Day 4: IFP Market
Got up early to attend HBO Breakfast at 9am. Wasn't sure what would happen since I had just met with HBO yesterday (and they were none too interested then). Sure enough, when I arrived at the breakfast place, I was told that HBO only wanted to meet with people they hadn't already spoken with -- so I just filled up my breakfast plate and sat with a few other filmmakers in the same boat. Met the cameraman/editor of "Animas Perdidas", a doc film that follows two deported Mexican brothers who had lived all their life in the U.S. Also met the director/producer of "Sons of a Gun", a doc that follows four formerly homeless people who live together in a single motel room. I wasn't expecting to enjoy meeting filmmakers so often, but it was really one of the highlights of the market.
Our first meeting was scheduled for 11am with Cinetic Media. This meeting was a total surprise because it was originally canceled on Monday. Cinetic is probably the #1 sales agent in the entire country -- they have represented everyone from "Napoleon Dynamite" to "Born into Brothels" to "Supersize Me", essentially the blockbusters of the independent film and documentary world. Getting represented by them is a very good bet towards getting into Sundance and/or Toronto -- they can't guarantee you entrance, but the festival programmers trust them so much that they tend to give you an extra look. For a film like ours which really needs finishing funds and good marketing, having a partner like Cinetic would be crucial. Kudos to the IFP folks for rescheduling the meeting.
However, I wasn't really sure why Cinetic would be so interested in meeting with us. When we walked into the meeting with Erin Heidenreich (one of the co-founders of Cinetic), we quickly found out why. Even though Erin hadn't seen anything yet, she said that the description of the project that she read in the catalogue really stood out to her. As soon as I finished my 1-minute pitch, she just started saying how great she thinks the project is. Because she was expecting an important call any moment, she said that she wanted to "cut right to the chase" and she asked us how much we needed to finish the film. We told her that we still needed $110,000 to finish post-production (and $90,000 to reimburse crew for the production). That number didn't seem to faze her, and she immediately told us about how places like Participant & Big Beach have funds available to fund documentaries with greater social impact. Then she asked if we thought it would be possible to do some kind of a corporate tie-in with our film, just as "Akeelah and the Bee" did with Starbucks. We laughed and told her that the South Bronx doesn't have ANY Starbucks stores (at least none that we'd seen); however, we thought that Dunkin' Donuts would be a perfect tie-in since the principal in our film visits Dunkin' Donuts every morning to get his caffeine and sugar -- we even have a sequence in which I follow Ed to the store. Another tie-in possibility is Dell, since all the teachers have Dell laptops and they are always using them.
Finally, our meeting came to an end, and Erin asked if we had a DVD of our trailer. I told her that we would get one to her immediately, but we would much rather she come to our screening which was coming up in half an hour. At first, she said that she was busy (not surprising) but then she quickly reversed course and said that she was going to cancel her other meetings and come to our screening. Needless to say, we were very happy by this turn of events. As promised, she showed up and by the end of the film, she was in tears (or so my producer Jillian tells me). She said that this film is "important" and "needs to get out there" and she promised to call us immediately on Friday. Wow, that means she must like it, or else she wouldn't make that kind of a promise. Amazing.
Our second screening was much larger than the first, which caused me to wonder if word-of-mouth from the first screening had attracted more people. I was trying to count the number of heads in attendance, and I think a good estimate was 30-35 people. From other screenings I had been at, the average is about 15-20 people. What was nice was that we had no other films following us, so we could take as long as we wanted for Q&A. We had about 6 questions and you could tell that people were really involved in the story (and curious as to whether or not our main student character succeeds). Two of the programmers from the Slamdance Film Festival came up to me at the end and said that they would really love to have "Whatever It Takes" submit -- incidentally, the same thing happened two years back with "Mad Hot Ballroom" and look where they are now.
Another bonus was that one of the representatives from the Gates Foundation's PR firm (Clark & Weinstock) was there in attendance. We are really hoping that the Gates Foundation sees a tight connection between our film and its advocacy for small schools. We talked with the rep for awhile and she said that she really enjoyed the trailer and that she would be in contact soon. Not as enthusiastic as Cinetic, but that's probably because the rep didn't want to get our hopes up too much with the Gates Foundation, which is certainly an intimidating organization.
