Hollywood Road

Ask for monthly tickets and recommended tickets!

This is the actual situation. What Murphy said is not an exaggeration at all. Compared with the investment in making a film, Stanton Studio's funds are really not much.

"Chain Saw" is not a one-time sellout like "Hard Candy". It takes time to recover the funds. The North American box office alone will not be paid until February next year. The subsequent TV copyright fees and DVD video tapes are long-term income. , even if it is a sold-out overseas market distribution rights, according to Hollywood practice, the funds will not be in place in one step.

Even with the most optimistic estimate, we have to wait until the film is released overseas, which may be a year or even a year later.

As we all know, the return of funds in the film industry is not fast, and most films take a long time to achieve profitability.

Murphy himself is not in a hurry. With the past two investments, it can be said that he created opportunities for himself in a difficult situation. Otherwise, how many companies would be willing to invest in an unqualified director like him?

The North American box office of "Chain Saw" has turned all this around fundamentally. The North American box office of 60 million US dollars is enough to make many companies willing to invest in Murphy's next project.

Commercial achievements are always the best qualifications and evidence in this circle, and also the biggest source of confidence for investors.

"Leave it to me." Bill Rossis was full of confidence, "This is what caa is best at."

Although he has not actually operated a one-stop package service, he has the support of the company, and these are not problems.

Murphy also nodded, which is exactly what he meant.

He is a director, not a full-time producer. He felt powerless to take charge of these two aspects of the filming of "Saw". An excellent director needs to focus instead of being distracted by messy things. CAA's packaging service can just do that. Help him solve these troubles.

It is true that CAA's one-stop service fee is a headache, but Murphy does not have enough funds in his hands and is not ready to invest in himself. CAA's fee does not directly conflict with his interests.

Most importantly, this kind of service can effectively help a director at the beginning stage like him.

Since Bill Rosses provided a wide range of services for the film crew in the last film, Murphy has specially studied this business strategy of CAA, and found that as long as the conditions are right, its disadvantages are far less than the benefits he can obtain.

As we all know, many projects of production companies rely on stars,

But stars need good works, and good works need to be carefully discovered.

Since the early 1980s, caa has formed a partnership with a New York literary agent, and the other party helped to find a good story. After that, caa hired famous screenwriters to write the story into a script, so as to find stars and directors, etc.; then use this combination package to cooperate with producers factory negotiations.

Hollywood studios, especially mid-sized production companies, liked this time-saving and labor-saving operating model so much, so the studio paid a lot of money to buy this package.

The caa thus represents at once all the star performers and behind-the-scenes staff in the package, rather than a single individual.

In addition, the old habit of the entertainment brokerage circle is individual to individual, and CAA's approach is that a team serves an individual, just like the service provided to Murphy.

In this regard, the core logic of CAA is that when there are enough customers, the identity can be reversed, from the buyer to the seller.

For example, the barriers to entry in the media industry were very, very high. If it didn’t matter, there was no way to do anything. When there were enough customers in hand, they could be packaged and combined in different forms, thus forcing those who controlled the threshold nodes. .

After studying these, Murphy also has to admit that this is a very clever and genius business strategy, which has changed the entire entertainment brokerage industry.

Of course, the development of everything is not smooth sailing, even caa is no exception.

In the first 5 years of caa, it could only focus on the TV field, without movies, music, etc. Later, it switched from TV to movies, and it also started from scratch.

They bring ideas and information together, introduce customers to each other, and introduce customers to people who are not customers. Originally, artists who belong to the same attribute should not be signed, such as Robert De Niro and Al Pacino under CAA, but CAA thinks that it is better for these people to get together and know what each other is doing.

In addition, caa has created a department dedicated to finding ideas, such as mining stories from news headlines.

In addition, every agent of caa has to do things outside the company, such as looking for inspiration in the school community, and creating products for customers all the time.

It is absolutely no coincidence that this company can develop into a dominant presence in the entertainment brokerage industry. Many of its strategies are in line with the needs of the market.

For example, Murphy now, if he fights alone, even with the box office figures of "Chain Saw" as his qualifications, if he wants to attract enough investment, he still needs to run from company to company to explain his crew Creativity, explaining the possible market potential, and even working hard to build a good relationship with investors...

