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Producer Ted Hope gives it up.

11 years, 7 months ago - Dan Selakovich

Indie producer Ted Hope blogs on why he's not going to produce any longer. He's produced "21 Grams", "American Splendor", "The Ice Storm", "Eat Drink Man Woman"... about 70 films in all.

I encourage everyone to read his blog here:

http://bit.ly/JChOgz

But here are some highlights:

I have decided I am no longer going to produce films for my living. To do so requires me to deliver quantity over quality. Or to not contribute as fully as I like since I won’t be fairly compensated. Or to make something that is virtually guaranteed to not have the cultural impact it warrants. Those are three things that I am refusing to be part of.

Producing two movies a year these days requires too many sacrifices. It requires accepting whom a financier wants, be it a director, an actor, or collaborator. It requires rushing development and selecting projects that can get made quickly. If you want to survive as a producer, when you get to do something for the money, you have to do it. It requires continual “fake meetings” in an effort to sleuth out every opportunity. It means facilitating alliances that I may have little respect for. It requires compromises that I am no longer willing to make.

What I think I do best (develop and edit) is the part I never get funded for. What I value most amongst my skill set, the industry expects me to give away for free. I may work several years on a script with a writer and/or director, getting it to a place that it can attract cast and financing. These days generally then a financier comes aboard and expects both an equal credit and fee to me or any developing producer. The funding producer knows that the lions’ share of the work ahead will still be done by the developing producer, but still expects equal compensation. There is no special credit in the US for those that develop material.

The current ecosystem is not structured in a way that work gets better. The current infrastructure encourages concepts over depth. It is not a process that I want to encourage or participate in. Until I see it can change, I will seek to earn my living doing other things than just producing movies.

With the collapse of producer overhead deals, no producer (other than those that have accumulated or been provided with wealth) is permitted to pursue quality. Those overhead deals meant a great deal to us. The industry no longer truly values the well done or well told. If a film can not appeal to the widest markets you can now expect to not be fairly compensated.

I have gone cold turkey and fled the treadmill. Yes, I was addicted to producing #IndieFilms. When I was living in NYC, I could not resist. I wanted to read your script. I wanted to take that meeting. I wanted to team up. Sorry, but fuck that. It is a waste of time and only feeds our Bizarro World. I don’t want to be part of it.

I want to make films that lift the world and our culture higher — and our current way of doing things does just the opposite.
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And from his "Bizzaro World" post:

http://trulyfreefilm.hopeforfilm.com/2013/10/say-goodbye-to-bizarro-world-time-to-make-business-of-art.html

The world over, film culture is in the same crisis.

1. Creators cannot sustain themselves financially no matter how good their work is.

2. The fair market value for our work is a pale fraction of what it was decades ago.

3. Good movies do not get seen.

4. Consumers demand that content be free, but then are willing to shell out thousands for the hardware to play it on.

5. The hardware manufactures and the rights aggregators get rich and the creators get pennies.

6. Participants in the passion industries are exploited for their commitment and dedication.

7. We watch the long tail get crushed by the tsunami of the new as the system we rely on only benefits the well funded loud shouters.

8. Our film culture has bifurcated into $100 million dollar tentpoles about superheroes of mass destruction and redundant family fables about gaining self-esteem on the one hand and the hordes of underfunded passionate amateurs on the other.

9. We have created a corporate culture committed primarily to risk mitigation and thus ultimately resulting in the obliteration of ambitious, original, humanist work.
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Man, Mr. Hope is so right. But I wish he weren't. Especially about producers getting paid in the indie world. The rule of thumb has always been a fee of 2.5% of the budget for a producer, then hope to make it up on the back end. But I have NEVER known a good indie producer to take that much. More often than not, they pay themselves living expenses. They want to make sure every penny goes into making the best movie possible.

I've worked with a lot of producers over the years, and it's so easy to tell the bad ones. They take as much as they can. They'll rent everything they own to the production, just to squeeze a little more out of it. The production tends to run despite them, but it doesn't run very well. A good producer is like gold, kids. Fucking GOLD. But they are a rare creature.

And people wonder why I scream so loud about Piracy.

It's a sad day when great producers like Hope say "fuck it."

Thoughts?

Dan

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Response from 11 years, 6 months ago - Anthony Rossello SHOW

11 years, 7 months ago - Dan Selakovich

Yeah, a few of my friends consider him a complainer, and should be happy with what he's got. Though I have to side a bit with Hope here. The "One for me, and one for you" paradigm really doesn't exist any longer. "Storytelling" or "Safe" just couldn't be made now, even though the digital age giveth, it also taketh away. He's right that people expect free content. If the budget is low enough, you can get a first film made. But not a second film. The first will have lost money. And every investor now knows about "file sharing" and the impossibilities of the current market. Films are not TV shows or books. They are a "one off". An author can have a book stolen as long as he has 2 or 3 others of the same genre, piracy may help him. Once a film is gone, it's gone.

