paramount's "Star Trek," Sony's "Angels and Demons," Warner Bros.' "Terminator Salvation" and Fox's "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian."
They ended up cannibalizing each other, depressing overall results. Each had strong opening weekends, but sustained big drops in the following week as audiences went for the next big opener. It's called "leaving money on the table."
Studios wanted to get out of the way of "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," opening June 24, but was the strategy worth it?
More than one option
- (Film) Spider-Man
- (Tv) Spider-Man
  Man - Nicholas Hammond, E W Swackhamer
- (Tv) Spider-Man
  Man - Series Information, Seasons, Credits, Awards
- (Tv) Amazing Spider-Man
- (Tv) Spider-Man
  Man - Series Information, Seasons, Credits, Awards
More than one option
Is it a good idea to counterprogram?
Over the past few years, the studios abandoned their tactic of filling the season with pics targeted at fanboys. But "The Devil Wears Prada" and "Mamma Mia!" showing the benefits of wooing other demos.
The fear now is that there is too much demo-specific fare, with the possibility that they are undercutting each other's longevity.
This month alone offers plenty of fodder for doubt. Sony's female-skewing "The Ugly Truth" opened July 24, followed by the studio's "Julie and Julia" Aug. 7, followed by WB-New Line's "The Time Traveler's Wife" Aug. 14.
It's not just females with so many choices this month. Studios are also giving guys plenty of testosterone-driven fare: Paramount opened "G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra" on Aug. 7, followed by Sony's "District 9" Aug. 14 and the Weinstein Co.'s "Inglourious Basterds" on Aug. 21.
Do stars matter?
Par's "Transformers 2," and "Star Trek," Disney-Pixar's "Up," and Warner Bros.' "The Hangover" represent four of the top five summer films so far, but none is a star vehicle. Conversely, the Eddie Murphy Par comedy "Imagine That," Will Ferrell's U pic "Land of the Lost" and the Jack Black-Michael Cera Sony starrer "Year One" were sold on star power, but it wasn't enough.
To a lesser extent, marquee names didn't seem to aid the John Travolta-Denzel Washington "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3," from Sony. Its domestic cume is $65 million and $27.3 million overseas.
But, star wattage did help Universal's Johnny Depp gangster pic "Public Enemies." The film has grossed $95.5 million domestically and $63.5 million overseas.
More than one option
- (Tv) Land of the Lost
  Series Information, Seasons, Credits, Awards
- (Tv) Land of the Lost
  Series Information, Seasons, Credits, Awards
More than one option
More than one option
- (Film) Female Jungle
- (Film) The Hangover
More than one option
- (Film) Up
  Robert McLane, Russ Meyer
- (Film) Up
More than one option
- (Person) Eddie Murphy
  Voice, Director, Song
- (Person) Eddie Murphy
- (Person) Eddie Murphy
  Carpenter, Construction
Do critics matter?
Many media pundits derided Par for not screening "G.I. Joe" for critics (a few online reviewers were shown the film). The studio said it had nothing to gain, since it's not a reviewer-friendly type of film. It opened to a tidy $54.7 million. "Transformers 2" received some of worst reviews of the year, but it's become 2009's top-grossing film, with north of $819.4 million worldwide.
At the same time, glowing reviews for "Star Trek" and "Up" appeared to bring in auds who might otherwise not have seen those films. And raves have helped smaller films like Fox Searchlight's "500 Days of Summer."
More than one option
- (Tv) G.I. Joe
- (Film) G.I. Joe
Do the old box office formulas work?
A few years ago, distribution execs could calculate weekend grosses based on Friday's numbers. But with word of mouth via Twitter, Facebook and texting, a film can tumble more steeply than ever from Friday to Saturday, making it ever harder to come up with accurate weekend estimates.
Sacha Baron Cohen's U comedy "Bruno" fell a debilitating 39% from Friday to Saturday, as an example.
Has audience taste changed on Iraq war pics, or was it the movies?
When a flurry of 2007 Iraq-themed pics stumbled, analysts declared audiences didn't want to see the war on the bigscreen. Either tastes have changed or they just didn't want to see those movies. One of the specialty-level successes of the summer has been the $9 million for Summit Entertainment's "The Hurt Locker," the Kathryn Bigelow film about a U.S. bomb-diffusing team in Baghdad.

THE TRUISMS

Aside from the questions, this summer provided confirmation for some long-held beliefs.

