How Do I Get My Film Made?

When you tell people that you are in the industry sooner or later, someone is going to say this to you. “I have a great idea. How do I get it made?” What I tell people is both encouraging and discouraging and that is “Anybody can do it.” Furthermore, you don’t need to convince hundreds of people of the greatness of your idea. Nor do you need to go to film school or have any special education. You only need to convince an audience of one that your idea is terrific.

But that’s when it gets tricky – that one person has to be able to write a cheque and sometimes it takes years, if ever to find him/her. But if you do and you can get that first person to sign on, it becomes easier.

I’ll use myself as a case history. I was a fulltime composer in film and television in the mid-1990’s when I started thinking about making being involved in the entire filmmaking process. I had never taken a filmmaking course, never written any screenplays or proposals – actually I had hardly any writing experience at all because my Master’s thesis in Music was an original piece of music. But what I did have was this very strong feeling then as now that stories and characters involving the Chinese cultural diversity needed to be increased in North America because of well… The Changing Face.

So I started writing words, dramatic scripts and documentary ideas. (I still do that today.) It was rather painful but eventually I would up with a six part documentary series proposal idea on a history of the Chinese in Canada. I talked to all kinds of people about the idea and got lots of good feedback and kind support.
Armed with this knowledge that "the people" wanted this series made, I went to the NFB and CBC and Knowledge Network about this and had a meeting at then head of the BC Region for the CBC, John Kennedy. He liked me and what I was proposing and then said, “I’ll work with you on a one hour program, not a six part series.” More than that, he wrote a cheque and more than that, he offered his guidance for over a year on various drafts of the documentary proposal, “Beyond Golden Mountain.” He didn’t like what he was seeing but had the patience to work with me until I got something that he could support for production. Beyond Golden Mountain won or was nominated for several industry awards. It remains relevant today and CBC recently re-acquired the rights to broadcast it again.

Thank you John for being that “audience of one.” It took me hundreds of meetings, phone calls, presentations to all kinds of people but eventually I found that right “audience of one.” Interestingly, when I went in with my letters of support etc., he never wanted to see them. His attitude seemed to be, "I'm paid to make decisions and I will make decisions on how I best see fit."

The takeaway that I want everyone to have is that ideas, not education or background, is the lifeblood of the industry. The industry is more fragmented now and money is ever more competitive to get but if you can, find that “audience of one” who can help you achieve your idea. My late father was quite a successful life insurance salesman and his philosophy was, “If one person closes the door on you, knock on the next door. The law of averages dictates that sooner or later, someone will let you in.” At the same time, be flexible in modifying your dreams. Whoever writes that cheque is going to want to have input too.

Next week, Cam Hui comes back with another insightfully entertaining look at business and the arts.

Multiculturalism & Money

Is all this writing in this blog “ethnic navel-gazing” or is there another purpose other than allowing me (and select friends) to blow off steam about how unfair the “system” is?

Not.

I do what I do because of I feel that having visible minority representation in every part of society and media is vitally important, if we are to have a truly multicultural society. Now we can debate about the merits or demerits of multiculturalism but as it is still an official part of the Canadian identity, let’s make it real, I mean really real.

In order to do so, you have to go past the trappings of multiculturalism as pagodas and lions dances at Chinese New Year. In Asia, these are considered historical relics and even anachronisms, not at all reflective of life today. These are important and I have and continue to participate in these events but in North America, we are wrong in celebrating these as essential parts of being Asian contemporary culture.

Real multiculturalism is when the cultural identity is integrated into everyday life – we are not exotic people on display.

Why is this so important? It’s because multiculturalism is more than a way of creating jobs for a phalanx of bureaucrats as its critics often say. At its essence, multiculturalism is a redefinition of what we know contemporary society to be. And you can’t pin it down because culture is living, breathing and always changing.

Many dread the word “multiculturalism” the same way we dread a flu shot because we’re given the same reason for either’s existence - “ you may not like it but it’s good for us.” It may be but the real reason we need to take cultural diversity seriously is money. Done with the proper approach and understanding, there is a huge amount of gold to be mined from understanding how different cultures can work together. Where it counts is the “real world,” where money is earned the hard way – getting customers through the door.

How do I know this to be true? As a filmmaker, I’ve made several trips to Hong Kong and China in the last few years and one thing I continually hear from Chinese producers is, “How can we internationalize our product?” From North Americans, the question is, “How can I crack the Asian market?”

