Wake up Call: The Business Plan

<---A helpful book for starting out

Last week I took a second run at my business plan for film. Every time I dig in, I get so excited about the future of this business. When I walk away, all the crap of life and my artistic mind wants to throw more into it, tell me how hard all of it is, and tries to overwhelm me. It often succeeds. It is why I'm only on the second draft of a business plan investors need to know about.

Too many of us treat ourselves as "filmmakers". Well, I'm sorry, but unless you work at Kodak, or Fuji, you are not a film maker. I am not a film maker. We all need to get it through our heads so we can move on and stop expecting someone to give us an aurteur contract because we can dissect Francis Ford Coppola films.

You are hardly an artist. Just because you know the art side, just because you make a movie and inject something Scorcesse or Lynch has done into your story, just because you can break down exactly why a Michael Bay movie is awful (and I'm talking about myself here too) doesn't mean you are "above" the business nature of your medium. This is a wake-up call, Jake.

The moment you apply a story to your art, you have become an entertainer. And entertainment is a business, there is no way around it. Your market might be stuck up film snobs like yourself, your story might be for pure art reasons. But any time you want to hold an audience captive, any time you would even like the idea of them paying for it, you are a business person.

Even David Lynch is subject to budgets, schedules, marketing, audience turnout, and ROI (that's Return On Investment for you ingenious aurteurs out there).

Here's what I've learned:

• Your art will not go away. You have a unique vision - inherently - no one else sees how you do. Therefore your artistic nature is not a trick, if you don't think about it, if you set aside thinking about your "art", it will not make you worse because you aren't thinking about it
• So start learning the business. Stop watching more movies for a month, and research on how the movie got made. You will only lose time by putting off stepping towards business.
• MOVE FORWARD, or, as I will condition myself to think = MFF. I will let you fill in the blanks there, but I had to use the middle one to get some emphasis on FORWARD. My first draft happened months ago because I finally sat down and said "I'm doing this". Because of that moment on that day, I'm done with my second draft today. But only because I did that first one months ago.

Finally: Rely on other people. Being an artist is a lonely gig, it comes with the territory. But you aren't an artist until you start creating art, remember? And you can't create art until you do some business.

• Which makes you a business person right now. Your business is failing. Because business is not a lonely gig. Understand your business and then get people excited about helping, people who are business people - not other aurteurs like you! How's that supposed to work? You will need marketing people, producer people, and people who know people. Start collecting business cards.
• Like a movie without a screenplay - you don't have a viable business without a business plan. So start writing the business plan. All those people you are collecting cards from have no idea what making a movie is, but if you can relay what making a movie is in terms they already know... How exciting will that be to them to understand the magic behind a movie suddenly?

That's all. Stay tuned for more on HOW to write a business plan. I'm no expert, but I sure have done exhaustive research. So I'll relay it to you. Not to mention, if you don't know anything about Oklahoma Tax credits combined with the federal government's incentive for investing in film, you are missing out. 

There is no other business that can guarantee 70% of an investment will not be lost. Not to mention, at the same time providing the potential of the return to be so massive (how much did the $10G film Paranormal Activity make at the box office?)

Oh... and MFF. Let's go.     (that's "flip"... by the way... like a, uh, front flip, you know... flip)