Mega-grosses are great, but it all comes down to profitability.
"G.I. Joe" got off to a good start, but it will need to do a lot more biz to break even. The pic, co-financed by Spyglass, cost $175 million to produce, plus the expenses of a worldwide marketing campaign.
B.O. gets a boost from 3-D.
The overperformance of "Up" and Fox's "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" proved how much the upcharge for a ticket to a stereoscopic 3-D pic can bump up box office revenues, both domestically and overseas. Studios estimate that 3-D grosses make up as much as 50% of the gross, even though 3-D screens represent only a fraction of the total theater count.
"Up" is the second-highest grossing title of the summer at the domestic B.O., grossing $287.4 million through Aug. 9. "Dawn of the Dinosaurs" has grossed a massive $576.4 million internationally. Disney's"G-Force" had a surprisingly strong bow, with $67 million domestically so far, as it begins to open overseas.
Overseas is invaluable.
Sony's "Angels and Demons" reaped $233 million domestic, $349 million overseas. "Terminator" found salvation overseas, with $124 million domestic, $237 overseas.
Seasonal shifts are sometimes possible.
Though the first two "Ice Age" pics opened in March, Fox bowed "Dawn of the Dinosaurs" in July. The pic has grossed $187.9 million domestically and became top grossing animated film of all time overseas, surpassing "Finding Nemo" ($524.9 million).
While the first "Narnia" film had whopping numbers when it bowed in winter 2005, the second "Narnia" film, "Prince Caspian," saw a big dropoff by opening in summer 2008. So studios fretted whether franchises can switch their lucky opening dates.
Fox likely left money on the table by opening "Night at the Museum 2" in the summer, in a crowded scene. But the fact is, it did make money,
"Harry Potter" proved a few years ago that a durable franchise will draw audiences whenever it bows. Last year, fans raised a ruckus when Warners pushed the release of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" from Thanksgiving to July 15. But all was forgiven after the film opened to a record-breaking grosses. To date, it has cleared $273.4 million domestically and $542.2 million for a worldwide tally of $817.4 million.
The marketing should reflect the pic.
U's Adam Sandler starrer "Funny People," directed by Judd Apatow, is both a comedy and a drama, but the campaign played down the latter. Moviegoers quickly spotted the difference, something that may have hurt the movie's Friday opener vs. Saturday performance.
U also ran into trouble with "Land of the Lost." In the campaign, the movie seemed to mirror the 1970s TV show, but in truth, the pic wasn't a family title. Film's domestic cume is $43.4 million.
More than one option
- (Person) Adam Sandler
  Song, Song Performer, Executive Producer
- (Person) Adam Sandler

THE REBUTTALS

Though some adages were re-proven, a couple were refuted this summer.

Midrange pics are dead. That "truism" popped up a few years ago, but summer saw sizeable returns for such titles as Disney's romantic comedy "The Proposal" ($154.7 million), which managed to beat out last year's "Sex and the City's" gross ($152.6 million).
Box office returns for Warner's "The Hangover" are downright astounding: The R-rated comedy has cumed north of $263.4 domestically.
That's a better showing than summer pics "Star Trek" ($255.3 million/Paramount), "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" ($187.9 million/20th Century Fox) and "Terminator: Salvation" ($124.7 million/Warners).
Fanboys are dangerous. A month before "Wolverine's" release, a pirated copy of the film was leaked on the Web. Fox didn't know how much the film's grosses would be hurt, but the losses seemed to be minimized when fanboys around the world decried the piracy and websites like Ain't It Cool News made good on its promise that no reviews of the Web version would be posted.

America's subsidies for filmmaking ** The money shot

2009-08-13T22:06:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

A friend and associate sent this article to me which I found interesting. The Article has most of the information we collectively know from all the ongoing incentive reports we receive. From a laypersons perspective all the incentive deals out there make for a rosy ROI but producers have to do their diligence to find out the status on the day/week/month your project is funded. I recommend that you present potential investors with the states incentive program highlights but know that anything can change "when" you are funded!

Have a wonderful day!

Jean-Luc Martin
Producer, Line-Producer, UPM

From The Economist print edition
Why government handouts to Hollywood are growing

WITH its deserts and its slight air of decay, New Mexico is a good place to shoot a post-apocalyptic action film. But the state’s natural charms alone would probably not have been enough to lure the makers of “The Book of Eli”. Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosove, who are producing the Warner Bros film, say they were particularly enticed by New Mexico’s generous production subsidies and interest-free loans.

All but seven of America’s 50 states now offer incentives to lure filmmakers. Some states refund a portion of in-state production costs, which may include actors’ salaries. Others issue rebates against state taxes that can be sold to local residents. The club is growing quickly. California, which resisted subsidies for years, recently approved its first clutch of recipients. Kentucky is considering its first application. With banks and hedge funds virtually out of the game, state governments are now the most important external source of funding in the film business.

