The Wrong Way is - Wrong

"What you resist persists and what you allow to be disappears"
-Dan Pallotta, Stop Thinking Outside the Box. Harvard Business Review*

The author of the above quote claims it is a zen saying, but while I did a little research, I could not find an original attribution, and found it on more self-help sites that anywhere near a Buddhist site. However, as a longtime practitioner, it is certainly true.**

What inspired this search about not thinking outside the box was an article I read in a blog on Linkedin. I won't link the article here, or give its author, as I neither wish to promote it or get into an online feud with the author, who I imagine - or at least hope - thinks he is giving good advice.

What he is actually doing is encouraging the worst instincts in emerging filmmakers who want to hear that they can make their script into a movie regardless of how difficult the script or how little they are able to raise.

Below is the article in its entirely (I didn't want to be accused of taking him out of context), with identification and links removed:

Budgeting the correct way. There is obviously only one method to use for budgeting once you have your screenplay and are preparing a budget for your script to be made into a feature film “the right way”.

“The right way”, “Can you prepare a budget for me… the right way”, “I want to do it right”, “What is it going to cost to make this movie”… These are the most common statements I heard 30 years ago when I was hustling gigs as a Production Manager, Assistant Director or, hopefully, a Line Producer from first-time Producers or Directors…even Screenwriters.

“The right way”!

“The right way”?

I know how to do a budget. I worked for Roger Corman (King of the Bs), a producer/distributor who has made almost 700 feature films that have all allegedly made profits. I know what things cost.

• Renting Cameras.
• Hiring Crew.
• Renting Locations.
• Building Sets.
• Securing Film Permits.
• Paying for Insurance.
• Casting Actors.
• Renting a Grip Truck.
• Paying a Gaffer.
• Feeding a Crew.
• Buying Props & Wardrobe.

Forms, contracts, agreements, deals… I did it, I did it, I did it…

I wrote the checks. I made the deals and not by theory but by actually doing. I asked for “rates”, I haggled, I negotiated, I never paid retail, I begged, I made the deals.

I would listen to a vendor, an equipment supplier, an actor, a crew person tell me what they charged; then I would say “Cash?”

I truly know what things cost when making a low-budget or independent feature film and I discovered that budgeting the “right way” is really, in reality, the “wrong way”. Now allow me present the proper approach to budgeting.

Back-to-basics: There are two ways of doing a budget. The first is the “right way” and the second is the “wrong way”. What I discovered from the school of hard knocks is the “right way” doesn’t work.

Permit me to explain. The “right way” is you go to the Writers Store website and buy a movie-budget software (Movie Magic, Guerilla, Easy or ShowBiz) or even try a freeware (celtx).

Load it onto your computer then fill in every line item “The Right Way”. Doing this the “right way”, and filling-in every single line item as if it is an “absolute must”, which it probably is if making your movie the “right way” and you will inherently come up with a budget that is between $2 Million to $200 Million.

You print it out, all 40-70 pages, with a proper Title Page and Top Sheet and you now have almost 130-200 pages (your script at 90-120 and the budget at 40-60) of typing. Combine this with some actor head-shots and agreements, some CV resumes of key crew personnel, a couple of storyboard panels, a poster, a festival plan and a business plan and you have one-hell of a package….which is totally useless!

Why?

Get real.

Who the heck is going to give you, a first-timer, $2-$200 Million? Who? Come on, answer. Get real. Who?

Answer: No one.

So the “right way”, which can be called the “Studio Method”, the method taught at those $200,000 4-year film schools, USC or NYU, gets you stuck in a deadend and nowhere.

Now, let’s prepare a budget the “wrong way”, which can be called the “Independent Method”, is the method that will actually work for you, the first-timer, for your first feature film.

This is the method used by Roger Corman when he hires someone, a Line Producer or Co-Producer, to make a movie. He simply says, “You’ll get $150,000. Can you make it for that?” Your answer better be instantly, no hesitating allowed, “Absolutely, Mr Corman”

So what is the “wrong way” to prepare a budget?

