How A Film Student Raised $230,000 For A Short Film - Houston Howard

Sherrod Sloan, Filmmaker/LA Film School Student: How do we as independent filmmakers use transmedia to elevate our production pitches or when we're trying to take on investments or get financing for our projects how do we use transmedia to make that more easily accessible? Houston Howard, Transmedia Author and Instructor: So a question that I got after the first round of Film Courage interviews we had was a lot of people asking me about how this impacts the the the search for investment you know independent filmmakers and event creators are always looking for money and that's just part and parcel you have to figure out it pay the crew you have to figure out how to you know pay for the sets you have to buy insurance you have to do all these things so so money is is is necessary and so a lot of people were out there trying to find a private equity investment into their film and right now that's that's very difficult when you talk to any independent filmmakers they're gonna say the search for financing is one of the most frustrating difficult things that that you do as a film as a filmmaker and and that's why a lot of people pivot to things like a Kickstarter or IndieGoGo because they want to crowdsource that and unfortunately most you know the vast majority of things when Kickstarter the vast majority of films and Kickstarter don't get funded at all and on average films on Kickstarter get funded at about twelve thousand dollars and and if and if you're a swell thousand dollars on Kickstarter to make a movie I am rooting for you and hope you make the greatest 12 thousand dollar movie you've ever made but if you want to filmmaking to be your career and you don't want to be you don't want filmmaking to be your side hustle then we have to figure out how to how to get beyond the 12 thousand dollar movie and so a lot of my focus over the past year and a half has been working with independent creators on how to better position their films for investment private equity investment and so because a lot of people a lot of filmmakers think trends medias for the back end stuff it's it's after you make your movie and how to you know how to promote it or how to extend it or how to expand it but but I think you need to one front load your transmedia plan before you go out to get and one if you if while you're while you're writing your script while you're shopping your script while you're looking for financing for your script you could be extending your IP and building audience the entire time mostly every writer that I know when they when they write a script they're hustling that thing for two three four sometimes sometimes ten years looking for investment or trying to get it optioned and so if during that time that you're developing hustling shopping whatever you're doing if during that time the entire time you're using the tools that we have available podcast self-published novels IG TV short stories and what bad whatever it is if you were just working the IP and building audience what happens is when you finally get into the room with somebody whether it's a production company for that you're pitching it to for you if you want an option or to a private equity investor you can now have the data and the analytics of market pre awareness 2.2 because when you walk in the room with zero brand recognition and zero fans you're having a different conversation than somebody that can point say I have three hundred thousand people who who love my IP that engage with me and cross for four or five different channels it's just a different conversation because you've you've switched the risk analysis and that's one thing we talked about one of the previous videos is is studios they don't necessarily love great content they love low risk and the way the way to skew the risk is to build audience is just to have audience and when you have audience all of a sudden people feel like you're safer and so being able to walk into a finance meeting and point to audience gives you such a leg up because now you shift that risk analysis into your into your favor if you watched Shark Tank the first thing that that the Sharks asked people is how many units have you sold they don't ask how much money you're looking for what so how much equity you trying to give up they ask those questions at the end the very first question they say is how many of you sold your one that you'll me to invest in your toothbrush how many toothbrushes have you sold why do they ask that they're asking that to gauge is this risky or is it not and so somebody says I've sold 400,000 toothbrushes in the past year independently is less risky than the person that sold zero toothbrushes and in in the entertainment space it's the same exact thing you you want to be able to point to the data and the analytics to be able to prove audience so I think there's when we're talking about investment I lean into warren buffett warren buffett you don't think of them as somebody like from the film world or entertainment world but you have to understand warren buffett's a businessman who understands investments and a lot of the people that you go for investments you target for investment aren't entertainment people they're you're rich orthodontist that's in your neighborhood that just has some money that you want to be able to go and pitch this thing - they're not entertainment people it's the the it's the the person that made a bunch of money in natural gas and oil or tech stock they're business people so you have to understand what motivates a business person to be able to to want to invest into into an opportunity and there's there I think there's two major components that you need to have according to Warren Buffett you need market pre awareness and you need scalability and