These simple questions are actually quite profound and remind me of Rudyard Kipling’s poem where he writes, “East is East and West is West but never the twain shall meet.” Please forgive me for contradicting the 1907 Nobel Laureate in Literature but the “twain are meeting” and the issue is not “if” but “how?”

This is a question that I’ve been exploring with a few colleagues who have had experiences in making films in Asia and in North America with Asian themes. We are convinced that a new paradigm of filmmaking is emerging and in short order, we’ll be outlining how this is not just cultural mishmash but a solid and most necessary business opportunity.

Multiculturalism is more than dinner, dance and drama. If we can get past the notion that multiculturalism is some government-inflicted concept that has been inflicted upon the populace, we will understand what it truly is.

Multiculturalism is the future of the world or to be crass and commercial, it is about money.

I don't want to live forever

Another guest post from Cam Hui:


I see that they’ve released a re-make of Fame, the musical from 1980 that follows the lives of a group of students at the New York Academy of Performing Arts. The lyrics of that title song of the film were “I'm gonna live forever/I'm gonna learn how to fly…”





Just as medical schools don’t teach doctors how to run a medical practice, film schools don’t teach filmmakers how to run a film business. Like many artists before them, they fall into the trap of wanting to live forever – and they fail in the business.

If I were in the business, I wouldn’t want to live forever. I would want to practice my art and at the same time make a business of it.


Creativity + Robust business model = Success
Filmmaking is a creative business, but it's still a business. You need the combination of vision, creativity, a competitive advantage and the right business model to be successful. The success of the Star Wars franchise was a combination of good storytelling and the taking advantage of computer animation techniques which were coming in use at the time. By contrast, the film Tron, which was made in the same era, failed because it was all special effects and no story.

On the other hand, the lack of a robust business model has also made many film ventures disappear, never to be heard from again. Disney or MGM can make flops, but proper risk controls are in place so that any single flop doesn't render the studio insolvent.

I have found that finding the right framework for analysis makes a problem simple. Otherwise, excuses of “nobody knows anything” become a crutch for failure, a cop-out.


Be formulaic in business, but not creatively
While the expression of “nobody knows anything” is applicable to the creative process, it is not applicable to the creation and implementation of a business model. This is not a prescription to be formulaic in your creative endeavours, but to be formulaic in your business ones.

The trick is, of course, is to find the right framework for a business model. Here is one that I would suggest that I believe could be adapted to the filmmaking world. In my previous life as a fund manager, pension fund sponsors evaluated investment managers based on the 5Ps:

Philosophy: Where do you believe the opportunity lies?
Process: How are you going to capitalize on that opportunity?
People: What skills in your organization do you need to implement the Process?
Portfolio: Does your portfolio reflect what you say about your Philosophy and Process?
Performance: What is your track record?

In practice the last two Ps can be ignored. Many filmmakers have little or no track record, but that doesn’t have to be an impediment. Moreover, past performance is not reflective of future returns.

It is therefore important to focus on the first three Ps. In a future post, I will consider the case study of a well-respected independent production company was grounded in the 3Ps that was able to achieve some modicum of financial success. In process, they were able to “live forever.”

History made Alive

Thanks to Cam Hui who gave a financial potential overview of what Asian in North America means. I’ve had people ask for more and Cam will be back next week with another great insight.

Today, I’m going to personalize the history of one of Chinese Canadiana’s darkest eras.

Live History
I was in Toronto last week where I was chairing the meetings for the Chinese Canadian Advisory Committee to the Community Historical Recognition Program, which looks at proposals relating to the preservation of knowledge relating to Chinese Immigration Restrictions, more commonly known as the Head Tax. As I did so, I couldn’t help but think of my maternal great grandfather and paternal grandfather, both who paid the Head Tax so I, and all Canadians with a Chinese heritage, can be doing what we do today. This is part of my family story.

When my great-grandfather on my mom’s side came to Canada, he was a dirt poor peasant in rural China and North America was considered the “Golden Mountain” where everyone had a chance to “make it big.” Lots of his fellow peasants felt that way and they came to America with dreams in their hearts. Life was pretty damn tough here but despite incredible racism, this generation survived. They survived persecution, they survived lower wages but one thing they almost didn’t survive was the implementation of the “Head Tax” and subsequent “Chinese Immigration Act.”

Why did Canada put this in?