Public largesse has led to some odd artistic decisions. “Gran Torino”, a story that originally revolved around Minnesota’s distinctive community of Hmong immigrants, was transplanted to Michigan to take advantage of that state’s subsidies, which can amount to 42% of production costs. The forthcoming “Battle: Los Angeles” will be filmed mostly in Baton Rouge, Louisiana—a reversal of the tradition by which southern California stands in for everywhere else.

Studies commissioned by the states tend to show a healthy return on investment. Filmmakers have certainly learned to follow the money: California’s share of big-studio productions dropped from two-thirds in 2003 to less than one-third in 2008 as its politicians dithered over subsidies. It is also likely that subsidies have helped America compete with Europe and Canada, although the weak dollar has probably done more to restrain what is known as “flyaway production”.

The continuing bidding war is likely to result in diminished returns for the states. Michigan’s subsidies, once considered improbably lavish, may soon be matched by Washington, DC. Alaska has approved a 44% rebate, although production companies must film in rural areas during the state’s gruelling winter to qualify for the full sum. Whatever the benefit to the states, however, the subsidies are becoming ever more important to Hollywood.

But as state budgets tighten, a backlash is gathering. This summer Indiana and Wisconsin reduced their rebates. A bill to do the same is before the Michigan legislature. In the Midwest the surge in foreclosures and the collapse of traditional industries has hardened hearts. Jud Gilbert, a Michigan state senator who opposes film subsidies, points out that if he could offer a 42% rebate on car production, that industry would not be in crisis.

Yet a broad retreat from film subsidies is unlikely. Some of the first places to offer rebates, such as New Mexico and Louisiana, now have impressive sound stages and a deep pool of production workers. States that want to compete with them will have to be extremely generous. And big studios and independent outfits are sharply trimming their film output in response to the credit crunch and a faltering DVD market. As the supply of work shrinks, the squabbling will only intensify.

Strong Spring Sales Boost Exhibitors

2009-08-13T10:24:00.000-07:00

The strong box-office performance of movies released last spring is beginning to be reflected in the quarterly reports of the nation's theater chains. Cinemark, which operates 4,889 screens worldwide said its profits rose 20 percent to $18.7 million on revenue of $517.5 million. Ticket sales were up 115.2 percent to $339.1 million, while concession sales were up 12.3 percent to $158.9 million. Most impressively, said CEO Alan Stock, was the fact that overseas attendance outpaced the U.S. "Consumers continue to prove they value the cinema as one of the most attractive forms of out-of-home entertainment," he said. Nevertheless, because of the weakened dollar, overseas revenue was up only 1.1 percent over last year.

Thanks AP.

Film biz mulls mixed messages Is it cash infusion, or confusion?

2009-08-11T09:09:00.000-07:00

I truly believe if there was any time to produce a movie it would be now. Enjoy Peter Bart's message.

Jean-Luc Martin
Producer, Line-Producer, UPM

Peter Bart
Several sectors of our economy are showing signs of life these days, but here's my forecast for the entertainment business: There will be a significant recovery thanks to increased spending, stepped-up production and an easing of the credit crunch.

On the other hand, there will be sharper cutbacks, reduced output and a further pinch in the job market.

Confusing? Sure. But if you talk to Hollywood power players those are the sorts of mixed messages you'll hear.

The narrow issue of film output offers an intriguing microcosm of this mixed outlook. The major studios believe there are vastly too many movies out there and say they're cutting back. Co-financing entities are biting the dust and independents complain that the banks are still acting like skinflints.

The picture is clear except for one factor: The movie business has always been remarkably self-replenishing. Though logic may dictate caution and cutbacks, there's no way of reversing the engines.

Take a quick glance at the studio horizon: Universal has had a dicey summer, Paramount is retooling and MGM seems to be nearing another corporate chasm. That's the bad news.

But Morgan Creek, DreamWorks and New Regency are newly energized and financially refurbished, Summit is riding high on its "Twilight" franchise while Spyglass is relishing its shares of hits like "Star Trek" and insiders speculate that it may expand its business plan to encompass distribution.

Further, the co-financiers with portentous names like Legendary and Relativity are still finding abundant capital to meet their obligations, and Village Roadshow has reinserted itself into the marketplace thanks to its new resources.

Mind you, the task of eliciting a greenlight is ever more formidable. The project with the dicey title of "Dinner for Schmucks" will finally move forward in October after a seven-year battle. Jay Roach will direct Steve Carell and Paul Rudd.

Yes, this was originally the Sacha Baron Cohen project that DreamWorks was going to make, but now the funding will come from DreamWorks, Reliance, Paramount and Spyglass and it wouldn't surprise me if even another financier clambered aboard. But the movie's finally getting made -- that's the law of self-replenishment at work again.

