Project Background
I want to work in the film business- mainstream or indie film, it doesn’t matter to me. As long as I’m making movies, I’m happy. While I love BYU-Idaho’s video production program, one thing that was always missing for me was a deeper understanding of how the film industry works and how movies are funded, produced, distributed, etc. While the program has certainly prepared me to be technically proficient with video production gear and to work in a video advertising setting, I did not feel very well prepared to get my foot in the door of the sector I actually want to work in.
With this in mind, I set myself a couple of goals as I was pondering what to do for my senior project. Firstly, I wasn’t satisfied with just repurposing the COMM465 documentary I shot and directed, Thin Blue Divide, to fulfill the requirements of this course. I wanted to create something new, and with my time at BYU-I coming to a close, I knew that I wanted to take advantage of the production office’s cameras and equipment to create something I wouldn’t be able to as easily without those resources. I also wanted to push myself to work at a higher level of story concept and production design, beyond the typical short films about “student life” shot somewhere on campus. Finally, I wanted to learn more about what it takes to break in with an original idea and get an indie movie greenlit.
I settled on creating a screenplay and short concept film accompanied by a pitch deck that could be used to promote a potential feature adaptation. From this, my project, The Masculine Urge to Die in the Snow, was born.
How to Pitch a Film
I knew that if I wanted to create something that could convincingly win over producers and investors, I needed to fill my aforementioned knowledge gap and learn about how movies are actually taken from the concept stage to distribution. Fortunately, I had been connected with a full-time film producer on LinkedIn for a while, named Daren Smith, who posted frequently about effective strategies for pitching films. I was able to hop on a video call and learn from him firsthand about what the pipeline for production looks like and, most importantly, what investors are looking for in a pitch.
I learned very quickly that a fatal flaw many aspiring filmmakers make is shooting whatever their favorite idea is first, and then expecting to find an audience for it after the fact. With independent films, or any films for that matter, this strategy is incredibly risky and usually loses money, which is why investors tend to steer clear of any pitches that don’t follow this strategy he laid out:
- Determine a clear target audience with strong market demand
- Create a distribution strategy
- Set a realistic budget that aligns with the market demand
- Plan your cast and crew attachments according to the target budget set
If these steps are done out of order, often the market demand, target budget, and attachment plan do not align. For example, you can’t say you want to hire an A-list actor who costs $2 Million for a project with a target budget of $2.5M. Or, you can’t plan an exorbitant target budget of $100M for a story that has little to no market demand. Producers and investors quickly see through this sort of poor planning and dismiss the project.
In any case, with this new understanding, I decided to find my target audience and market demand first and develop an idea from there.
The Story Idea
As I was researching target audiences, I learned that the demographic that makes up the largest chunk of total annual moviegoers in the US was 18-34 year old males. Looking through an old document of story ideas I had written down in my notes, I found a couple of ideas I could expand that matched the psychographics of said target audience. I ultimately settled on an idea I had that explores the dangers of toxic mentorship and internet influence on young men within the context of a militia in a near-future civil war.
This idea closely mirrored the themes that were most prevalent among the comparable titles popular with this target audience.
With the basis for my film decided, I was able to start drafting a screenplay. The process after this point became pretty typical of any student film production.
The Production Process
Things moved pretty fast after this stage. While working on finalizing the screenplay, I was simultaneously doing location scouting, searching for actors, and finding people I could source extra props and costume pieces from.
I was able to find an ideal location just 20 minutes outside of Rexburg on public land, and after calling the Bureau of Land Management, I confirmed that we would be able to film there without a permit.
In terms of finding actors, I sent out a casting call to the COMM department, the theater department, and also put one up on a Rexburg Facebook group. After about a dozen auditions, I found both of my leads through the FB post.
Finding realistic-looking props and costumes to really elevate the production design of the film was tricky, but a couple of weeks after making a post on a local airsoft page, two individuals reached out and were generous enough to provide many of the replicas you see in the film. They even agreed to show up as background extras in the final scene.
After several additional hours of pre-production and planning, the shoot day finally arrived. The day started out rough when one of the lav microphones we were using decided to stop working and put us severely behind schedule. It also didn’t help that it was incredibly cold and windy that day, so we were constantly fighting the elements. However, the team pushed through, and we were able to shoot almost everything we needed that day. We had arrived at the location at sunrise that morning, and by the time we left, it was dark. It was an incredibly educational set experience, and if I could do it all over again, there are many things I would do differently, but I’m very proud of what we were able to accomplish with the time and resources we had.
Editing the film came next, and as of writing this post, the final cut of the film is still in the post-production stage, with small tweaks being done to color and sound.
The Pitch Deck
Finishing the short film wasn’t where this project was going to end, though. I still needed to take everything that I had learned about financing and distributing to create an attractive pitch deck I could show to investors.
The point of a pitch deck is to reduce the perceived risk an investor will take on in giving you their money to make your film. Below, you can see what that finished product looks like. Of course, a pitch deck is also accompanied by a presentation you yourself give, and so some information may be missing, but overall, this document outlines why this film should be made and why it will be successful.
Next Steps
With a finished screenplay, short film, and pitch deck, I am now in the position where I could hypothetically take this package and present it to producers and investors to gauge their interest in making this feature film a reality.
That’s easier said than done, of course. Hundreds, if not thousands, of films are pitched every year, and only a fraction of those make it to the big screen. So really, the difficult part starts now. However, I’m grateful for the experience I had working on this project. I learned many lessons of what to do and not to do on a bootstrapped production like this, and I expanded my knowledge of the business side of film. I feel better prepared now to make my way into the movie business after graduation.