The “wrong way” is first pick a number, a dollar amount, in the above example from Mr Corman the number was $150,000. Ergo, you know your budget instantly. Now lets figure out how to allocate that money over cast, crew, equipment, locations, food, etc to get this movie made… “the best way possible” but made.

Simple. Just pick a number, a dollar amount that you truly believe you have access too independently, but not by deal making, but by your savings account, or what a group of friends & relatives might give you, or what a crowd fund group might offer with proper donations.

So the “wrong way”, or the “Independent Method”, of prepping a budget is to actually pick the DOLLAR AMOUNT first. Then back into it.

Thus, if you want to Budget with a method that Guarantees you will make the movie you first pick the dollar amount that you will have access to…and that’s the budget.

I know it’s the “wrong way” but it works… Guaranteed!

Whether his intentions were the best or to simply drive more work his way, the result is the same. He is encouraging the worst instincts in filmmakers; namely, that if there's a will there's a way, and regardless of the difficulty of the script or how little they can raise, the result will be everything they seek.

Only, it won't be.

I have first-hand seen the wreckage of the thinking advocated here, and it's never pretty. What he describes is not only the "wrong way" but what I call the Wish Budget, and it always ends up with trouble.

So, why won't his "wrong way" work? Let me bring in some of the sound advice from a business perspective in the article linked in the title from Harvard Business Review.

In that article, Pallotta says:

Thinking outside the box without understanding the box is a petulant exercise in resistance — every idea that comes from the process has the box written all over it. It’s a reaction to the box. It’s fighting the box. It’s a child of the box

Mr. "Wrong Way" has the box wrong to begin with, so he can never conquer it.

He starts with the assumption that the only alternative to reckless, no-budget filmmaking is the Studio System, where every film needs to be "$2 to $200 million," and he mocks actually breaking down the script and budgeting it first, which I find odd from someone who, at least according to his bio, has been a line producer (his IMDB says differently).***

Sadly, he starts with a truth and comes to the wrong conclusion.

He sounds convincing. After all, he says:

I know how to do a budget. I worked for Roger Corman (King of the Bs), a producer/distributor who has made almost 700 feature films that have all allegedly made profits. I know what things cost.

When he says this, he leaves out a lot of information. First, Corman had a distribution outlet - New Concorde. He knew that even if the film was horrible - as many of this guy's films are - it had a guaranteed way to make money.

The Corman motto varied on "Blood, Breasts and Beasts." "Bombs" were sometimes mixed in there. As such, if your script does not fit that format, then Mr. Wrong Way's formula doesn't work.

Furthermore, even with his own distribution network, it is an outdated formula. The last film that met this formula for Corman was in 2006 - Cry the Winged Serpent. That was nine years ago - and did you ever see that film? Neither did I. Neither did most people in the United States - or anywhere else.

To be kind, Mr Wrong Way's entire premise is a lie.

When I get a script, the first thing I ask the person is how much they think they can raise. As most of these are independent and will be looking for financing, most will fall somewhere in the SAG INDIE world, anywhere from $200K to $2M.  It would, as he suggests, be fruitless for me to give them a budget based on all union rate books and salaries for A-List talent.

However, once I get that number, we get to the reality of the situation, namely, what is the script?

Yes, last summer, I produced a film for under $100K - all the director had raised. However, almost all of it took place in one location, a nightclub he managed, and there was no location fee. He was also very flexible on the shooting style, allowing us to move much faster than we normally would have done.

By contrast, a few months ago, a director brought me a very good script about Haitian refugees. It included the aftermath of an earthquake, shooting in three countries (Haiti, the Bahamas and the US) and a good deal of time at sea with the refugees in a rickety boat on a turbulent sea. He thought the maximum he could raise was $300K or so.

