Trends + Analysis = Profit

In my book Producing for Profit: A Practical Guide to Making Independent and Studio Films, I use the acronym TAP to illustrate how we may tap into the marketplace: Trend + Analysis = Profit. We have talked about trends extensively in previous chapters, and that analysis has two components: a creative component and a financial component. If we understand what the market desires are based on salable trends and what creative elements of story, genre, and any unique salable elements for the majority of the major territories are, the next step is to develop a script or a screenplay that incorporates those market desires.

Next, as outlined previously, we assess the market value of the trend we intend to develop a screenplay for and write with a realistic budget in mind so that it can be produced for substantially less than market value, thus ensuring a profit. If there is no realistic expectation of an ingoing profit, which incentivizes the buyers and distributors to risk their investment in releasing a film, then those movies will not be made. As I have often said, out of necessity in today’s world, we no longer “budget scripts” but rather we “script budgets.” Again, through our due diligence in the global marketplace, we determine the market value for the picture we are attempting to develop. Remember that the market value should be based on the worst case value of the proposed film, not the most optimistic. Remember also that out of worldwide gross proceeds, there are sales agency commissions and market fees and expenses that must be calculated and deducted from the worst-case market value, as well as residuals, finance and legal costs, and a margin for error or market fluctuation. The ultimate production budget of the film should be approximately 50–60% of the worst-case market value to insure a margin for profit, so budgetary considerations as the screenplay is developed must always be kept in mind.

The non-commercial films I have made, which were exceptions to the rule, were able to be financed because they were pet projects of movie stars and the star value superseded the general rule of commercial trends. Also, they were made cost-effectively within a financial analysis of the market value of the movie stars in the “wrong” project. They were able to be produced for budgets that were far less than a normal studio film budget, so I could pre-sell them in the marketplace and produce them for less than market value, so there was no financial risk. Under my paradigm, these were essentially the wrong scripts and the wrong films, but the right budgets and star names transcended what otherwise were films that would never have been made.

The Necessity of Developing Screenplays

Finding an existing script that just happens to meet all of the current market criteria, which may have different components for multiple different territories, is like finding a needle in a haystack. If one has done proper due diligence in the marketplace, identified the desired trend to be developed, and determined the specific components in key territories that need to be incorporated, as well as what the budgetary constraints of that trend are, finding an existing script that contains all of those specific elements is slim to none. These specific components must be incorporated into both the screenplay and the film as they are vital to territorial sales, and the sales in key territories ultimately dictate whether or not the script gets purchased and the film gets financed and produced. Keep in mind that as an informed writer, you may not only have budgetary restrictions, which will limit speaking roles, locations and production capabilities, but you also have the obligation to organically integrate the known factors that the key territories want, and possibly a second level of sell, into the script while staying genre specific.

Key Territories and Associated Challenges

Japan is a key international territory and is very mercurial in its tastes. A film that is appealing to the Japanese market is almost always a sale for a lucrative amount of money. Conversely, a film that may be appealing everywhere else in the world may have no appeal in the Japanese market and could have zero value and never be sold in Japan. In my years of doing due diligence and trying to discern what specifically was appealing to the Japanese, and what would result in a sale or pre-sale to a distributor, even the head buyers from major Japanese film corporations were often not able to articulate what distinctive elements, genre, or type of film would result in Japanese interest and ultimately a sale. If there’s one thing I learned about doing due diligence, it is that one must be tenacious and persistent, specifically in the case of trying to get a Japanese buyer to convey what specific creative components may result in a sale. I elected to make “no” the beginning of the conversation and continued to ask questions in order to gather more information, which helped me “crack the code” and to identify what was appealing to this very mercurial market.

Second Level of Sell

Unless a film is a big-budgeted studio film with box office success and marketing visibility in the U.S., dramas and most comedies prove to be difficult sales in the Japanese market, as are black and white films, westerns, period pieces, and musicals. Some action films were appealing in Japan and others were not, and I finally realized that it often wasn’t the action, per se, that was so appealing to the Japanese market, but it was what I call the second level of sell. After repeatedly questioning and basically interrogating my buyers, I ultimately identified that they at times would buy movies that had a submarine or an aircraft carrier, an F-14 Tomcat, a stealth fighter, an Apache helicopter, a nuclear reactor, or a tangible science fiction element, but often not a routine action film. These second levels of sell, in this case a technological or science fiction element, or a cool piece of military hardware, were eye candy that could be featured prominently on the poster, flyer, and DVD box, and were often what was appealing to the Japanese market. The buyers were not specifically cognizant enough to be able to articulate that if a movie contained a technological element featured prominently in the script and the artwork, they would buy and often pre-buy it.