So where does all this money come from? Clearly, it doesn't exist, except it does. Spyglass and New Regency can borrow against their very substantial libraries. Ryan Kavanaugh has his hedge fund to back Relativity and the redoubtable Jim Robinson underwrites Morgan Creek for a very "Hollywood" reason -- he loves the movie business to the tune of four films a year.

And for every nightmare like "Land of the Lost" there's a "Twilight" to re-energize everyone's business plan.

"One big hit can cover over a lot of dumb mistakes," confides the head of one indie company.

Spyglass suffered through "The Love Guru," but its success stories date back to "The Sixth Sense" and "Bruce Almighty."

To be sure, the majors may have to rethink their convenient business model of the last few years. A hedge fund was always on hand to provide downside protection. Funding from Relativity has thus propped up Universal and Dune has provided protection for Fox, but the sources of outside capital may have to be restructured in future years. That, in turn, may further incentivize the majors to try and cut back their production schedules. It's risky out there in the sun without Wall Street's sunscreen.

But again, Hollywood always seems to find new money. The playpen is too entertaining and the upside too enticing.

So, that's the key explanation for an optimistic forecast: The party is too much fun to shut down.

Upfonts come to an end Reports suggest 10-12% drop in advertising

2009-08-10T08:13:00.001-07:00

Happy Monday to All

I realize this has very little to do with Features but it does give us an indication of what advertises and networks go through in order to see a profit. Creative advertising is on the rise both for the products but also campaigns for the programs. HBO - True Blood had/has an amazing campaign and what is even better is that the writing team has improved. Anyway ... take a read ... Enjoy the week.

Jean-Luc Martin
Producer, Line-Producer, UPM

BROADCASTING & CABLE -- The curtain is finally drawn on the tumultuous broadcast primetime upfront of 2009 and the range of final dollar estimates-based largely on hearsay and back-of-the-envelope calculations rather than network guidance-is as wide as a barn door.

With the networks keeping mum, agencies are putting the figure anywhere between a 10% to 12% drop from last year's $9.2 billion, which leaves the upfront finishing around the $8 billion mark. Other estimates are more aggressive about the decline, with trade MediaWeek suggesting a tally of $7.2 billion and The New York Times estimating $7.8 billion.

Whatever happens in scatter, the missing billion dollars will no doubt affect forward planning inside major media conglomerates looking to reconfigure the network model.

Networks have sold around 70% of their commercial time. On Thursday, CBS Corp. CEO Leslie Moonves said on the company's second-quarter earnings call that the Eye network had sold around 65% of its inventory. One agency executive on Friday suggested some network executives are already planning some payback in the former of higher scatter pricing.

Indeed, this year's upfront was highly acrimonious, with advertisers demanding double-digit rollbacks and getting anywhere between a 1% and 7% discount instead.

Fox and CBS were at the low end of the discounting, with ABC and The CW falling in between and NBC coming in at the low end. NBC had anticipated a lower take this year due to its gamble on putting Jay Leno into the 10 p.m. slot. Drama shows, though more expensive to produce than variety, command higher ad premiums.

Strong integration opportunities helped bring additional dollars to The CW, which is part owned by CBS. Executives familiar with NBC Universal's sales said the company had taken close to $4 billion across the board. ABC was the most secretive of all networks, with the usually talkative sales chief Mike Shaw staying quiet as a church mouse on every aspect of the Disney-owned network's upfront. Fox also gave little away, saying it was satisfied with its take and had concluded talks with advertisers.

Meanwhile, primetime was just part of the story. Networks seemed willing to take much bigger rollbacks outside of the prime territory. Clients saw much higher rollbacks in other dayparts, most notably news and late-night, where CPM rollbacks fell between the mid- to high-single-digits level.

News programming, given the drop in pharmaceutical, financial and auto categories, had to take rollbacks in the mid to high single digits. Late-night also saw CPM rollbacks of mid to high single digits. "They've had ratings contraction, and we expect there'll be more with Jay leaving. Conan will hold the younger end but lose the older viewers, and they've haven't gone over to Letterman," said a buyer, adding that CBS was pushing its late-night properties hard.

Daytime saw discounts in the low single digits since it is a daypart popular with all advertising categories. "The other dayparts show a much truer demand picture than primetime," said one agency buyer.

Networks are already planning to price their scatter airtime at a premium to upfront in expectation of ad comeback. Moonves suggested his company is already seeing a "phenomenal third quarter" scatter market. The telco category, which typically isn't a big upfront player, will add scatter money into the mix, and pharmaceutical, which has been quieter in recent months as the new White House administration took over, may start to see some greater activity. The government's expansion of the Cash for Clunkers program may also provide some additional advertising demand. The Senate Friday added $2 billion to the auto purchase incentive program.