I told him I doubted that could work, but I would try to put something together at that number. As you might imagine, that budget would have slashed his idea to pieces, shot in one country, cheated much of the filming on the water, and it still came in a little high. The lowest realistic number we could come up with was $625K, which still kept him under the SAG Modified Low Agreement. As we wanted to work with some US actors, we needed to be a SAG film.

Even at that number, he was going to have to make certain concessions. As we talked, those concessions would mean a movie that had none of the force or even the message of his script. He didn't want to make that film.

This was not just the case of being a stubborn artist. As Stan, who actually was a Corman producer, often said, "First, you have to make the movie."

What you really have to decide is whether you are making the movie just to see your name in the credits, as a vanity, or whether there is a vision you want to bring to the screen, because neither the $300K nor the $625K version of this film would have had much of a chance of making their money back. As such, you would just be bilking your investors so you could say you made a movie, and have very little chance of ever making a second one.

Neither an ethical choice nor a good career move.

I recently had another gentleman who wanted to do a period piece from the 1960s with a lot of young teens, who, of course, are minors and subject to child labor laws that restrict their hours. It also had a lot of baseball.  He, too, asked about $300K.

I read the script. There was likely a way to make it, but with big concessions. It would not work as a period piece; he would have to make it more contemporary. Fewer players. Fewer locations.

That would be possible, but the script would lose much of its charm.

I did not charge him for that advice, and told him that anyone who told him that he could do it for that amount was misleading him just to charge him for a budget. Mind you, while he doesn't do budgets, he has been "in the business" for a long time.

A few days later these was an ad for someone to do a budget.

He will find someone like Mr. Wrong Way who will convince him that he can do it. Then he will sink his life-savings into it - he already told me he was willing to do that - and, if he was like another filmmaker I worked with, mortgage his home.

All of that sounds very romantic. In the movies, a guy like that would win in the end, despite what skeptics like me think.

In the real world, he would find himself broke with a film that only friends and family would get to see.

In reality, the time to "pick a number" is before you type fade-in. I have many creative and talented friends in the horror and sci-fi worlds who do amazing things with the slimmest of budgets, some of whom can be found in the blog links to the right of this post. From years of plying their craft, they know what they can and cannot afford to do, and so they stick to those parameters when writing their scripts.

"Simple. Pick a budget...." Mr Wrong Way suggests. Do I even have to explain why this is a bad idea? Why it won't work?

What angers me is that in giving this advice, he is preying on the vulnerable, those who desperately want to make their movie. They want someone who tells them not to listen to the "experts" who tell them it can't be done.

This is how snake oil salesmen used to work, preying on the weak and the sick. This is the fortune teller who tells you that Mr. Right is just around the corner. After all, who is going back to a fortune teller who tells you that there are no princes waiting for you, just real people who may make you happy or may break your heart. That is real life.

Mr Wrong Way says:

So the “right way”, which can be called the “Studio Method”, the method taught at those $200,000 4-year film schools, USC or NYU, gets you stuck in a deadend and nowhere.

Again, our friend from the Harvard Business Review has an explanation.

"The box thrives on your impatience with it."

Making a low-budget independent film requires a lot of hard work, along with a leap of faith. No amount of planning will guarantee success, and even doing it the right way almost always means doing it with less than you would like to have. It's neither comfortable nor easy. It does require sacrifice, and being willing to make concessions.

All of that after raising the right amount of money.  That is the independent method, not:

So the “wrong way”, or the “Independent Method”, of prepping a budget is to actually pick the DOLLAR AMOUNT first. Then back into it.

But Mr. Wrong Way insists it works. What does he say?

Thus, if you want to Budget with a method that Guarantees you will make the movie you first pick the dollar amount that you will have access to…and that’s the budget.

I know it’s the “wrong way” but it works… Guaranteed!