It's because Hope is successful that he's in an awkward situation. He's been around too long to ask people to work for free. I feel the same; I have a terrible time asking for that myself. But that's a serious reality. By the time a distributor, a theater, and a pirate take a bite, there is nothing left for the investors much less a producer and his crew. And that's the position he's in because Studios have slashed "overhead deals" (that's when a studio funds a producer with staff and office space to pursue creative property). And that's why he can't do the one for you one for me. "Little Miss Sunshine" was only made because the producer, David Friendly, had an overhead deal. Even Joel Silver--one of the most profitable producers of all time--lost his overhead deal. And Silver is not the least bit interested in doing small, personal films.

When I started in film, American box office accounted for 80 percent of a films revenue. Now international box office is 70 percent of a films revenue. Gosh, what could have flipped that on its head I wonder?

Not to say producers can't do the job. It's just working with lower budgets, shorter schedules, and convincing "names" to take a back end deal. So in the end, a producer spends much more time in bullshit meetings that may or may not go anywhere than actually making the movie. And that's basically what Ted Hope is burned out on.

Many of the producers I used to work for have headed for other industries, giving up filmmaking altogether. 10 short years ago, you could walk into a studio with a good idea. Now you must walk in with a business plan. That's why I tend to laugh when I see "How to Pitch" seminars here on shooting people. The studio pitch is almost a dead concept. Almost. Sure, you still need to pitch, but without a business plan on how to promote, sell, and make a profit, a pitch gets you nothing but lunch at the studio (and bring your wallet).

Response from 11 years, 7 months ago - Dan Selakovich SHOW

Response from 11 years, 7 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin SHOW

Response from 11 years, 6 months ago - Tom Luc Sahara SHOW

Response from 11 years, 7 months ago - Dan Selakovich SHOW

Response from 11 years, 6 months ago - Dan Selakovich SHOW

Response from 11 years, 7 months ago - Dan Selakovich SHOW

Response from 11 years, 7 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin SHOW

Response from 11 years, 7 months ago - Tom Luc Sahara SHOW

11 years, 7 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin

It's an interesting discussion topic, and I'm not actually sure where I stand on it on the grand scale of things.

On the one hand, he wants to make quality, arty films and sinks so much time into development unpaid - the artist has never had an economically valued life (ask the great painters who died in poverty). On the other he wants money from 'the system', and that means compromise. Is the level of compromise excessive for the level of money? Clearly he feels so. He's probably right. But if it's not cost effective for a backer in the mainstream system, either the films are art for art's sake or he's spending too much on them. I don't know you can have it both ways.

Perhaps the answer for him is to forget the studio years and fight the same battles many people here face, raising finance for noncommercial projects, or ditching the 'art' and becoming a hack. Nothing wrong with being a hack. He can even use one to subsidise the other. Do an indulgent, deeply creative and potentially enduring and important project in 6 months and do 'Freddie and Jason vs The Lost Boys' in the other 6?

Response from 11 years, 7 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin SHOW

Response from 11 years, 7 months ago - Marlom Tander SHOW

Response from 11 years, 6 months ago - Anthony Rossello SHOW

11 years, 7 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin

Don't get me wrong, I suppose I'm not calling him a complainer so much as someone who at least got to enjoy the gravy years whilst they existed. Perhaps that got him a little too comfortable or too well known or too entrenched so when the changes came, he just didn't have the energy to deal with them? I can understand that.

I can't be dealing with all the scrabbling around for backers and deals and the begging it involves, I'm really not interested. I made an active choice to do 'production management', to spend the money some other poor soul has wounded/overcommitted themselves to get, and taking a flat fee for it. One in the hand, and all.

Maybe we're lucky in the UK that all our 'studios' (in that sense) died a long time ago so the landscape had been bleaker longer, and people have adapted better. There's no money in TV or movies here any more (TV - piracy and vod showings meant again Google got the advertising revenue the independent stations used to command - a slot used to cost 10x what it now gets). There are a few flagship shows with good international sales, and hours of disappointment and broken dreams filler.

80% US domestic down to 30%, that's pretty brutal though. If only it was due to the rise of international markets as opposed to the decay of the domestic one. That said, if you're making internationally interesting films as opposed to 'generic buddy road trip 4' you have a margin you didn't have before. The studios were never interested to begin with so maybe this is the dawn of the new era of American film finance somehow.

On the other hand, if he can adapt to the new/current world order and bring good projects without burning his bridges, there are thousands of talented and hungry crew here in Blighty, even if he can just knock people up for half his previous budgets I'm sure we can still do *something* with them... ;)

Response from 11 years, 7 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin SHOW