Know Before You Write

By example, for my military hardware films, which provide built-in second levels of sell, I learned that I had better know before commencing development of a script that I had access to either stock footage of the military ships, planes, tanks, or other hardware that I was intending to feature in the film, or a resource to actually film new footage with what I was promising the buyers.

Understanding Territorial Desires and Why

Another of the largest most lucrative territories is Germany and the German-speaking territories. Whether or not they have any level of theatrical release in the territory, German buyers are looking for scripts and movies that can play on primetime television. Primetime revenues are vastly more lucrative than late night license fees from the TV networks in Germany, and are ever more important with the steady decline of DVD revenues over the past decade. Contrary to what most American writers and filmmakers think, German distributors for the aforementioned reason invariably do not want films that are gratuitously violent, bloody, or gory because they will receive a restricted TV rating and not be aired during primetime. Again, no primetime television sale equals a loss of revenue for the distributor. If you have ever traveled to Germany and watched television there, you can see that Germans are more liberal with sexual content and nudity on network television channels compared to American audiences. However, they are vastly opposed to films that contain excess blood and gore and gratuitous violence.

During my due diligence with almost all German buyers the mantra was “action without violence.” This understanding was essential to impart not only to the screenwriters that I was employing at the time, but also my directors and editors. My interpretation of action without violence was an exciting martial arts sequence without seeing needless blood, neck snaps, or bones breaking. In the case of action with guns, shoot outs, or explosions, they were filmed without superfluous slow motion shots with blood spurting, or squib hits, with blood bags accentuating bullet hits with blood spatter. (Squibs are miniature explosive devices that are connected to a remote electronic trigger and are detonated by a licensed special effects person. In this example, they are often placed on an actor’s body, with a protective plate between the small explosive charge and the skin, and usually with a blood bag that will blow up as the charge is ignited, thus showing a hole in clothing surrounded by blood, which simulates in a continuous take the entry wound caused by a bullet.)

To achieve action scenes without “violence,” this meant choreographing fight scenes and martial arts action scenes in ways that would highlight the action beats but de-emphasize the elements that were unacceptable for Germany. With action scenes involving guns, from a production standpoint it was also cheaper, easier, and less time consuming to film actors being shot and have them spin away from camera, so that the audience would not miss where the bullet hole or blood would logically be. It’s the cinematic difference between killing and carnage. This also eliminated the necessity for a special effects crew and associated costs for squib hits, as well as the time it takes to prepare for each take. Germany also often wanted an element of human drama, which was an additional emotional layer, usually a subplot, supporting the action film genre, which I always imparted to my screenwriters.

At the time, Korea was a very lucrative sale if the script and film contained hand-to-hand marital arts. So accordingly, I incorporated martial arts sequences whenever logically feasible in my action scripts, and my fight choreographers were instructed to stage fight scenes and martial arts action scenes in ways that would accentuate the action beats but deemphasize the elements that were unacceptable for Germany, while still giving the Koreans what they wanted.

Genre Beats and Running Times

The rest of the market wanted big production value for independent movie prices, exciting action, and seven to ten good solid action beats. I translated this to my writers, and when developing an action script, I instructed them to include a good sustainable action beat or sequence approximately every ten pages. In the independent film world, buyers and distributors almost all want movies with running times between ninety and ninety-six minutes, often including end credits, which generally run between three and four minutes, and running times are contractual delivery requirements. With the limited financial resources that independent films are constrained with, independent film scripts should be between 90 and 95 pages, not 110–120 pages. Days of production are the greatest expense, and shooting footage that will ultimately not be in the finished picture that has a running time restriction as an essential component for delivery of the finished film is a waste of the writer’s time, a waste of the production’s time and money, and gives the director and actors less time to focus on the scenes that will actually be in the film to make them as good as they can possibly be.

An Example of Developing a Script Based on Market Desires

Having done this countless times, I’ll recount a specific example from a film I developed, sold, financed, and produced, which incorporates all of the elements that I discovered through my due diligence/market research and specifically the desires of Germany, Korea, and Japan. At the time of this particular example, the U.S. home entertainment distributors wanted a couple of recognizable names that they could promote on the DVD box and in the trailer. The international market also desired to have a couple of name actors to boost the awareness of the picture and its interest to the consumer. Japan wanted a second level of sell, Korea wanted hand-to-hand martial arts, and Germany wanted action without violence and a human drama element. Taking all of the above territorial buyers’ desires into account, how would you as a writer, go about taking this invaluable information and writing a story and a screenplay to fulfill the criteria as outlined above?