My wife Eunice was also in attendance, and it was great to have her support. I felt bad not being able to pay more attention to her then and there, but I know she understands. I hope it's an encouragement to her to know that her husband is finally making some headway with his documentary films!
Next up was a meeting with American Documentary Inc., the folks who program the "P.O.V." program on PBS. POV is probably the place where I think "Whatever It Takes" really belongs. Strangely enough, that's exactly what Chris White (the POV representative) said: "This is exactly the kind of thing we are looking for..." Of course, he hadn't seen a second of footage yet, but he promised to look at our DVD trailer. He said that the POV staff was about two weeks away from making final decisions for POV's 2007-08 seasons. All in all, quite a positive meeting.
Immediately after POV came a meeting with Eric Korsh of Scout Productions. This was an especially interesting meeting because Eric asked us if we thought that "Whatever It Takes" could be split up into a six-part series for TV -- something we had never ever considered. Eric said that he sees the story of the school as being a possible series on something like ABC Family Channel. In general, I think we would have to do a lot of reshooting in order to have enough footage and exciting, cliffhanger moments that TV demands -- but if we were to have a POV premiere, a second run on ABC Family would certainly be an intriguing possibility.
We waited for about half an hour for our next meeting, but the guy never showed up...
Lastly, we met with Susannah Ludwig from Flourish Films. Susannah is a producer who last worked on "Stolen", a nice doc which got some run on PBS. Susannah was the only person who said that she could probably NOT give us any money -- what she promised instead was to help us finish the film and talk to all the right people, be they from foundations, distributors, or sales agents like Cinetic. Really nice person, and we felt like she might be a great addition to our team because of her potential to form tight relationships with funders and non-profits.
Whew! As exhausted as you may from reading this blog entry, I was even more exhausted by this fully packed day. Happy, and feeling very encouraged, I headed back home on the 7 train. As if the day weren't perfect enough, I got a call on the way home from a programmer with the Newport Film Festival who had seen my trailer for "Wheel of Jeopardy", my other documentary about TV game show fans, and they offered to waive the $60 application fee if I submitted. Of all places, he had seen the trailer on YouTube! Go figure...
Our first meeting was scheduled for 11am with Cinetic Media. This meeting was a total surprise because it was originally canceled on Monday. Cinetic is probably the #1 sales agent in the entire country -- they have represented everyone from "Napoleon Dynamite" to "Born into Brothels" to "Supersize Me", essentially the blockbusters of the independent film and documentary world. Getting represented by them is a very good bet towards getting into Sundance and/or Toronto -- they can't guarantee you entrance, but the festival programmers trust them so much that they tend to give you an extra look. For a film like ours which really needs finishing funds and good marketing, having a partner like Cinetic would be crucial. Kudos to the IFP folks for rescheduling the meeting.
However, I wasn't really sure why Cinetic would be so interested in meeting with us. When we walked into the meeting with Erin Heidenreich (one of the co-founders of Cinetic), we quickly found out why. Even though Erin hadn't seen anything yet, she said that the description of the project that she read in the catalogue really stood out to her. As soon as I finished my 1-minute pitch, she just started saying how great she thinks the project is. Because she was expecting an important call any moment, she said that she wanted to "cut right to the chase" and she asked us how much we needed to finish the film. We told her that we still needed $110,000 to finish post-production (and $90,000 to reimburse crew for the production). That number didn't seem to faze her, and she immediately told us about how places like Participant & Big Beach have funds available to fund documentaries with greater social impact. Then she asked if we thought it would be possible to do some kind of a corporate tie-in with our film, just as "Akeelah and the Bee" did with Starbucks. We laughed and told her that the South Bronx doesn't have ANY Starbucks stores (at least none that we'd seen); however, we thought that Dunkin' Donuts would be a perfect tie-in since the principal in our film visits Dunkin' Donuts every morning to get his caffeine and sugar -- we even have a sequence in which I follow Ed to the store. Another tie-in possibility is Dell, since all the teachers have Dell laptops and they are always using them.
