I was having a discussion with another filmmaker/producer a few days ago about how I did not agree with the idea of angel investors for commercial films. They should be business investors. He agreed

This is my simple, general opinion and distillation of what I have learned about feature film production as a business.

1. The first element is the intellectual property - the story and the script.

The production company must have legal control of the story and script, or demonstrate a means to get that control when financed.

The story and script need to be presented and/or analyzed for its market potential. This is where you look at global entertainment genres. Box Office Mojo and IMDB are both good sources for looking at comparable films based on story or genre.

An estimate must be determined of what the high, middle and low typical incomes of such a genre or genre combination may be. Typically the US box office is the bench-mark, but you can also make analysis for other big markets such as Europe as a Whole, Latin America as a whole, East Asia (South Korea, China and Japan for the larger markets; Singapore, Philippines, Taiwan and others as the smaller markets), and India. Australia and New Zealand are often combined in looking at western English-speaking markets such as examining US, Canada, UK and Australia/New Zealand together.

2. The second element is the production -

You can have a new producer, a new writer or a new director but you really do not want to have all three. One should be a known element from past performance.

In terms of cast - the same is true - you can have some new faces or regionally popular faces/television talent but a movie has to have some recognizable movie stars. It doesn't have to be international "A-listers" but there should be some regionally big movie stars from more than one region, and or a combination of "known movie talent" for one region listed above (US, East Asia, Europe, Latin America, India) to give it a chance to recoup investor and loan costs during the theatrical box office stage.

My films concentrate on the US market because I have a US distributor interested in distributing my films, but we have left some cast spots open during the development stage to fill during the preproduction stage - that may represent stars or "known movie talent" from other world markets.

3. The third element is the marketing - which is sometimes broken up into the categories of Public Relations, Branding, and Advertising. For feature films, the "marketing" cost is also synonymous with the catch phrase or jargon known as "P&A".
P&A literarily stands for Film Prints and Advertising, where advertising includes marketing expenses.

In the modern market, advertising is actually more of a sub-set of marketing; if you consider the power of the internet social networking, and bloggers. Marketing also includes a very important element which is sometimes called "Publicity" and sometimes called "Editorial Marketing".

Editorial Marketing or Publicity is like "free advertising" which is when the production's marketing officer or consultants spend money on getting the efforts to set up television and magazine interviews for the stars and interesting production team members (including the writer, director and producer, but sometimes other crew members who have a interesting life story or hobby). Then, in this modern world, the marketing team makes sure that such interviews and articles are publicized in the internet through social networking and blogs.

Marketing plus the Story (1 and 3) can make up for not having a recognizable movie star in a market region. The marketing demonstrates elements of the movie story and of the cast/crew to the market place and then the audience becomes interested enough to attend the theater or purchase home video (DVD, Blu-Ray, Video On Demand, Cable, Television).

You may look at these three elements as a basic checklist, however as I have discussed on a few other forums, you'll find that the producer's experience, knowledge and other connections will inform the subjective elements involved in judging the completeness of the business elements.

– contact me if you wish to post/publish this elsewhere or inquire about my films.
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