After the railway was built in the 1880’s, Chinese kept coming even though they weren’t needed so much so Canada instituted a “Head Tax” to all new Chinese immigrants, hoping to discourage them from coming. It started as $50, but the Chinese kept coming so they raised it to $100. Chinese still kept coming so they raised it to $500 but Chinese still kept coming. Only with the passing of the “Chinese Immigration Act” in 1923 (more commonly known as “The Exclusion Act) which forbade the immigration of any Chinese, including immediate family members, was immigration to Canada finally stopped. The Chinese are the only group that Canada inflicted this upon.

My great-grandfather managed to do quite well in Victoria, had land and children born here. However, the Exclusion Act caused problems for his kids. My grandfather was born in Canada but because there were so few women around, he had to go to China to get married. Because of the Exclusion Act, he couldn’t bring any of his family to Canada. He returned to Canada to work, returning to China every couple of years, long enough to sire another child. What this meant, is that my mother, who was the child of a man born in Canada, was not allowed to join her father until she was nineteen, after the Chinese Immigration Act was repealed in 1947. Had it not been for some 800 Chinese young men and women in WWII, who participated in Canada’s WWII efforts without rights of citizenship or franchise, she might never have been able to come.

Fast forward almost a hundred years. Well, the dirt poor peasants aren’t around any more and by and large, never achieved too much… but their children and their children’s children have. In fact, not only are we not worried about getting our daily bread, we are providing the jam and butter that that make a country important, worthwhile… we have gone past worrying about making a living. We have gone Beyond Golden Mountain.

In this new century, there has been a paradigm shift in how Chinese are viewed, not only by Canada, but the world. No longer will you find a sign on a restaurant door in Shanghai saying “No dogs or Chinese allowed,” but the doors to the world are open to all of us who are descendants of the Han.

It's still not an advantage to be Asian but "we've come a long way baby."

The promise of the New Golden Mountain

Today's guest blogger is Cam Hui. I've known Cam for over thirty years since the time he and my kid brother used to play Stock Ticker together. Cam went on to play real life Stock Ticker in Toronto, Boston and New York. I've been talking to him about how the world's changing dynamic represents a financial opportunity which he is in agreement with. His thoughts come from the hedge fund analyst side of him.

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A century ago, the Chinese looked across the Pacific and called it Golden Mountain – and they came. While the streets weren’t paved with gold, the Chinese and other Asians have largely settled in and succeeded in North America. In effect, they made a Golden Mountain of their own.

Canadian demographic studies are more difficult to obtain, but consider the following from the U.S. Census. Asians males are better educated than any other ethnic group in the United States:



Asians also earn more. The chart below shows that there are more Asian families with income more than $75,000 a year is more than any other ethnic group:



Making our own Golden Mountain
For marketers this has to be an enormously attractive demographic to focus on. Better educated, higher income – what would you pay per set of eyeballs compared to other ethnic demographics?

Consider how others have cashed in on ethnic demographics.

In 2000, Robert Johnson became the first US Black billionaire when he sold Black Entertainment Television (BET) to Viacom for US$4b. In 2006, Univision, the Hispanic media conglomerate, was sold for US$12.6b.



Admittedly, the Asian demographic in the United States is about only one-third the size of the Black or Hispanic population. Nevertheless, there is no home grown North American Asian focused media industry. But as an example of what is possible, Loblaws recently bought T&T Supermarkets for $225 million. The former is a well-established Canadian supermarket chain, while the latter is a chain of Asian focused supermarkets with 17 stores in Canada,

Any entertainment company that can create product that can penetrate this demographic will have created its own Golden Mountain.

In future posts, we will consider how to appeal to the Asian market and how to broaden appeal to the larger North American mainstream.

Media? Direction?

Over the years, I have had the wonderful opportunity to work with many of Canada’s government funded broadcasters and funding agencies. However, in the last while, a sad truth seems to be emerging and “showing Canada to Canadians” is not longer a priority. It breaks my heart to see “Jeopardy” on the CBC.

I must admit that I am terribly conflicted by government involvement in our media and cultural agencies. On one hand, I see their necessity – how else can we tell some of the important stories of our nation? But then when I see some of the things that are put on or exhibited and I ask myself, “Are we living in the same country?”
The Canada that I see everyday is a wonderfully diverse community of people with heritages from around the world. Toronto and Vancouver are fantastically diverse which not only adds to the flavour of the city, it is part of its essence. So why is Canadian film and television so white? For the life of me, why does it seem as if programs set in Vancouver seemed to have more American blacks in it than Asians? Aren’t the largest two visible minorities in Canada, the South Asian and Chinese?