Finally, our meeting came to an end, and Erin asked if we had a DVD of our trailer. I told her that we would get one to her immediately, but we would much rather she come to our screening which was coming up in half an hour. At first, she said that she was busy (not surprising) but then she quickly reversed course and said that she was going to cancel her other meetings and come to our screening. Needless to say, we were very happy by this turn of events. As promised, she showed up and by the end of the film, she was in tears (or so my producer Jillian tells me). She said that this film is "important" and "needs to get out there" and she promised to call us immediately on Friday. Wow, that means she must like it, or else she wouldn't make that kind of a promise. Amazing.
Our second screening was much larger than the first, which caused me to wonder if word-of-mouth from the first screening had attracted more people. I was trying to count the number of heads in attendance, and I think a good estimate was 30-35 people. From other screenings I had been at, the average is about 15-20 people. What was nice was that we had no other films following us, so we could take as long as we wanted for Q&A. We had about 6 questions and you could tell that people were really involved in the story (and curious as to whether or not our main student character succeeds). Two of the programmers from the Slamdance Film Festival came up to me at the end and said that they would really love to have "Whatever It Takes" submit -- incidentally, the same thing happened two years back with "Mad Hot Ballroom" and look where they are now.
Another bonus was that one of the representatives from the Gates Foundation's PR firm (Clark & Weinstock) was there in attendance. We are really hoping that the Gates Foundation sees a tight connection between our film and its advocacy for small schools. We talked with the rep for awhile and she said that she really enjoyed the trailer and that she would be in contact soon. Not as enthusiastic as Cinetic, but that's probably because the rep didn't want to get our hopes up too much with the Gates Foundation, which is certainly an intimidating organization.
My wife Eunice was also in attendance, and it was great to have her support. I felt bad not being able to pay more attention to her then and there, but I know she understands. I hope it's an encouragement to her to know that her husband is finally making some headway with his documentary films!
Next up was a meeting with American Documentary Inc., the folks who program the "P.O.V." program on PBS. POV is probably the place where I think "Whatever It Takes" really belongs. Strangely enough, that's exactly what Chris White (the POV representative) said: "This is exactly the kind of thing we are looking for..." Of course, he hadn't seen a second of footage yet, but he promised to look at our DVD trailer. He said that the POV staff was about two weeks away from making final decisions for POV's 2007-08 seasons. All in all, quite a positive meeting.
Immediately after POV came a meeting with Eric Korsh of Scout Productions. This was an especially interesting meeting because Eric asked us if we thought that "Whatever It Takes" could be split up into a six-part series for TV -- something we had never ever considered. Eric said that he sees the story of the school as being a possible series on something like ABC Family Channel. In general, I think we would have to do a lot of reshooting in order to have enough footage and exciting, cliffhanger moments that TV demands -- but if we were to have a POV premiere, a second run on ABC Family would certainly be an intriguing possibility.
We waited for about half an hour for our next meeting, but the guy never showed up...
Lastly, we met with Susannah Ludwig from Flourish Films. Susannah is a producer who last worked on "Stolen", a nice doc which got some run on PBS. Susannah was the only person who said that she could probably NOT give us any money -- what she promised instead was to help us finish the film and talk to all the right people, be they from foundations, distributors, or sales agents like Cinetic. Really nice person, and we felt like she might be a great addition to our team because of her potential to form tight relationships with funders and non-profits.
Whew! As exhausted as you may from reading this blog entry, I was even more exhausted by this fully packed day. Happy, and feeling very encouraged, I headed back home on the 7 train. As if the day weren't perfect enough, I got a call on the way home from a programmer with the Newport Film Festival who had seen my trailer for "Wheel of Jeopardy", my other documentary about TV game show fans, and they offered to waive the $60 application fee if I submitted. Of all places, he had seen the trailer on YouTube! Go figure...
posted by cccwong at 12:41 PM
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