However, if ratings fall again, as they did last season, and networks are forced to give make-goods, then that will suck up additional inventory and put pricing pressure on whatever is left. One broadcast network executive was said to have been so angry with the aggressive stance of advertisers and their clients that he said clients would "get killed" in the scatter market if demand does indeed return.

On Thursday's earnings call, Moonves no doubt panicked some marketers with his news that third-quarter scatter was already up 30% on the year ago period. He suggested that CBS is so heavily sold that it is cutting back content on reality shows to accommodate rising demand. The ever vigilant Sanford Bernstein analyst Michael Nathanson wondered why, if scatter was so buoyant, advertisers hadn't rushed into upfront territory to avoid high scatter premiums. There was no good answer for that thought.

Ultimately, the broadcast networks finished with no real losers. "They did better than the economic model has suggested," said another agency buyer.

NEW INCENTIVES-AWARE PAYROLL COMPANY

2009-08-10T07:56:00.000-07:00

Ease Entertainment Services: Payroll company

For the first time in over twenty years, a major new payroll company has opened to serve the entertainment community: Ease Entertainment Services, based in Beverly Hills, CA, but with offices in many of the incentives states. Ease is a different kind of payroll company, based on a service model, with state-of-the-art software, the best financial security in the business, and an experienced group of payroll specialists in charge, all with actual hands-on production experience.

The company's first project was "Dead of Night," a $20 million film in Louisiana. Ease is now providing payroll services for films shooting or preparing to shoot in Texas, New Mexico, California, New York, Michigan, Iowa, Louisiana, Georgia, Toronto and Vancouver. Budgets range from $1 to $45 million.

Incentives information is provided by The Incentives Office, which is working closely with EASE. For more information or to set up payroll, please call Jeff Begun at 310 469-7302 or Dama Claire 310 469-7303. Ease has a website at ease.us.com.

Properaly developing a feature film

2009-08-05T20:53:00.000-07:00

Hello All,

Development is one, if not the most important phase of any film project. Typically, outside of the studio system this stage is poorly executed due to a lack of experience, support or financing. I believe that todays producers have risen to the challenges of our economy and are careful not to let their passion override the importance of the business. And frankly that is the ROI!

While there is no guarantee a film will become profitable, properly developing a project can mitigate some of the inherent risk involved with film investment.

Development provides a reasonable assurance a project can be produced and distributed with a realistic potential for a return on investment.

Any project presented to financiers or distributors will require detailed information presented in a professional format. A business proposal assists in presenting this crucial information so that financiers and distributors can make an informed decision.

I am very proud of the producers, business analysts, assistant directors, casting directors, associates, etc ... that have come together under one roof to properly package films.

Best,

Jean-Luc Martin
Producer, Line-Producer, UPM

Steve Zahn to star in 'Wimpy Kid'

2009-08-04T18:06:00.000-07:00

Hello All, Okay ... this is not budgeting, scheduling, markets, incentives or anything to do with any updates for production flow.

But rather this is one for all the little boys out there like my son. He is going to freak out when he hears about the Wimpy Kid and it will be hitting the big screen! And ... believe me when I say that he is going to make notes on who should be cast and what the story line should be .. well actually my daughter does that more than my son. I was in Pre-Production on a film and she had all of her friends ready to audition. Well .. here is one for the Wimpy Kid .. can not wait!

Jean-Luc Martin
Producer, Line-Producer, UPM

Freudenthal to direct Fox 2000 film

Steve Zahn will star in "Diary of a Wimpy Kid," Fox 2000's adaptation of Jeff Kinney's novels, with Thor Freudenthal directing.
Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson are producing. Kinney exec produces; his "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" series has sold more than 20 million copies. A pair of writing teams -- Jeff Filgo & Jackie Filgo and Jeff Judah & Gabe Sachs -- wrote the screenplay for "Wimpy Kid," which follows a middle-school student during the course of a school year.

Zachary Gordon, who was tapped after a nine-month search, will play the title role, with Zahn and Rachael Harris portraying his parents. Robert Capron will portray his best friend, and Devon Bostick will play his brother.

Zahn will be seen next in U's "A Perfect Getaway," which opens this weekend.

Location scouts, managers ink deal- Three-year pact covers 440 Hollywood employees

2009-08-01T22:38:00.000-07:00

Just announced! Take note in your budgets!

Jean-Luc Martin
Producer, Line-Producer, UPM
www.JeanLucM.com

Hollywood location scouts, managers and assistants have ratified a three-year deal with the showbiz companies covering about 440 employees.