Based on my market research, a large-scale military hardware action film was the most desirable and lucrative trend, if it could be produced for a budget that would be covered by the sales to Germany, Japan, Korea, and the U.S. If I could pull this off, the rest of the world would be profit. For the story I was formulating in my head, I decided that I wanted to go through the approval process with the Department of Defense (DOD), so that if I adhered to their guidelines while developing the screenplay, I would have carte blanche to shoot on military bases and to film military maneuvers for free!

A Catchy Title

Some years ago, in watching TV news featuring the Desert Storm conflict and subsequently the Afghan and Iraq conflicts, I kept hearing a repeated term: surface to air missiles. I latched on to the words “surface to air” as the title for a story and set about incorporating all of the above desired elements for maximum global appeal and sales possibilities. Knowing that I needed a second level of sell for Japan, I decided to find some type of tangible military hardware. For the purposes of my script, I broadened the scope of “surface to air,” took creative license, and defined “surface” as U.S. Marine military operations that fight on the ground with tanks and ground warfare military hardware. For “air,” I chose U.S. Navy aircraft carrier operations and carrier-based F-14 Tomcats, which fly missions and fight aerial battles in support of the Marine ground forces. Tanks, aircraft carriers, and F-14s were all tangible second levels of sell, which delighted the Japanese.

Since I had two separate divisions of the armed services, I decided to create two focal characters: brothers who had a past history of conflict. This satisfied the human drama element for Germany. I chose to make the older brother a Marine, who was assigned to a ground operations mission, and to make his younger brother a Navy pilot, flying an F-14 Tomcat stationed on an aircraft carrier in support of the forces engaged in a Middle Eastern conflict. Aerial battles were exciting and great action without violence which thrilled the Germans. The Marines on the surface gave me the liberty to incorporate a number of hand-to-hand martial arts fight sequences to satisfy Korea.

Working With the Department of Defense

I approached the Department of Defense with my story and, with some minor alterations, they approved it. The DOD enumerated specific criteria, some of which was to be incorporated and some of which was to be avoided, in order to get final script approval and full DOD support during production. I then hired a writer to write the screenplay based on my approved story and to include the criteria imposed by the DOD. Throughout the development process, the writer’s job was to collaborate with the DOD and incorporate, eliminate, or mitigate whatever the DOD dictated, in order for me to receive a final approval of the shooting script. DOD approval promised us access to Marine infantry division maneuvers at Camp Pendleton in San Diego, as well as shooting on an active U.S. naval base, on an aircraft carrier, both interior with its high-tech control rooms, and on the exterior with airplanes and helicopters taking off and landing. This was vast and invaluable production value and with DOD approval was completely free of charge!

The script was ultimately approved, I made the movie, and buyers and distributors made a profit. I hired both the director and writer again, since they understood and complied with the creative process based on both market research, which allowed the picture to be sold and financed, and the DOD requirements, which elevated the level of production value immeasurably.

Development Recap

To recap, during a specific snapshot in time, I identified the desired components of a story that would insure sales to major territories, which would provide the bulk of the financing for a specific trend of film, before I wrote the story and developed the screenplay.

I needed a second level of sell, which we’ve defined in this instance as military hardware and a tangible high-tech element, in order to sell the Japanese market. As established, I needed a sustainable action beat or action sequence approximately every ten pages and hand-to-hand martial arts sequences in order to sell Korea. I needed to incorporate a human drama element and “action without gratuitous violence, blood, or gore” in order to sell to German-speaking territories. I needed a couple of home entertainment name actors for the U.S. market. Finally, before settling on the arena for the story and the specific military hardware to be incorporated into the story and screenplay, I needed to be certain that I either had access to existing footage of the elements we were promising to the buyers and consumers (in this case tanks, aircraft carrier, and military aircraft taking off, landing, and in flight) or the ability, within our budgetary constraints, to film new footage.

In the case of existing, or “stock footage,” one must first find existing footage of the desired second level of sell element, then make sure that it is available for global, all-rights licensing within budgetary constraints, then write sequences around the acquired footage. In this case, the only other option to be able to film new footage of tanks, aircraft carrier, and military aircraft was to go through the submission process to the Department of Defense (DOD) and develop the script under their meticulously scrutinized guidelines.