so market free awareness is being able to show that there are people that want your product is there pre awareness in the marketplace we've seen this in Hollywood for the past 40 years when they say is it based off a book you know if you if your if your screenplay is based off of a successful book it will it will get option faster than one that's not and and and anybody's out there shopping will attest to that that's it that's why the optioning the the book optioning market comic book markets super competitive because people want to be able to get that market pre awareness and leverage that into a deal so you need that market pre awareness but you also need scalability so what's the market opportunity in the long term how big is this not big and how long is this investment so is it a is it a two year window of revenue is it a one-year window of revenue is it a ten-year window of revenue or a 20 year window of revenue so how big can we make this thing it's just a one-off or how big can we go and so a lot of times we think about transmedia in the scalability aspect of it how big can we make it it can be toys and video games and and TV and film and all these big things right that's great because that shows market opportunity but we also need to use transmedia on a smaller scale to be able to shift the pre awareness game and so if you can show pre awareness and scalability and just have a good idea all of a sudden you have armed yourself with everything that you need to be able to go into to an investment meeting and point to to to you know the the assets that you have as far as your pitch and so so understanding how your pre awareness shifts the risk and how your scalability increases market opportunity is a really valuable thing to have and unless you use a multi-platform trans mediated model you're not going to get either one of those things so all that to say we have to we have to think in a broader term of what the IP is I think this is the thing that that Warren Buffett really Warren Buffett really in a commoditized market so I talk a lot about the entertainment industry now being commoditized and so what I mean by commoditized is there's a lot of people making similar products right and if competition in the marketplace is so crazy we have zillion things on Netflix is zillion things on hulu amazon anything that comes out in the theater network TV TV cable TV premium TV you know we have like every its entertainment is commoditized because there's so many options that everything is a little less special and so Warren Buffett tells business people don't make investments into products that are currently in commoditized markets unless they can shift pre awareness they have good scalability and they have brand value if you have brand value all of a sudden you you can survive in a commoditize market Warren Buffett also says that one of the things that help you help you compete in a in a commoditized market is volume and diversification so this is business principles so Warren Buffett says if there's if the if the market is oversaturated and there's there's there's like a hundred times more stuff out there then you actually need to produce more things into the marketplace right to be able just just to be not washed away right because we've gone from a pond to an ocean and if you wanna make a splash in the ocean you need to have more of a presence in that ocean so volume is a strategy within a commoditize market just general business principle how does that now equate to entertainment which is now commoditized that means now we have to have we have to have more things more stories into the marketplace or houston it's is it how can I make more movies like it takes a long time to make a movies and I'm trying to make it like one movie let alone ten movies exactly you can't make ten movies simultaneously you put them all out at the same time it's too hard too expensive too difficult takes is it's just that's impossible so now we have to then use the second component which is diversification so now we have our movie that can be one touch point of the brand maybe the tentpole of the brand but now we're pushing volume through diversification so now we're thinking about what are my digital assets what what are what's my my social assets what are my immersive assets arv are you know how can I have publishing involved you know what could like how can I now push volume out on the front end and the back end to-end diversify that across mediums and platforms that now me to compete in the commoditize market why are we talking about this because the businessman that you're pitching to understands this stuff the biggest one of the biggest failings of independent writers and producers and filmmakers is when they go to pitch they think they're pitching to themselves that the person on the other side of the table thinks like them that if you're filmmaker that leans into if you're DP and you may love your color palettes and your your cinematography and you may have storyboards and you can talk about lenses and all these things this is what you love this is part of your art and you're going to create the most the your most beautiful film ever that's great the odds are the orthodontist or the investment banker or the the rich lady in the next seat doesn't understand that stuff or even if she does she may not be excited about it what they understand is business and what they understand is investment and they understand rate of return and return on investment they understand risk they understand volume they understand diversification they understand branded ecosystems and all this sounds like a foreign language I can imagine all the people watching the video now and I'm turning into the Charlie Brown teacher wah wah wah wah because they say I don't want to think about that stuff because