Pact was approved at a meeting Thursdsay by scouts, managers and assistants repped by Local 399 of the Intl. Brotherhood of Teamsters. It goes into effect on Saturday.

New pact gives an annual 2% salary hike, with a retroactive increase to any increase above 2% that drivers repped by Local 399 are able to achieve in salary minimums next year. The drivers' contract, which covers about 4,000 West Coast employees, expires in August 2010.

"We've hitched our star to the drivers' contract," said Local 399 organizer Steve Dayan.

Location scouts and managers are among the first below-the-line crew members to be hired on many feature and TV projects.

The pact was hammered out on July 24 after three days of talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.

IATSE's new three-year Hollywood Basic Agreement, which also goes into effect on Saturday, contains 3% annual wage increases. The below-the-line union began negotiations in April 2009 and was able to lock in the higher wage hike prior to the recession hitting showbiz.

California Tax Incentive Update

2009-07-31T20:07:00.000-07:00

CALIFORNIA - The Film Commission has issued 25 approval letters, which means that all funds for this year have been fully committed and set aside for those films, so qualified expenses subsequent to the approval date may be included in the tax credits claim (not payable until 2010). Of these, 10 were "Independent Productions," and will receive transferable tax credits. (The others will qualify for non-transferable credits). If production does not start within the time limit, the funds will be released and used for the next project in the queue.

Even Hollywood Lawyers Being Hit By Downturn

2009-07-31T11:08:00.000-07:00

Everyone keeps sayiing Hollywood is on sale but really we all are. (or) not? I have worked with some wonderful attorneys over the years that charge exactly what they should and others that send me a bill that is so outrageous that i just laugh and say really?

Jean-Luc

Attorneys representing members of the entertainment industry say they have been hard hit by the current economic downturn, amid production declines and less lucrative deals for their clients, according to the National Law Journal. The Nlj cited MPAA figures indicating that the number of movies released between Jan. 2 and July 21 of this year came to a total of 284, down 15.5 percent from 2008, when 336 were released. "Every entertainment lawyer will tell you the same thing about new deals: they have to do twice as many to stay afloat, which means working twice as hard because the deals have been cut in half," Doug Mark, a partner at Mark Music & Media Law in Los Angeles, told the Nlj. Some attorneys said that the independent film business has been particularly hard hit, since loan money has evaporated. One noted that while a few years ago, 10 banks were involved in independent production deals, only two remain so. But even big Hollywood stars have been caught up in the recession, it noted, with several seeing cuts in both upfront fees and backend deals. Lawyers representing them traditionally receive 5 percent of the deals they negotiate. Craig Emanuel, chairman of Loeb & Loeb's Los Angeles entertainment department, told the Nlj: "If they represent an actor who normally makes $10 million a picture, and that person is now making $2 million, this obviously impacts your bottom line.

Thanks Ap.

Lawmakers tubthump CA tax incentives

2009-07-30T08:27:00.000-07:00

I don't know what to say ... It would be great to see LA busy but this does not help .. it is a band-aid

Krekorian talks up much needed boost

Local lawmakers gathered at a press conference Tuesday morning at the 20th Century Props warehouse in North Hollywood to tubthump California's recent film and television tax incentives.

Assistant majority leader Paul Krekorian, who represents the state's 43rd district including the San Fernando Valley, described the program as "an immediate boost right now, when we need it the most."

"There are many people in Burbank, North Hollywood and throughout California whose life depends on film and television production ," Krekorian added.

Greg Lippe, chair of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn.'s board of directors, said the program's 30 existing projects have created 6,000 jobs in the San Fernando Valley, where approximately 60% of the film industry's wages are earned.

Yet, some in the industry criticize the program for ignoring broadcast pilots. Along with feature film productions of up to $75 million, the incentive covers only cablers and existing TV series that were first shot out of state.

Krekorian said the program will be open to expansion after its initial five-year run, but for now, its aimed at the below-the-line projects most likely to create jobs.

The California Film Commission has received 59 applications, allocating incentives to 30 possible projects, 25 of which have already received credit.

25 film, TV productions among first to get California tax credits

2009-07-28T20:37:00.000-07:00

California's effort to woo film and TV productions that have been fleeing to other states has netted its first results.

The California Film Commission on Monday announced that 25 productions had been awarded tax credits, which refund 20% or 25% of all spending in the state on so-called below-the-line employees, Hollywood parlance for behind-the-scenes crew.

Fifty-nine movies and TV shows applied for the credits once they became available on July 1. Almost all of them filed on that day, since the credits are awarded on a first-come, first-served basis. Applications that arrive on the same day are ranked randomly.