Guaranteed?  Perhaps the only industry as risky as film is opening a restaurant. The number of independent films that make a profit - or even break even - is low. The number varies, but numbers I've seen over the past few years are about 5-10%. In his book Hope for Film, Ted Hope, who has been a successful independent producer with a variety of types of truly indie films, has says that most independent films can't make money with the current distribution model, and that many of the films that made money for him in the 1990s would not even break even today.

This is not to discourage people from making movies and taking that risk. That is why we are all in this business. But, they should do so with eyes wide open.

So, who is doing the guaranteeing here? Is Mr. Wrong Way going to give you and your investors back the rest of your/their money if the film, like most, does not break even? Hmm, he must have left that part out.

Pallotta has a great example of what truly defeats the box in describing a campaign his company put together for National Breast Cancer Coalition.

In the breast cancer fundraising field, it’s all about who can out-hope the competition. Hope, hope, hope is the mantra everywhere. So our campaign for the National Breast Cancer Coalition became: “We’re giving up hope.” The message was that hope is not what overcomes great obstacles. Deadlines and commitment do. And the organization has committed itself to an end to breast cancer in 10 years.

It's like my mantra when first hired to line produce. There will be times I am going to have to present you with tough choices. That doesn't make me popular, but if you had a deadly disease, would you want a doctor who told you only the best-case scenario or one who clearly tells you what you are up against, but will be there to fight with you?

If you want good news hire family, I tell them. It's their job to comfort you. It's my job to get you well and keep you well.

A producer friend of mine recently suggested that she gets tired of working with people who think they are working "outside the box," but who are just ignoring it.

Sometimes thinking outside the box is really just fitting a square peg in a round hole. If it's not Apollo 13, that probably won't work.



Outside the box. Square peg round hole. A guy I have the pleasure of working with now has a better solution, based on yet another tired axiom.

"I don't want to reinvent the wheel," he says. "I just want to make it go faster."






*It's a great article regardless of your profession. I highly recommend you read it.

**The instruction when following your breath in meditation is that when a thought comes up, acknowledge it, then let it go. What we all know is that if you try to force it out of your mind, to fight it, it just becomes stronger.  More details here.

*** While he claims:

These are the most common statements I heard 30 years ago when I was hustling gigs as a Production Manager, Assistant Director or, hopefully, a Line Producer from first-time Producers or Directors…even Screenwriters.

his IMDB has NO First AD credits, NO line producer credits, and NO UPM credits. It has ONE producer credit - from 1988 - for a movie with no name talent that I doubt anyone here has seen. To be fair, I know from working with Stan that many Corman-produced films (as opposed to films he directed) are not on IMDB, which is only further proof of what an anomaly they are.

A Night At The Opera and Green Stamps

Some jokes lose all value when the reference becomes archaic.

As indie producers follow the spiral downward in terms of pay for crew, I have already had some DP friends  joke ,"Will shoot for food," and, sadly, they often are not far off, given some of the rates.

I'm old enough to remember people joking that someone wanted to "pay them with Green Stamps," and recently, this thought came to me when I accepted barter in exchange for some work I was doing.

First, an explanation about Green Stamps.

The reference is to S&H Green Stamps. The way it worked was a number of supermarkets, department stores and other retailers would give you these Stamps along with your purchase. The stamps would go into books, and the books could be traded in for items.

As with most "rewards" programs such as this, the work was hardly ever worth the effort. To get anything of real value - you know, more than a new toaster, for example - you needed to amass an amazing number of books, not to mention the embarrassing process of having to put them into the books. Like postage stamps, they had to be moistened on the back.

I can still remember Mom, with the sponge on one side, the books on the other, and stamps in the middle. She created a small assembly line. Remember, our parents were from what Tom Brokaw calls "The Greatest Generation," that had grown up during at least part of the Great Depression. Getting value from everything was important. If some company was going to give something away, they were going to be there to take it.

Even then, however, some people saw how the process outweighed the rewards, and the joke about allowing others to pay you in "Green Stamps" arose from people offering something of little value for barter.