I'm a writer I'm a filmmaker I just want to worry about making my movie I just wish that person would have been born 30 years ago like if they were born not just born 30 years ago like active in the industry 30 years ago if they were active in the industry 30 years ago it's a different ballgame now it's so competitive the world is so different you have to think about these other things and so understanding it's it's empathy it sympathy it's it's empathetic pitching so if you understand what concerns that the other person has then you will be better at pitching your project you'll be better at positioning your your your art and your project for an investment so what do investors care about what do investors get excited about what do they look for and then how do I design my project and my my proposition in such a way that alleviates those concerns or those they hit the touch points that excite them and so the more you do that the more successful you'll be at in getting these investments so if you know if you know that that investors are concerned about volume diversification propre awareness the shifts risk scalability that increases market opportunity why would you ever pitch anything that doesn't have any of that stuff there and so but the only way you're going to be able to get that in an entertainment perspective is using a multi-platform transmedia super story approach because again you can't make a hundred movies now you have to have a plan to be able to use all these different assets one really interesting story to tell you that I think is really inspirational and really cool and that makes this whole thing real is there was a student that that approached me with a short film idea they were shooting a great shoot a thesis film to graduate film school and they needed to raise $12,000 to to shoot their short film and he said Houston will you look at my business plan and I looked at his business plan and his business plan was give me $12,000 and I'll make my short film I'm gonna put it into festivals and as I win the festivals I'll give you the prize money until your $12,000 is paid back that was the plan when I read that I I applaud this guy for coming up with that but I'm thinking again like the like a businessman no way I invest in that $12,000 into that into that business plan why it's because one it's hard to get into festivals and it's even harder to win I mean that's the thing that any filmmaker understands it's very super super competitive so me as an investor I'm gonna look at that and say that's risky like it's very very low a rate of return I'm probably gonna lose this money and so I encourage this student I said yeah I don't think this is gonna go you can try it I don't think it'll work I think you would be better off potentially just asking people for like a go fund me donation he didn't want to do that he wanted to actually try to get the investment and so he identified an investor in Florida that he wanted to approach with this opportunity and this guy owns seven car Lots and his mom was connected to this guy on on Facebook they were friends and so he had just had it again this is not an entertainment guy it's a guy that sells cars and so so for three days we sort of repackaged his pitch so what we did was we went and we did a transmedia plan for that and we went from a product century eccentric view of the of the of the opportunity and made an IP centric view of the opportunity so IP being the larger intellectual property right and so we quickly what this what this kid had in spades was a really cool idea he hid a cool creative idea and so we for two days we workshop the idea and we we developed we developed a podcast we developed a self-published novel we developed a concept for a digital comic book we developed a concept for a musical EP he knew some people at the Music School that were that was that he contacted they said they would create six songs that extended the story they would do it will inspect for him and they had a rev share that they were gonna do we we sketched out the self-published novel we sketched out a feature film and a TV series and we figured and they all told different stories within the same story world they were all connected together in this really interesting way and they all worked for one whole big puzzle and so then the pitch became I want you to invest in not into my short I want you to invest into the IP itself right so now your financial you the investor our financial partner into my in my intellectual property so what we're going to do first is we're going to take the twelve thousand dollars and we're going to put it into the short film because that's what I need to shoot the short film for but listen we know that short films probably won't make money I'll put it in the festivals and if I win then I'll give you some give you the prize money but the point of the short film no longer is driving revenue primarily it's building audience we're gonna put it into festivals start to build an audience with the school idea we're gonna release the podcast that I can produce myself for free that's gonna build audience it's going to get eyeballs we're gonna release the music which is gonna get a whole different demographic of people and also build audience and get and build excitement and if the music makes any money you participate in the profit of that I'm gonna write it write my own novel self publish it that's gonna be an Amazon that's gonna build the audience but if that like through the book sales if that starts making money you participate the investor participate in the profit of that the digital comic books will be up on the website his his brother was a illustrator and said he would spec out one issue for him if when that's a 99 cent download investor will participate in the profit of that that's also gonna