Commercial Doesn’t NECESSARILY Mean Crap
Everyone has seen at least one bad movie in their lifetimes. They’ve probably seen more than that. However, unless you also work in film acquisitions or have done first-round review for film festivals you have not seen as many bad movies as those of us who do those jobs have. That’s for the simple reason that any movie you have seen out in the wild had to go through someone like us. There’s a narrow exception for self-distributed content that is generally limited to silos on Transactional Video On Demand (TVOD) platforms and some easier to access Advertising Supported Video on Demand (AVOD) platforms, but in general, unless someone with the power to act as a gatekeeper for film festival programmers or independent film distributors has given it the go-ahead, the general audience won’t see it.
This functionally means that anyone who works or has worked in these positions, myself included, has seen a Jurassic park sized pile of poopy submissions. Which is to say that we know the milieu of a crappy film. We can, and frankly should talk about the flaws inherent to the current system of gatekeeping, and how sometimes gatekeepers don’t know the difference between a revolutionary piece of cinema and more of the same old skeet. That conversation is beyond my personal scope to change it alone, especially not in a single blog post. Instead, this blog is an examination of how to avoid getting lumped in with the pile of crud we constantly reject. The basics are really easy to sum up:
Commercial Films Get Selected.
I don’t think I need to tell you why sales agents and distributors are drawn toward feature films that they deem commercial. They’re all business people, and if they don’t think they can make money with a project they won’t pitch it up the chain to their bosses and generally won’t take it out if they are the boss. Sure, there are exceptions here, but when you’re spending two, three, five, or even ten years making something you don’t want to bank on getting lucky at the end of it. If you make a commercial film in a known genre, your road to getting that film seen is going to be a lot easier.
Related: What Distributors Mean by Genre
While this is obvious for indie film sales distributors, you may not be familiar with the fact that most festivals make a similar calculation. There’s a pervading assumption that film festivals focus solely on the art, weeding out the diamond in the rough to give emerging independent voices a leg up. There is at least a bit of truth in that, and in general film festivals will focus significantly more on art than sales agents. What that assumption ignores is that most festivals also need to pay their bills, cover the expenses of their year-round staff, and overall build their brand so they can attract bigger new releases. This means that nearly every festival is also concerned about filling the theaters for the films that they select. Many if not most festivals also program with something of an eye for whether a film will have a life outside of their own screening as it grows their own renown. In short, festivals also care whether your film is commercial.
Dramas Don’t Sell
What mat makes us scream, gets our heart pumping, and brings us to the edge of our seats tends to be pretty universal for us as a species. What makes us emotional, or what makes us laugh isn’t nearly as universal. This means, that dramas and comedies tend not to export outside their country of origin unless you have a few big stars in them or they serve as a once-in-a-generation breakout. This is why those of us who work behind the back office tend to refer to those genres as regional films.
Speaking as a distributor, even domestically it’s really hard to get people to pay attention to an independent drama without names in it. It doesn’t matter how well made it is, if it doesn’t have a name people would often rather re-watch a Marvel movie than watch an enlightening indie drama that helps us better understand the human condition. I want to be clear here, I like those movies. I think we need more of them out there in society. However, if they don’t make money and make it hard for programmers to fill seats, it’s hard for us to focus on them when there’s so little profit margin for most independent film distribution companies.
If People Don’t See It, Your film has no impact.
If you want to make some revolutionary avant-garde piece, you’re going to have an uphill battle to get people to see it. If your work is about your strong and uncompromising vision and the statement you need the world to know, you could be doing yourself a disservice by focusing solely on the packaging you put your messaging into. Auteurs don’t get discovered as easily as they used to, and there’s such a glut of content it’s nearly impossible to have the impact you most likely desire without traditional distribution infrastructure behind you. Of course, there are exceptions, but they tend to involve years of building your own audience which can detract from the work that drives you to the point of burnout if you’re not careful.
Instead of banging your head against the wall trying to make your film exactly as you want to, you should consider boiling down your message to its core and then creating a story that fits into a strong, marketable genre in order to at least plant the seeds of your message for when you come back to the message film you initially needed to make. It could likely be a faster path to your end goal and will help you combat the issues inherent to my next point.
Tastemaker Fatigue is Real.
We as tastemakers, programmers, gatekeepers, buyers, distributors, and whoever else needs to review unreleased movies often have limited time and mental energy to get through our stack of submissions that piles much higher than you would ever expect if you haven’t seen it in person. First-round programmers at most of the top 10 major film fests have to say no to at least 9 out of 10 submissions. This means that they look for any possible reason to say no and when they find it, they put it on the poo poo pile.
Even if it makes the most timely possible statement and would get programmed if you don’t know somebody who can get you to a final stage programmer directly, the odds are not in your favor. The only way you can get an advocate like that is if you’ve been in the festival before or you attract a talented producers rep or distribution executive to champion your project. Generally, for those people to be your champion your work needs to be commercial.
Commercial doesn’t mean Crap
So what am I advocating for here? Do I want you to make the same old bloody, gore-y, craptacular boobfest of a horror movie? No, I’m not saying that. Well, unless you want to. If you do, it will get distribution, I might even help.
Defalcating Dung beetles! I just went against my own point for a shill and a bit. Let’s try again.
The commercial doesn’t NECESSARILY mean Crap
No one will tell you that every overtly commercial film is a masterpiece of cinema. There have been quite a lot of major blockbusters that turn out to be stinky bowel movements. What I am saying is that if you have a message you want to get out to the masses, one of the best ways to do that is to insert that message into a broader story that meets genre guidelines. Bryan Singer’s X-Men has strong undercurrents of self-acceptance and coming out in a time where that wasn’t really acceptable in a movie targeted at Teenagers. James Cameron’s Aliens is an Allegory for the War in Vietnam, and Stanley Kubrik’s The Shining is a tale of the fate of indigenous people and the increasingly aggressive subjugation they faced.
I doubt anyone out there would say that those movies or those messages would be considered shitty examples of cinema or messages, and almost anyone would consider them strong examples of highly commercial genre films. But that’s just one executive producer’s opinion. If you want more of my opinion, you should join my mainlining list via the button below. You’ll get monthly content digests to help you continue to learn on a manageable schedule. You’ll also get a FREE e-book, white paper, and some really useful templates to help you finance your film. Check it out via the link below.