But diversity issues aside, almost anybody you talk to about Canadian media will tell you that the system is broken and something should be done about it. Here are a couple of thoughts that might be an interesting entry to discussion.

1. We need to encourage private investment. The media industry is fraught with risk and we need to encourage those that are willing to participate in it. We had a system of tax breaks before but they were so seriously abused, that the investor who only saw the term “tax deduction” didn’t realize that there wasn’t a solid project to go along with the tax relief. I’m not suggesting we go back to this model but we should have some incentives to help build the indigenous private film industry. There are many potentially profitable stories that can be told by Canadians and we need some help to tell them. These films don’t need government investment but private investors should be given some encouragement for their risk.

2. For our public agencies, let’s figure out what we want to do. Right now, it seems that policy changes every couple of years which makes it impossible to achieve an identity. I suggest some kind of Public Inquiry that will look at where we feel we are going as a country and what we feel is important. Once we know what we want to do, then it is easier to figure out who is going to do it and how much it is going to cost. Now this group has to be made up by more than one political party because we can’t keep changing policy every time there’s a change of government. Nor should it made it up of artists/media types only. A non-partisan comprehensive look at what we hope to achieve.

Once these suggestions for private and public companies are determined, let’s give at least a ten year window so that there is time for implementation and stability.
Knowing the rules allows us to know how to play the game. The hard part for those of us that play the game is when the rules keep changing or even worse, it looks like there are no rules at all.

Next week I will be in Toronto for some meetings as I’m the government’s Chair, Chinese Canadian Advisory Committee to the CHRP. I’ve invited Cam Hui, a really bright money guy , to be a guest blogger.

Hollywood North?

Hollywood North. Sounds pretty glamorous and certainly Vancouver has many movie stars gracing our town. We also have a tremendous talent pool and wonderful production resources but I think we need to keep in mind the key reason people come to our fair town – money, or more importantly, saving money.

Between tax incentives, labour rebates and a lower Canadian dollar, we have been substantially cheaper to produce in than Los Angeles or New York. However with the rising Canadian dollar and other production centres becoming more competitive, work is no longer quite so easy to get . Moreover with many American productions, key creative, producing and acting jobs stay American so most of the activity in the film industry here is what is called “service work” – we serve to fulfill the vision of our primarily American clients.

This is a vital part of the industry but as this is so price sensitive, there is a need to develop sources of work that are not quite so cost dependent for survival.
One of these sources is to have a strong indigenous Canadian film and television industry where Canadians control the content, the finances and decision making.
The problem is that this is just darn hard to do. Many organizations and individuals have tried but in the end, there are few successful Vancouver-based companies and individuals that have sustained themselves on the long run at the international level. (There are more in Toronto because their water makes them a lot smarter there.)

Why is this? Well there are many reasons for this. I’ll tackle one reason now and others later.

Filmmaking is expensive, no ifs ands or buts. Paying everyone minimum wage and getting great deals on facilities and supplies, it would be hard to make a feature film for less than $200,000. And that’s lots of money for most people so by necessity, a filmmaker has to partner with somebody or many bodies in order to finance their films.

There are very few funders that one can pitch an idea to and have them say, “That’s great. I’ll finance it just as you described.” Usually, the answer is, “No” or “maybe.” The process of funding and subsequent making of a film can take years to put together. Without generous rich connections or being lucky enough to get government funding, filmmakers have maxed out credit cards, mortgaged their home… even sold their own blood to raise money for their films.

And then if one is successful in making their film, it then has to go out and compete with the mega dollar extravaganzas with huge promotional and marketing campaigns. Talk about David vs many Goliaths.

However, there is a little glimmer of light here. Academy-award winning writer William Goldman once wrote, “Nobody knows anything.” Even after years of sweating bullets to make a film, even with pre-sales, even with big stars, even with huge marketing campaigns – nobody really knows if the film will make money or not so our small indigenous film does have a chance and on occasion, one hits it big.
The problem is that it so seldom happens that it is akin to winning a lottery or as one of my business friends so aptly puts it, “Hope is not a business strategy.”

Oh and let’s not forget that if you have an interest in cultural diversity, things are even harder . More next week.