What would I do if I ran a film studio?
TIMED - 45 minutes or less, baby. I can name 5 things. GO.
The idea is, you just inherited a film studio, one that already exists. It’s a dream scenario, so it’s fully funded, ready to go, and you can do anything you want with it, turn it into your dream studio. So what would that dream studio be?
Some other great writers who posted their own takes on this:
And a best-of-the-best roundup:
THE RULES
You can only name 5 things.
And as an additional challenge, he suggested we write these posts in 1 hour or less. He wrote his in under 45 minutes.
So I set a 45 minute timer for myself. Here we go:
1) Bring Back Small Budgets
My studio would focus on quality AND quantity, producing more movies, with less need for high number returns. Ideally, I'd try to stick to $1-$3 million budgets. Maybe as high as $5 million, and only break these budgets for rare occasions. It's not just the mitigation of risk, it's also to bring back the artform of making films with significant limitations. It's about more projects happening simultaneously. It's about everyone getting paid well but no one taking home obscene paydays. No producer or director needs to make millions. No single actor does, either. A lot can be done with $1-$3/$5 million.
2) Make Films That Move Us and/or Push Things Forward
I have no doubt that we'll always be looking for the pitch, the easy(ish) selling point of any project, but we also want to produce films that hit us (myself and my staff) in undeniable ways. New stories, new voices, new takes on established tropes, impeccably written characters or dialogue, whatever it is, we want to focus on putting out films that haven't been done before, or rarely done. We want our contained budget projects to push the industry forward, the way contained budget movies of the 90's once did.
3) Represent As Many Voices As Possible
When I worked for Sundance, I found the work to be some of the most rewarding I'd ever done because of our focus on historically underrepresented voices and supporting creatives of few means. But we've also been grappling, as a nation, with the fact that the youngest generation of men are now falling behind other groups in education, career, relationships, you name it. So I want our films to have a true blue full variety of voices - no voice will be off the table. I want to find films of all POVs, all voices, all walks of life, so long as the projects themselves do not promote toxic or harmful according to my (likely progressive-minded, if I'm the one who hired them) staff.
4) A Society of Like-Minded Production Companies
One of the biggest hurdles in keeping budgets in check, are the Agents / Managers of top talent. They only make 10% of whatever their clients make, so the motivation to keep prices at obscene levels ($20M for one person, for one movie) is high. I'd try to find as many production companies / producers as possible to form a "society", dedicated to only working with talent willing to take reasonable payscales. No single person can take more than 5% of any total budget. This is pie-in-the-sky, I know, but I believe it's integral to getting the wealth divide and the affordability of cinema as a business back under control.
5) No "Hollywood Accounting"
All contracts would be clear in language and fair in purpose. What precisely counts as "net" vs. "gross", and if a film performs, and makes a return, everyone benefits. The more people trust the industry as a functional business, the more healthy the industry - as an industry - will be, long term. Residual checks are the social security of film and TV folk. They need to happen always, whenever it's authentically earned.
Whew! Roughly half the time and DONE! At least writing out the text. Now I'm off to source some a cover image for this Substack and put it all-together in an actual post. Let's see if I can do it before the rest of the timer runs out...
DONE!!!
That was fun. I need to time myself to write Substacks in under 1 hour more often. Now to get back to real life ;)