These will consume a lot of energy and affect his work as a director.

After talking with Bill Rosses about this matter, Murphy checked the time and prepared to leave.

"Murphy," Bill Rosses finally reminded, "don't forget, after finishing the script, there is still a plan."

"I know." Murphy nodded.

Scripts and project proposals are essential. You can't let caa go to a production company and tell them in plain English that a project is being prepared by its director, and then pull investment, right?

According to legend, the agent of caa went to the six major companies and said that I had a project, and the other party would feel like they had found a treasure, obediently set up the project to invest... Well, Murphy just listened to this kind of thing.

If you think about it with your toes, you know how stupid the executives of the six major companies must be to do such a thing?

Leaving the Death Star Building where CAA was located, Murphy first went to a car sales company in West Hollywood. A black Cadillac that was reserved some time ago had already arrived.

That's right, he was going to change the car. Although the dilapidated second-hand Ford had no major failures, there were many minor problems, and he couldn't continue to drive it.

Murphy also did not choose a luxury car, and temporarily bought an ordinary black Cadillac sedan.

In addition, after Carey Mulligan met the conditions, she was asked to apply for a driver's license. This is a car kingdom, and driving is a must.

The contract with CAA was completed, and for the time being, the idea of ​​other brokerage companies poaching the wall was eliminated. Without the frequent interruption of the broker, Murphy returned to the working state before the vacation. After finishing the first draft of the script before, he began to prepare for the more important program planning proposal.

The script is the basis for the existence of this project, and the budget funds are the basic conditions for its realization.

Although the investment in the new project is much higher than that of "Chain Saw", it is not as good as Hollywood's mainstream commercial production. From a large perspective, it still does not break away from the category of independent films.

Making a budget is not enough to list all possible expenses. It takes some skills to make the project impress investors.

This is not difficult for Murphy.

When making independent films in Hollywood, there is never a so-called "correct budget", but there is a "correct method of calculating the budget".

Before using this method, Murphy needs to consider writing a movie budget independently like writing a script seriously. His former mentor told him a little trick to judge whether a movie scene is complete: if he deletes from the description of the scene One word, the whole scene cannot be filmed.

This rule also applies to the initial frame cost budget of the film. He needs to start from the lowest budget on the premise that the film can be shot.

On this budget, a movie for less than a dollar may not be made.

But Murphy will hide this amount from anyone, not even Bill Rossis, and this so-called "anemic budget" is his little secret, and this amount should be hidden in the back of the closet at home. , or any other place that anyone who rummages through the box for months can't find it, instead of spreading it around.

Unless Murphy is really forced to nowhere, he will never easily come up with this budget to make a movie.

The actual reported budget is several times of this figure. It is impossible for this kind of film investment to be as much as the plan, and the intended investor will give as much. No one is so stupid, and there must be a certain amount of room for bargaining.

With the script and budget, Murphy has to consider how to impress investors.

It is true that he has certain qualifications, but when it comes to millions of dollars of funds, who would easily throw them out? To make investors willing to spend money, we must let them see the expected benefits.

This can be said to be the most critical part of the project plan. Hollywood investors will not invest in a movie because of art or other lofty goals. Their investment purpose is very simple-profit!

The estimated initial profit is also directly related to the actual cost that Murphy can get.

Murphy can assume that all resources are available, put forward the cost of filming in a perfect world, and then calculate the possible returns for investors based on market estimates.

After obtaining this figure, potential investors will inevitably cut costs based on this figure as much as possible, and then subtract the estimated income that can be obtained through overseas film market sales, and the estimation of overseas market sales must take into account the actual political and economic conditions. For example, in the current market environment, the gains from the three markets of China, Russia and India are basically worthless.

After deducting the cost of overseas income, plus the amount of film shooting tax rebates that can be obtained based on the shooting location, it is roughly the actual investment of an independent film.

This will also determine where the film will actually be filmed.

If the budget is less than $1 million after deducting overseas earnings, shoot in Los Angeles, California; if the budget is less than $5 million, shoot in New Orleans, Louisiana; if the budget exceeds $10 million, then You can consider buying a copy of "Romanian for Dummies" and then apply for a passport. Go to Bucharest to take pictures. (To be continued.)