Usually, this is the reference that comes to my mind when I see these "job" notices that offer "meals, IMDB credit, copy of the film and a chance to work with other filmmakers." Nice, except all of those things should go without saying, and in no way change the idea that many of us do this for a living. These are not really forms of compensation - and I already have a toaster.

Now, my case was slightly different, and, to my mind, worked out not so bad at all.

There is a filmmaker who has had a number of projects over the years that required a budget to raise funds, and he has repeatedly come back to me. These were good projects; there is no reason they should not have been funded. One, a feature, had gone up and down the budget ladder in what would look like a Marx Brothers movie if it weren't so sad. The script, based in part on his life, was a good tale of a young man who marries an older woman, who expects them both to live a high life, and keeps them both living lavishly.

The townhouses and rich lifestyle they chase made it impossible to do this in the very low indie mode, say, below $1 million. We budgeted it for the least we could imagine. Then, a big name producer and director wanted to get involved, but, of course, that that upped the budget, so we revised it upward. The result? It's too big a budget- can you cut it?

I've been on this roller coaster before, and while it is frustrating for me, it is more frustrating for the filmmaker. Reasonable changes I do for free - I can't justify making someone pay every time someone wants to tweak something in one direction or the other. In this case, each of the changes was so drastic and so much work that while I charged a good deal less for the revisions, I did require an additional fee.

There were also two other projects, one a documentary, as yet unfunded. Each time he paid me.

This time, he needed something simpler, and asked if I could do it for a little below my regular rate. I really felt bad for the guy - these were all worthy projects, and all he saw was money going out.

"Just give me a number," I told him. I knew he would be fair, and while it was way below what I would have charged someone else, it was more than reasonable.

He works at the Metropolitan Opera, and asked if, in exchange for accepting the lower end of the range we discussed, he could throw in a pair of tickets to the opera.

It was a new production of a contemporary piece, and while I don't ever get to go to the opera any more, I lived with an opera singer, was married to a musician and once directed for a young opera workshop. Sure, I would take the tickets.

Accepting the tickets also allowed me to do something nice for the camera person who is one of my favorite crew people who let me crash at her place when Hurricane Sandy left me with no power for a while.

She had never been, but asked "Can we get dressed up?" Sure, I told her. "Don't let me down," she said, and on the day of, when I reminded her of the time, she reminded me of the promise. There was a little history.

She has her own camera, and a few years back. I line produced a Live from the Artists' Den show for PBS.. I hired her, but told her that the producer wanted all the camera operators to dress in formal wear. She was the only female, and was glad to do so. "Are you going to dress up."

I didn't have the time to change, but joked that one day I would dress in my teen 70s attire - full bell-bottoms, dickey, etc.  Now, most of you may have seen pictures of your folks in bell-bottoms, but dickeys, in their late-60s and early 70s incarnation, were not false tuxedo tops, but rather false turtlenecks. No, I cannot describe why this ever became a fad, and, to borrow from that current fashion reality show, few of us made it work.

Well, even at my Mom's place, most of those clothes are gone, and, sad to say, what may remains no longer would fit. I've gained more than wisdom over the years.

My friend was worried that I would renege again, but, as the picture below can attest, I did not.

Of course, when my loving ex saw the picture, she couldn't resist. "Aw, father and daughter. How cute."

When one of your friends and crew people is also a lovely opera and dinner companion for the evening, let them joke. It's certainly rare that I get to dress up, and there's joy enough in the charm of good company.

The opera that evening. The Tempest, by Englishman Thomas Ades, was written only a few years ago, and this was the first time I got to see a composer conduct his own work (in no small part because most of them are dead).

The opera was wonderful, the coloratura who sang the spirit Ariel being among my favorites.

The next week, my producer friend had another spare pair of tickets, this time to Verdi's Un Ballo en Maschera.  This was a more old-school production, but again, marvelous voices.

