CIMM Fest’s Carmine Cervi does a scene

Pay your Cast & Crew!

Consolidation

LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, Slideshare, Blog, HootSuite, various websites and more. It’s time to begin rounding up everything in one place and develop a consistent message and brand. I am toying with the idea of a VLOG in 2015.

Anita Garibaldi – the Early Years

Anita was married off at age fourteen to a drunkard who physically abused her.

When she met Giuseppe Garibaldi she simply left her husband and joined Garibaldi on his ship, the Rio Pardo, and became his common-law wife.It was the first time she was ever at sea and she quickly became an able-bodied seaman and a fierce sword fighter. Legend has it that, at the point of her sword, she forced cowardly shipmates to fight.

I am anything, at any time, as the need arises – I am the Producer

“I don’t want the world to know, I don’t want my heart to show, Two faces have I…”

– Songwriters: Twyla Herbert, Lou Christie

I have a vocation and an avocation. Both, equally important. My vocation puts food on the table, a roof over my head and allows me to purchase goods and services to support a lifestyle. It also allows me to pursue my avocation (the creation of a feature film) by supplying a meager cash-flow and credit to finance the entire endeavor. I disagree, however, with the dictionary definition of avocation; a subordinate occupation pursued in addition to one’s vocation, as it is actually the driving force behind my ‘job’.

There are two “me’s”. They have blended into one and they feed off of each other. These two business development professionals work in tandem to achieve success. In fact, the skills I apply to producing a film supplant the 38 years of learned and acquired skills I’ve brought to my job as a marketer and a biz-dev consultant.

It isn’t easy. And I’ve been working 14-16 hour days for the past five years. But when things get rough, and a set-back or challenge slaps me down, I just turn the other cheek.

The Pre-Game Show

In five days, we are launching Phase II of the fundraising for our film – Anita. This initiative is being done through a Crowdsourcing/Crowdfunding campaign. I have hired a group of global professionals. The project itself is being spearheaded by Producer of Marketing & Distribution,  Brian Briskey of PMD Partners out of Austin, Texas. Coordinating with him is Social Strategy consultant,  Naomi Assraf from San Francisco. The Social Media ground troops consist of Mary Losey as Social Media manager, Cristiana Neves-Miller our Portuguese/Spanish Soc. Media expert and, long-time team-member and marketing professional, Jessica Orlandino spearheading the Italian online reach out

A Producer’s lot is not a happy one!

When a Producer’s not engaged in his employment
Or maturing his fiduciary plans.
His capacity for innocent enjoyment,
Is just as great as any honest man’s
Our feelings we with difficulty smother
When fundraising duty’s to be done:
Ah, take one consideration with another,
A Producer’s lot is not a happy one!

When the enterprising actress isn’t crying,
When her agent isn’t occupied in crime,
He loves to hear the little brook a-gurgling,
And listen to the merry village chime.
When the coster’s finished jumping on his mother,
He loves to lie a-basking in the sun:
Ah, take one consideration with another,
The Producer’s’s lot is not a happy one!

(and tip o’ the hat to Gilbert and Sullivan)

On every movie I’ve done as a director, I look at the producers and having done it, I don’t envy them, at all.
– Griffin Dunne

The More You Know….

…the more you know.

Knowledge is power. All Producers know that the key to getting a film made is getting it financed. So, I have been diligently learning the business of finance. A while back, I left the creative (fun) part of filmmaking to the writers, directors, cinematographers, designers, artists, cast and crew. The numbers-oriented, black & white, Excel™ spreadsheet driven part of the process is quickly becoming my domain.

Learning high-end, seven-figure finance is not an easy task. Small steps…first a fundamental foundation – Murray Rothbard’s Man, Economy & State, then on to Nicole Gravagna’s Venture Capital for Dummies and graduating to Kay Hofmann’s text book Co-Financing Film Productions. As I bang the doors of Venture Capitalists and Private Equity investors alike, I will continue to learn this end of the business. There are no less than 240 books and articles  from film finance experts that lie ahead, ranging from Ackerberg to Zufryden.

I hope I get this funded before Mr. Z.

Swept Up In The Hype Machine

 

Hype is the awkward and desperate attempt to convince journalists that what you’ve made is worth the misery of having to review it.  –  Federico Fellini 

P & A. Prints and Advertising. In the digital age the ‘P’ has become less important than the ‘A’. As an advertising professional, I am not immune to the veiled attempts of many film marketers to inject interest in the back story when the story quality of the movie itself is questionable. What relevance does the director/writer/producer’s sexual confusion, suicidal tendencies or high school traumas have to do with the watchability of film they’ve created? Does the director’s near fatal car accident while on the set make the film itself more interesting? The film industry is going through a tumultuous time. Movie attendance is dwindling, DVD’s are going the way of 8-track tapes and promoting 100 million dollar bombs may finally cause us to shrug and pull our collective marketing heads out of the clouds (or another less pleasant area) and re-focus on providing audiences with good movies built around even better stories. Nothing beats word of mouth.

Fine Tuning

We are now focused on raising our complete production budget by the end of July this year. This is it. No more delays. No more wasted “investor events” where checks are promised but the supposed investors never come through. In short, no more time wasting.  We are carefully calibrating and re-examining every dollar that is allotted to our budget numbers. In addition to this we are re-evaluating our connection to patrons of and donors/investors to costly artistic endeavors (opera, ballet, theater).

It appears these folks are more inclined to donate large amounts to these endeavors but not to a commercial project. even though we do have one of the very top theatre directors (Rick Snyder) joined with one of the up and coming, visionary cinematographers (Giulio Pietromarchi).

It’s kinda like a whole Orson Welles thing all over again…..Go figure.

I’ve completed over 12 marathons.

I’ll get there.