build audience the plan is then to do that for two years we're gonna work the podcast work the novel work the music there was there was a release window of like when they ever think it was gonna be released I'm we're going to work that for two years wild the kid writes the feature film script right as this being developed as it's being written that all this stuff is going to be there with after that two years if everything works out the the the plan will be will have enough audience and pre awareness to then start approaching production companies to option the script but we're not just going to be some but an IP that no one's ever heard of we can point to our brand awareness and we can point to our audience that we can point to our community fans and so now we have at least a Hunter's chance to be able to sell the feature if the feature sells you the investor participate in the profit of that and then you know listen this is pie in the sky long-term thinking if the film does well and we sort of have this like cult success on our hands its indie success maybe then we can sell it as a TV series and and if that goes you participate in the profit of that and so now it's a it's a ten year plan rather than just a short full plan but you can see immediately how that just became a whole other thing like that from an investment perspective the investor looks at that completely differently it seems it seems like a bigger opportunity it seems it seems reasonable and and this guy sells car Lots so we went oh he has cars 7 car Lots he sells cars we went and put the car lot in every story because what does the car lock guy care about most discs selling cars cares about his car Lots so we made it a location in the story world and we make sure it was in every story so we he works that up into a pitch deck the whole plant is there you know it works the he does the business the business the business plan runs the numbers for all the stuff and then goes off to Florida a couple weeks later gives me a call after he gets there he was been there a couple days gives me call and says houston i got my investment i said you got your twelve thousand dollar investment it's amazing he said no I didn't get a twelve thousand dollar investment I got a two hundred and thirty thousand dollar investment I said really like how did you get a two hundred thirty thousand dollar investment he said well I just sat down with this guy and I laid all this stuff out and this guy looked at me and said you know what this makes business sense and he says I don't know anything about entertainment but this makes business sense and then the guy said he said do you know how much money I waste in marketing across my car Lots every year and and he said I he said he wastes about 40% of his marketing budget just on Billboard's no one ever sees commercials no one ever watches and he said because this makes business sense and because you have the car lot in here I can take 10% of my marketing budget across all seven of my Lots and out just invest it into the IP because if it doesn't work I was gonna waste the money anyway but if it does work all of a sudden the business model seems interesting enough to where this could be a good long-term investment for me and all of a sudden this could be huge for me and my brand and in the fact that the car Lots in there may it will probably do little market my car lots better than then my regular crappy used-car lot commercials will is that people will come to my car lot just because it's like a movie location and it taps into all of the thing and so all of a sudden repositioning that that project from a product centric point of view to an IP point of view IP perspective that one had a plan of how do you build pre awareness that shifts the risk but then also how do you increase scalability on the back end that increases your market opportunity and how do you make it make business sense for the person across the table now if if that didn't work and he was going to an orthodontist who has money in the next bitch he will probably have to change that take the car let out do something else right and so so you have to be you you probably not just gonna have one pitch for for your IP you you need to design it for the person to whom you're pitching make it a tailored suit rather than the suit they have to fit in and so all of a sudden this this from an independent perspective this makes an independent private equity venture a hundred times more interesting and more valuable than just the person that has the one script or the one movie idea or the one short film or whatever it is so again do you have to figure it out a little bit more of course right but but I think a problem is there's a lot of people that want to achieve what other people have without doing the same amount of work that other people do and so yeah like we just we live in a time that independent creators have to do more work than ever before to be able to survive in a commodity - oversaturated entertainment market but at the same time we're blessed to live in a time where we have so many tools that my parents my grandparents my great-grandparents never had right so it's so it swings both ways you just have to get out of that that same mindset see the opportunities all of a sudden went to be if you're able to implement those opportunities your investment pitch come it's a completely different conversation you

Channel: Film Courage

Views: 14,419

Keywords: Story, super story, transmedia, storytelling, super story architect, story world, make your story really stinkin big, screenwriting tips, screenwriting 101, Houston Howard, screenwriting techniques, story tips, filmcourage, film courage, interview, la film school

Id: xrl0haOlFvQ

Length: 25min 2sec (1502 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 04 2019