The state is awarding $67.5 million in tax credits for the 25 productions. Amy Lemisch, director of the CFC, said those movies and TV shows will spend $347 million on below-the-line employees. Lemisch said she was confident the vast majority of that money would otherwise not have been spent in California.

"Based on my talking to these producers for some quite some time before they even applied, I'm confident most of these would not have shot here without the incentives," she said.

The CFC has $32.5 million left to award in tax credits for the current fiscal year that ends June 30, 2010. But Lemisch is allowed to award credits from future fiscal years for current productions at her discretion.

Though they're being awarded now, the first tax credits won't be issued until January of 2011.

California's tax credits, where were approved in February, are relatively small compared to some other states, but many in the industry have said they are critical as productions such as "Ugly Betty," "Deal or No Deal" and "Terminator: Salvation" have shot in other states with tax credits. California's share of feature-film production has dropped from 66% in 2003 to 31% last year, according to the CFC. The effect on California entertainment employment has been severe.

Productions using the credits include CBS Films' action flick "Faster"; DreamWorks' comedy "Dinner With Schmucks," starring Sacha Baron Cohen; and Sony's upcoming movie about the founding of Facebook, "The Social Network."

Comedy Central's "Important Things With Demetri Martin" is using a credit to help it move production from New York.

There's even a direct-to-DVD sequel from Disney that looks sure to increase employment among California dog trainers: "Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2."

-- Ben Fritz

Two visions of 3-D's success L.A. times cite decline in business, others disagree

2009-07-27T09:02:00.001-07:00

Hello All,

The 3-D research continues

Enjoy the Day and lets make it a great week!

Jean-Luc Martin
Producer, Line-Producer, UPM

There was quite a bit of buzz in the 3-D community over a recent L.A. Times blog post suggesting that auds' interest in the format was already declining.

The piece cited strong numbers for 3-D at the start of 2009 and a steady decline to "Up" and "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs."

But the figures struck many observers as incongruous, since 3-D screens continue to outperform 2-D screens, and independent research from Screen Digest and USC's Entertainment Technology Center show strong audience enthusiasm for 3-D.

ETC's surveys show the more viewers see of this generation of 3-D, the more they say they like it and the more eager they are to see more.

Screen Digest analyst Charlotte Jones, who has been tracking the perf of 3-D screens, says the pub's numbers show 3-D screens still performing very strongly, selling 1½ to 2 times the number of tickets that 2-D screens do for the same title.

"There's no significant deterioration in per-screen 3-D to 2-D ratio," says Jones. "(3-D) performance on a per-screen basis is coming in much higher (now) than for 'Coraline.' "

Part of the disagreement arises because the Times started counting, somewhat arbitrarily, at the beginning of 2009. The first 3-D release of the year was "My Bloody Valentine 3-D," which was marketed aggressively as a 3-D event and had by far the biggest 3-D overperformance of any film so far. So the rest of 2009's films naturally show a dropoff.

Previous 3-D releases from "Chicken Little" to "Journey to the Center of the Earth" behaved consistently, and were more like "Coraline" than "Valentine."

As for "Monsters vs. Aliens," "Up" and "Ice Age," those tentpoles went out on many more 2-D screens, so a smaller portion of their screens were 3-D. "For major studio titles, the 2-D screens are performing better" says Jones.

As the Times observed, comparisons are difficult because most numbers compare per-theater averages, and some theaters have both 2-D and 3-D screens. Even per-screen averages can be misleading because in some multiplexes the bigger screens were converted to 3-D first.

Netflix revenue up 20% as rentals boom in the recession!

2009-07-27T07:52:00.000-07:00

Good information! I don't think this is any indication that our business is recession prof - distribution companies always seems to win in the end.

Apparently it's better to rent than it is to own. At least when it comes to DVDs.

Netflix, the DVD-by-mail subscription company, saw revenue surge 21% in the second quarter that ended June 30 to $408.5 million, it said today. Net income was $32.4 million, up 22% from the same period a year ago.

Netflix added 289,000 new net subscribers, bringing its total to 10.6 million. In the same quarter last year, it added 168,000.

Revenue growth and subscriber additions were both on the upper end of the company's previous forecast, while net income exceeded the guidance it provided when reporting first quarter earnings.

Netflix's strong performance during the recession mirrors an overall industry trend that has seen movie rentals rising and purchases falling during the recession. Last week the Digital Entertainment Group, a home entertainment trade organization, reported that rental revenue rose 8.3% in the first six months of the years, while DVD sales were down 13.5%.

The company also raised its business forecast for the full year. It's now predicting it will reach between 11.6 million and 12 million subscribers by Dec. 31. It said revenue will be between $1.65 billion and $1.67 billion and net income will be $99 million to $109 million.

