[anigbrowl]

Good grief you guys. How many films do you think make that kind of money? Billion dollar film franchises happen about as often as billion dollar startups - often enough to be something you might get lucky with, but the odds of that happening for you are staggeringly low. And even then, those films have as much or more spent on advertising as on the production, which is part of why it's such a high-risk business and major studio offerings are so conservative in terms of storytelling, casting etc..

A prepay model is what we have now. The largest 6 studios have the resources to open a film globally if they really want to (eg this will probably happen with the new Star Wars movie, and most likely the new Avengers one coming out in a few days), but generally international distributors sign contracts to buy a film in advance at a certain price and those are used as collateral in obtaining financing, but this model is falling apart under pressures from piracy, Netflix, and other factors.

If you mean prepay as in Kickstarter, that model doesn't work for features. Well, I should qualify a little - it can work for feature documentaries, because there is an existing community for many interests and people are very interested in seeing their pet interest/issue treated in movie form, without being too picky on quality. And of course it works well if you have a book or a comic or an unfashionable old TV show or something that has a small number of very dedicated fans, eg the Veronica Mars project last year, or fans of a particular actor. I call these 'fanservice' films - they're basically franchise properties, but franchises too small for Hollywood to care about. You can also get some mileage out of community fanservice, eg if your story appeals to people of an under-represented demographic like people from a particular country, LGBT people, or similar.

But if you just want to make an ordinary narrative film pitched at a broad audience - a drama, thriller, whatever - it doesn't work well at all. Dig through the major (and some minor) crowdfunding sites, and you see hardly any feature projects meet their funding targets. This should (I hope) change a bit later this year or early next, when the SEC finally opens up the possibility of crowdfunding equity under title III of the JOBS act, because while the risk is high at least there's an incentive to invest, whereas under existing crowdfunding models you have to come up with a mix of merchandising swag (which is not free to provide) and weird high-ticket rewards like getting a hot air balloon trip with the lead actor or something to land a couple of big donations.

[tomjen3]

I was refering to what you call "unfashionable old TV show". Specifically I was hoping somehow to use this model to resurrect firefly...

That said if that model cannot sustain huge movies like we see them today, that may mean we end up with smaller movies.

[anigbrowl]

Ah, this model works very well for that use case, and you should definitely read this: http://www.buzzfeed.com/adambvary/joss-whedon-on-kickstarter...

It is easier to do a feature film and a whole TV series, because while your props, costumes, sets etc. can be reused and things do speed up a bit with familiarity you're still looking at spending maybe $200,000/week in salaries and overhead. Drop me a line if you really want to know more about the production side. I'm thinking of writing up an e-book or something, partly in anticipation of the SEC opening up proper investment-style crowdfunding and partly to put together cash money for a film I want to do.

On smaller films, yes and no. What you'll see is more of a bimodal distribution - the big megastar films like the Avengers or anything with an A-list cast (eg 2 big stars and a few small ones) are not going away - those people know what they are doing in terms of story, production, marketing and so on and the people that work on them are the cream of the industry. Even when the results feel forced (eg some of the Star Wars prequels) they still make their money back many many times over.

And there will still be lots of small budget films, partly because it's more accessible due to technology, partly because people need some way to get onto the industry ladder, and partly because it's addictive. But times are tough budgetarily; to quote on industry exec overheard at the last Sundance, 'what used to be a $10m film is now $5m, what used to be $5m is now $3m, $1m is the new $3m....').

It's important to remember that costs don't scale linearly, but they go up in fits and starts, depending on which guilds and unions the production company has signed contracts with. So if I'm doing my first feature film, I can pay some writer a few thousand for a screenplay, or better, write it myself. But if I want a budget above a certain size I'd be better off with a Writer's Guild of America member (not least to tempt investors, who don't actually know from reading a script and a budget whether a film is going to be any good), and the minimum price for a WGA to turn in a feature script is $92,000. That's even if you write it yourself, eg Quentin Tarantino gets paid to write the script, direct the film, and produce the movie (as he should, because each of those is a full-time job in its own way). So when you make films in the tens or hundreds of thousands budget range, it's OK to ask people to work for free or pay minimum wage and buy worker's comp insurance, but once your budget is over a million your crew costs jump substantially because now the unions want a piece. And while I'm not that big a fan of unions it's mainly because they bring a lot of extra administrative bullshit and some obstructive work rules. The jump in expenses because of extra pay is just what people deserve, because of the inherently unsteady nature of the work, the very long hours and elevated physical risks, and the fact that virtually everyone in the industry does a huge amount of work for free or stupid cheap.

The basic problem from internet distribution, legal and illegal, is not so much the actual downloads in many cases as the fact that it makes revenue very unpredictable for producers and investors, and so the lower end of the market faces constant economic pressure because investors are understandably wary. I expect this to stabilize a bit as Netflix, Amazon, and others start doing more global buys, and equity crowdfunding is finally allowed to take place. But the practical reality for people in the industry has been that internet distribution and the culture of working for free that goes with it have broken a lot of the lower rungs on the ladder. I expect to see demographics within the film industry skew a bit older over the next decade because of this.