Being an independent filmmaker is a hard way to make a living.  You write or collaborate with a writer to bring a screenplay to fruition, fighting naysayers and dead ends all the way.  Along the way you attract allies, colleagues and true believers to your film… and that keeps you going.  Every dime you bring in from your “real job” you plow into the development of your project.  You take coffee meetings with people with big promises, and no money.  You talk to people with money, but just not for your film… and you wait. 

I had a conversation with a financier the other day who said he couldn’t invest in my movie until I was out of “development hell”.  I tried to explain to him that he could turn my hell into development heaven very easily with a letter of commitment to fund the movie.  He didn’t agree.

From the pan to the fire.  Even if you do get the millions of dollars that it takes to make your indy film, the game is rigged to make sure that you never see any of it.  Other than your producer fee, which the investors will try to chop back, to reduce the fixed costs of the film, your back end profit is in last position behind everyone else. 

There are a lot of sharks swimming in the waters, just waiting for the minnows (that would be you) to swim by.  Come here said the shark:  I’ll lend you $10 million to make your movie… only I want to tack on a producer fee of $400,000 for myself; hold a lien on all rights foreign and domestic; have approval over every aspect of your film from casting to delivery; be recouped from any tax credits and foreign presales; charge 20% interest annually; carve out sales to Germany for myself; and take 50% of all back end profits.  Gulp.

I heard a story the other day about Woody Allen.  When the studio offered him a “package” for his next six films he said “thanks, but no thanks”.  He asked for $10 million a picture.  Up front.  “No, we’re offering you a chance to make a lot more,” said the studio.  Allen stood fast on his $10 million per film price until the studio executives relented.  What Woody Allen had learned from the business was that you get your money up front, because the waters are full of sharks that are just waiting for minnows like you and I to swim by.  Woody was just too fast for them. 

Casting a movie reminds me a lot of when (and I’m going to age myself) I used to sit around on the lawn with my neighborhood friends in Anaheim, California and trade baseball card.  “I’ll give you a Don Drysdale for a Maury Wills.  I’m not trading Maury Wills for anything less than Sandy Koufax or Willie Mays.” 

Actors would be horrified if they knew how casting decisions are really made.  “How about Eric Bana? No, his foreign numbers are lousy; we should go with Kenau Reeves.  No, he and Jennifer Connelly can’t stand each other.  They were in that tentpole that really bombed.  Well, how about James Franco?  Too young.  He can play older.  Think he’s tall enough?  Jennifer is pretty tall…”

And so on and so forth.  It seems to have nothing to do with their acting ability, if they are appropriate for the role, or their personality.  It is all about what they mean at the box office.  And, to a lesser extent, if they can get along with their co-stars.  How they behave on a set really matters.  I suggested a certain actress to my director and she visibly shuddered.  “No way, she is impossible to work with; I’m not going through that again.”  Well… put her card back in the pack. 

Back in the day, studios manufactured movie stars.  Today, it seems that even pretty bad actors can become movie stars, if their foreign numbers are good.  That is one of the reasons that you see so many British and Australian actors playing Americans in the movies.  Their names on the marquee draw theater goers overseas.  Almost 70% of a movie’s revenue and 100% of its profit will be generated by foreign sales. 

To the director, the actors are the raw clay that they form into the narrative of the film.  To a producer, the actors are simply an expense item that they need to get the film made.  To the exhibitor, the actors are the reason that people are sitting in their theaters – they could care less about the narrative of the film or what it took to get the movie made.  To the actors, it’s a rigged game that keeps a small number of actors living in luxury and the vast majority of them waiting tables and selling cars.

Nielsen study shows slow shift away from discs - L.A. Biz

Blu-ray and VOD are gaining in popularity on traditional DVDs. According to Nielsen, while 83.6% of consumers watched home entertainment on DVD or Blu-ray, 45% watched content via a video game console and 44% via a digital video recorder, re-emphasizing the increasing importance of streaming and time-shifted viewing.

Almost 32% more of consumers surveyed in 2012 said they would rather stream a rental movie than acquire the DVD, compared to the numbers in 2011. In a shift that indicates a move toward on-demand TV watching, 29% more of the 2012 respondents opted for transactional VOD for TV shows, compared with the previous year. Per the report, 12% more preferred Netflix for watching movies and 24% more upped use of a subscription video-on-demand service to watch TV programs.

With the increase in streaming service choices, came the decline of premium video-on-demand (VOD) business. VOD saw almost 8% fewer consumers who ordered movies. Per the report, respondents buying movies on DVD dropped almost 1%.

“People do still purchase and rent physical DVDs and Blu-ray Discs, but streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu continue to gain traction as a convenient alternative, accessible through a variety of devices,” the report noted.

Sales of action-adventure films increased 24% to more than 126 million units, but sales of comedies and family fare declined 12% (104 million units) and 11% (97 million units), respectively. The top-selling discs included Disney/Marvel’s "The Avengers," Lionsgate’s "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1," and "The Hunger Games."

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Author: Gina Hall is a Los Angeles-based writer and producer with more than 10 years experience in television, documentary and feature film production. She is a graduate of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts and blogs for the Huffington Post at huffingtonpost.com/gina-ha