In initial after-hours trading, Netflix stock rose 4% on the positive news. Shares closed at $46.46 before earnings were announced, up 55% for the year.

Two visions of 3-D's success - L.A. times cite decline in business, others disagree

2009-07-26T20:10:00.000-07:00

Hello,

I have been following a few articles on 2D and 3D trying to get an idea if it is viable for an indie horror program to go 3D. Any thoughts would be most welcome: JL@jeanlucm.com

Happy Sunday,

Jean-Luc Martin
Producer, Line-Producer, UPM

There was quite a bit of buzz in the 3-D community over a recent L.A. Times blog post suggesting that auds' interest in the format was already declining. The piece cited strong numbers for 3-D at the start of 2009 and a steady decline to "Up" and "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs."

But the figures struck many observers as incongruous, since 3-D screens continue to outperform 2-D screens, and independent research from Screen Digest and USC's Entertainment Technology Center show strong audience enthusiasm for 3-D.

ETC's surveys show the more viewers see of this generation of 3-D, the more they say they like it and the more eager they are to see more.

Screen Digest analyst Charlotte Jones, who has been tracking the perf of 3-D screens, says the pub's numbers show 3-D screens still performing very strongly, selling 1½ to 2 times the number of tickets that 2-D screens do for the same title.

"There's no significant deterioration in per-screen 3-D to 2-D ratio," says Jones. "(3-D) performance on a per-screen basis is coming in much higher (now) than for 'Coraline.' "

Part of the disagreement arises because the Times started counting, somewhat arbitrarily, at the beginning of 2009. The first 3-D release of the year was "My Bloody Valentine 3-D," which was marketed aggressively as a 3-D event and had by far the biggest 3-D overperformance of any film so far. So the rest of 2009's films naturally show a dropoff.

Previous 3-D releases from "Chicken Little" to "Journey to the Center of the Earth" behaved consistently, and were more like "Coraline" than "Valentine."
As for "Monsters vs. Aliens," "Up" and "Ice Age," those tentpoles went out on many more 2-D screens, so a smaller portion of their screens were 3-D. "For major studio titles, the 2-D screens are performing better" says Jones.

As the Times observed, comparisons are difficult because most numbers compare per-theater averages, and some theaters have both 2-D and 3-D screens. Even per-screen averages can be misleading because in some multiplexes the bigger screens were converted to 3-D first.

New era of 3-D begins at Comic-Con

2009-07-25T10:40:00.000-07:00

Hello All,

Trying to decide what the audiance will want when it comes to a 3D horror film. I remember meeting with a company 5 years ago who made the 1st 5 minutes of Star Wars in 3D and it was amazing! Is it financially viable for an indie horror film to go 3D?

Jean-Luc Martin

Producer, Line-Producer, UPM

Zemeckis, Burton, Bailey, Lisberger join panel

San Diego Comic-Con 2009 blasted into high gear Thursday morning with its first-ever 3-D panel that included Robert Zemeckis ("A Christmas Carol"), Tim Burton ("Alice in Wonderland") and Sean Bailey and Steve Lisberger, the producer and writer of "Tron 2.0."

To kick things off, moderator Patton Oswalt introduced Robert Zemeckis - the biggest name behind performance-capture technology - to talk about 3D and his new performance capture venturen A Christmas Carol. When asked by Oswalt why he was diving into the world of 3D, Zemeckis declared that "3D is the future... it's an immersive way to see movies." He also said performance-capture technology freed him from the rules of live-action films.

Zemeckis then presented the first footage from "A Christmas Carol." A visually impressive crowd-pleaser, it seemed somewhat slow paced in its first few minutes.

Burton, who received rousing applause upon his arrival, was affable and seemed very much at home with the full house of Comic-Con fans. Unfortunately, the "for Comic-Con only" footage was essentially the same "Alice in Wonderland" trailer posted to IGN yesterday, only set to a popular MGMT track. Oswalt even seemed to be left wanting more, asking Burton, "Is that it?".

Nonetheless, Oswalt then begged to play the trailer again, and again, for a total of three plays. When Oswalt again asked if that was indeed all Burton brought with him, Burton nearly brought the house down by bringing out his Mad Hatter, Johnny Depp. While only a brief cameo, it proved enough for a salivating Comic-con crowd

Finally, the cast and crew for "Tron" were introduced along with an appearance by the original Tron, Jeff Bridges, and Olivia Wilde. While the only new filmed footage was in 2D, the cast and crew spent most of their time showing new concept images from the film as well has reminiscing about the "Tron" of 27 yrs ago.

Steve Lisberger, who also worked on the original Tron, declared to the new generation of fans, "You made cyberspace real."

And with that, the panel ended and a new era of 3D films began. Let the buzz begin.