The Creative Challenge

Before embarking on writing this book, my publisher solicited peer reviews and professional opinions about the validity of my paradigm for screenwriters, and almost all were extremely positive. However, a particular peer reviewer opined that my model, provided in the initial book outline submission, “shows a lack of understanding and respect for how writers come up with their stories, and that having a passion for your genre and story is essential for good writing. His premise to following the global marketplace leads writers down the wrong road. He states that screenwriters need to know how the business side works to sell their work, but he seems to have no understanding or caring about the writer’s perspective, which may potentially turn readers away.” This point of view is naïve and I, as well as most professionals who actually understand how movies are made, could not disagree more.

If you are trying to please buyers from several territories around the world, you will most certainly have specific criteria that you need to meet. Is a writing assignment not creative? Does the DOD’s involvement and guidelines make the writing process non-creative? Of course it doesn’t. Screenwriting as a career is a constantly collaborative process with much greater creativity needed to satisfy the many factions that determine whether or not a script gets read, much less made. Being self-indulgently “creative” and writing the wrong spec script will almost always result in your film never getting get made.

Writer Wannabes vs. Career Professionals

In my book Producing for Profit: A Practical Guide to Making Independent and Studio Films, I categorize people in the motion picture industry either as employees, wannabes, or independent entrepreneurs. Most professional writers are employees who are given assignments. They are given the subject matter, given the genre or tone, given budgetary restrictions, given the parameters required to fulfill the writing assignment successfully, and given a paycheck.

Writers who aspire to a professional career are aware of the global marketplace, stay abreast of current trends, subjects, genres, or arenas that are predicted to be trending in the near future, as well as trends that are waning and will be out of vogue by the time a film may be made and delivered, so that they don’t waste months of their lives writing a screenplay that in no way resonates with the desires of the current marketplace.

Writers who are wannabes either out of naiveté, or stubborn disregard for how the business really works, and insist that they know better than the market, waste their time writing material that the likelihood of anyone other than friends and family reading is slim to none, much less anyone ever making their script into a film. Just because a writer thinks something is a good idea in no way means that it is salable or marketable.

In my on-camera film school series, “Foolproof Film School” (available at andrewstevens.info), a venerable writer, producer, and director was quoted as saying, “I don’t make cakes that I want to eat. I make cakes that other people want to eat. I have very eclectic tastes, so cakes that I want to eat would never sell.” He also went on to say that if you want to write as an exercise, write anything that you might dream up or conceive of, but if you want to write as a career, write for the marketplace that actually gives you an opportunity to have your script made into a film. Isn’t that our collective goal as screenwriters?

There are many wannabes, which I describe as people running around pitching scripts that there is no market for: the wrong story, the wrong script, for the wrong budget, and that no one is ever going to finance or produce, and producers roll their eyes at the start of the pitch. This is not the writer that I imagine any of us want to be. If you aspire to make screenwriting an occupation, you must write stories and scripts that the marketplace has a desire for.

Anomalies

Somehow there are always anomalies and labors of love that people are able to get made and don’t care if they are a financial disaster and never make a penny. Most people go their entire life trying to get a script made into a movie and never succeed. Why is this? Because they are either uninformed or they choose to ignore all of the reasons and realities that we’ve covered up to this point. If the goal is to write scripts that actually have a shot at getting made into motion pictures, a screenwriter with no knowledge or expertise as to what constitutes a commercial and salable film in both the foreign and domestic marketplace, as well as what the current market value realities are, is with rare exception destined for failure before he even starts writing.

Buyer and Sellers: Screenwriters Are Sellers

The above-mentioned naysayer-reviewer challenged that within my paradigm, there is a “false logic” that having the “right” genre or screenplay will make a box office success. The false logic is that the naysayer does not understand that over 95% of scripts that are made into movies do not have major theatrical releases and thus box office is moot and nonexistent.

If you are an accomplished writer with an agent who has access to all the studio and network development executives, who can submit your material and follow up and be the squeaky wheel with the executives to pressure them to actually read it, then you potentially have a shot of someone kicking it up the ladder and, if it is in the realm of what the studio is looking for, then possibly optioning or buying your spec script.