Two wonderful evenings of entertainment in return for a small discount. Not bad at all.

Of course, I hope that the general work environment does not become one in this digital age where barter becomes the norm, but heck, I can't complain. I didn't even have to lick any stamps.

Budgets Budgets Toil and Trouble

Sorry for the short break from the blog.

In the world of indie film, when it rains, it pours. The converse, of course, is that when it's dry, it's a friggin' desert.

In the past two weeks, I've been commissioned to do two feature budgets and schedules for investors. One has changed parameters a few times, as they now have some name talent that may be attached.

The other is for a film festival in Europe that will fund them as long as the budget is under $150K Euros. This means doing the currency conversion, which is easy, as Gorilla software, my preferred software, does this, as does EP.

I have put together different templates for features and shorts over the years in both EP and Gorilla. The film festival funding this project, of course, has decided that applicants need to use their budget template in Excel. It's a ridiculous template, more appropriate for shorts or commercials and music videos than a feature. They also lump the oddest things - location fees are under "set dressing." What's up with that?

The requests for these budgets came at the exact same time I got called to line produce a pilot for NICK Moms. Of course, they did. They would not have come when I was twiddling my thumbs hitting "refresh" on my Gmail in the hopes of seeing a job offer come my way.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not complaining.

I am actually very happy that they both came via a contact I've had for a long time, a really good guy who runs a studio in New York. It was, in many ways, a typical contact. This was a guy who I first spoke to about two or three years ago when I was line producing an impossible feature in Connecticut (don't worry - it will wind up here). I needed a location manager for a few select locations in NYC.

Brendan runs a great studio in NY, NYLAHD. Shameless plug? You betcha'. Somebody throws you work, you return the favor. Also, I've had two people I know work with them and tell me great things - plugs aren't cool if the referral is a bad one.

While Brendan was unable to location manage that shoot, he continued to refer possible location managers and gave me some location contacts to follow-up on. It's people like this that make you feel good about the business; people who don't just say, "what's in it for me," but who just genuinely try to help out.

Both projects he referred to me are good scripts with seasoned pros putting them together. I really hope they get funded.

I have a love/hate/love/hate/love relationships with budgets and schedules.

I love the income between gigs.

I've come to hate starting the input and breakdown, then trying to figure out the perfect schedule. When I was younger, schedules were like crossword puzzles, cool challenges. Now, I pretty much dread them. They are still like puzzles, only ones where I wish I could cut the pieces to make them fit.

The writer in me loves the intricacy of the script. The AD in me hates that phone conversations and parallel action mean more breakdown sheets to enter. The line producer in me looks at a the schedule and says "those two guys have no lines in the diner scene. If they weren't there, I could shoot them out in one week." Not very artistic.

Of course, once I DO figure out the perfect schedule, I get this warm glow. At my age, that's no small feat. I love.

Then I have to start the budget. I'm not naturally a numbers guy, and my ex will tell you that budgeting my life isn't my strong point. Films? That one I got. Hate going line item by line item, but that's the way it gets done.

A budget is not just a bunch of numbers, it's a game plan for your film. Once I have finished it, I hate that the right way to present it is with detail notes; but once I've done that, I love the feeling of satisfaction I get from knowing I have fully planned out a film from start to finish.

Both of those budgets are done now, pretty much. I meet with the filmmakers tomorrow, and will probably tweak them after we talk, Getting to know their priorities and how they plan on attacking the film needs to be part of the conversation.

I should be sitting here, basking in the glow of victory, getting ready to send my left brain to a nice warm beach and drinks with fruit and funny straws while revving up my right brain to get back to a theater play I am writing.

Instead, I'm taking a deep breath, because last Thursday, a novelist called me. He found me on the web, and wanted to know my thoughts about producing a short he wrote. He sent me the script, and it's a dark, funny, satire. He even wants to shoot on 35mm, which truly made me happy.

Next step - schedule and budget for the short!