If you are like 99% of the rest of the aspiring writers in the world, and do not have resources and connections with studios, and you would actually like to get your script read and made into a film, then I firmly believe that everything that I am outlining and teaching in this book is essential. The naysayer culminates his assessment by saying, “Both writers and buyers of scripts need to respect what each other brings to the table; this [my] proposal fails to do this by showing a lack of understanding and disregard for the creative process.”

In my decades of professional experience, I contend that there are two types of people in the world: buyers and sellers, and unless the seller has something of great perceived value, or has cornered the market on a desired commodity, the buyer invariably has the power . If a writer’s script is nowhere remotely in the ballpark of what is salable in the marketplace, there are no buyers to respect or disrespect.

The Creative Process in the Real World

In any industry that produces or manufactures and markets a product, and films are global import/export product, considerable due diligence and market research is done before the product is made, in order to pre-determine that there is a consumer market for the end result. For example, the automobile industry does not just greenlight the production of a random vehicle because a creative artist thought his or her concept might be a good idea. Rather, they perform intensive market research on public consumer tastes and trends, as well as what is currently selling successfully and what consumer requests for future product may be, prior to hiring an automotive designer (analogous to the screenwriter) to design the car. After market research, if the artistic conception has no market appeal, or can’t be produced for a price point that pre-determines a profit, the automotive company will not even proceed to the design phase, much less the production phase.

In the real estate industry for instance, residential builders who build houses for a profit margin hire trained professionals in the form of real estate agents to do due diligence on their behalf and give them current market advice. The agent knows the marketplace, what the desirable trends are, what creative components constitute those trends, what comparable sales prices and market values are, as well as what the recent fluctuations in the marketplace have been. In almost any business imaginable, market research and due diligence occurs prior to moving to the design phase, and in the real estate industry, prior to hiring an architect (once more analogously the writer). After the agent advises the builder, the builder hires an architect to design plans that meet the specifications that are most imminently salable in the targeted neighborhood.

Again, in almost every industry, the creative designer is given specific parameters by the company, producer, or manufacturer of what the market and consumer desires are before the creative designer is employed to embark on the creative plans for the product (which in the case of film is the screenplay). Does this make the automotive designer’s job less creative? Does this make the architect’s job not creative? Does this make the screen-writer’s task not creative? Of course it doesn’t! Once again, unless you have the time and the financial resources to allow yourself to write spec scripts that may or may not be read, and that will have a slim to no chance of ever getting made, treat your writing as a business rather than a hobby. My fervent opinion is that there is no more or less creativity in writing to incorporate multiple global salable elements into a screenplay that may actually be produced, than there is to write from a whim that you may think is a good idea. I’ve made over 175 movies because I chose to make filmmaking a career and treated my artistic endeavors as a business and not a frivolous pastime.

There is vast creativity in making your script artistically organic, unique, compelling, and infused with strong, well-rounded characters and outof-the-ordinary character arcs, crisp dialogue, intriguing plot structure, surprising plot twists, climax, and resolution, all while incorporating the elements that market research has shown will give you a likelihood of success. If an architect, on spec, dreams up and creates house plans that are far more expensive to build than any property that has ever sold in the target neighborhood, it is almost certain that those plans will never be sold nor will the house be built. The same goes for concept cars or technology prototypes or apparel design. If there is not enough market desire for any of those diverse products or any others, they will not be manufactured or greenlit for production. Screenplays for films, with the occasional exception to the rule, are no different.

The Cognizant Writer

If we followed the contentions of the naysayer, in the case of “Surface to Air,” his logic would assert that it “infringes on the writer’s creative process” to have the international and domestic buyers and the Department of Defense involved giving story and screenplay guidelines and notes. Without the buyers, there would have been no film, without the DOD there would be no production value of such vast scope, within budgetary constraints, which the DOD approval provided, and there would have been no screenplay, and there would have been no writer to be paid to write it. Again, the creative process of a cognizant screenwriter is to creatively incorporate the elements that are being thrown at you, just like pieces to a picture puzzle, and turn them into an organic, compelling, and sustainable story and script.

As we all know, writing takes tenacity, work ethic, and tremendous discipline. I suggest creating a realistic schedule that you can adhere to and commit your ideas first into a story treatment, then into outline, and then into a screenplay. Conceive your story idea based on your due diligence in the marketplace, the trend that you’ve identified, your creative analysis of how to hit all the notes that you’ve identified in major territories that will be essential sales for the financing of the film, and how to translate those elements into a story and screenplay that is commercially viable in both the foreign and domestic markets.