Time was, the big hurdle was getting your movie made. Remember those heroic tales about scrappy directors maxing out their credit cards, shooting in their living rooms with their moms doing the catering? That story's passé now. With the advent of inexpensive digital video cameras, it's easier to be a filmmaker. Now the primo challenge is landing a distribution deal – getting your movie seen.
Similarly, time was, the market scene wasn't the main attraction at the Toronto International Film Festival (whose 2010 edition opens today). Despite the occasional buzzed-about late-night bidding war, TIFF was much more a place where studios and distributors showed off their already-purchased wares to audiences, and jump-started their publicity campaigns. But in the current economic climate, companies have to shill their films year-round, not just at one or two markets, and an international jamboree like TIFF provides an obvious opportunity.
Lots of high-profile films are seeking distribution deals here this year, including Trust, directed by David Schwimmer, starring Clive Owen and Catherine Keener as parents coping after the rape of their daughter; The Conspirator, directed by Robert Redford, the true story of a woman charged in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, starring Robin Wright and James McAvoy; and Ceremony, the feature directorial debut of Max Winkler, son of Henry, starring Uma Thurman as the object of a young man's crush.
"The U.S. studios aren't green-lighting this kind of movie any more," said TIFF co-director Cameron Bailey in an interview, referring to adult-oriented dramas with mid-range budgets. (Instead, the majors are pouring their resources into megabudget, special-effects extravaganzas.) "They won't take the risk to make them, but they'll buy them. We position them so they can get seen." Movies that landed distribution at TIFF last year include Get Low, starring Robert Duvall, Bill Murray and Sissy Spacek, which is in theatres now; and The Secret in Their Eyes, the Argentine drama that won the best-foreign-film Oscar for 2009.
A tier of hybrid production/distribution/marketing companies – including Relativity, Summit (which has the Twilight franchise), Magnolia and Oscilloscope – has risen to fill the void. A promising one is IM Global, a 22-person company started three years ago by Stuart Ford, a Brit who used to run international distribution for Miramax (which, before its purchase by Disney and subsequent demise, was an icon of mini-majordom). Films that IM Global has either helped finance, sell or distribute include the drama A Single Man, the documentary Religulous, and the horror sensation Paranormal Activity, whose microbudget and $200-million gross makes it the current model for guerrilla marketing.
"I'm part marketer, part banker, part producer and part salesman," Ford explained in an interview. Translation: For some films, IM Global provides financing. For others, it finds financing from outside sources. It can also handle pre-sales, find U.S. and international distribution, and sculpt a marketing campaign. Ford recently sold a chunk of his company to Reliance, the $29-billion (U.S.) Indian conglomerate, which will allow IM Global to have its fingers in a lot of pies: action, horror, art house, foreign. One of its films at TIFF, Everything Must Go, is a $10-million philosophical comedy, a classic range-expanding showcase for its star, Will Ferrell; while another of its upcoming films, Judge Dredd 3-D, is a $45-million genre picture.
But if IM Global does everything, what sets it apart? "We've been very successful at making a film an event within the industry," Ford said. "We have the artistic sensibility to spot a diamond in the rough, take a cool project from left field and drive it into the centre of attention."
For Paranormal Activity, for example, IM Global got involved after financing, but two years before its fall, 2009, release. "We organized a now-notorious screening at the American Film Market in 2008 where we bused in 300 teens from the San Fernando Valley and seated potential distributors right in their midst," Ford said. "We created this rock-concert atmosphere. It was pandemonium. By the next morning, we'd sold 48 territories." That buzz helped convince Paramount to goose its campaign. " PA had lousy production values, no saleable elements [stars] there were 100 reasons it could have disappeared into cultish oblivion," Ford said. "But we saw how viscerally audiences reacted, and we helped it find a bigger ending."
Ford hopes to do the same with Skyline, a "non-stop, special-effects thrill ride" made by siblings, the Brothers (Greg and Colin) Strause, who own a special-effects company, and decided to make their own film in-house. After IM Global helped amp up the brothers' backstory – "as dazzling as a studio film, for a fraction of the budget," Ford said – Universal agreed to release it in November, on 3,000 screens.
"And we'll be introducing distributors to the script for Skyline 2 here at TIFF," Ford said. Ever the salesman, he added, "We'll be holed up on the top floor of the Hyatt for the duration."
But there's a downside – a big one – to this brave new world of hybrid companies. It can be very confusing to filmmakers. Do you go with a big or small company? Do you shoot in digital or 3-D? Do you go straight to HBO or Video on Demand? Do you sell foreign rights hoping to catch the U.S.'s eye, or vice-versa?
"I have one word for you: empowerment," said Tom Bernard, co-president of Sony Pictures Classics. (One of the few art-house divisions of a major studio still extant, it has eight films at TIFF this year.) "I'm rather shocked that TIFF hasn't made more of an effort to empower its filmmakers more, by imparting information about what happens to movies after they're made. That information is only available from mentors, but most of their panelists at the forums are carpetbaggers, just trying to get you to hire them.
"Making a movie now is like starting a garage band," Bernard continued, "but in the same way that not knowing the music business can hinder your progress, not being knowledgeable about sales and publicity can make it hard to decipher truth from advertisement. How much of your future profits should you sign over to a sales agent? Is that company even going to be alive tomorrow? With all the changes in the business going on now, the wrong decision could be the end of your movie – or career."
Bailey countered that TIFF did run a boot camp for Canadian filmmakers about "how to work TIFF from the media and sales side. But we could expand it," he said. "The do-it-yourself approach to filmmaking is like DIY dentistry – it can be successful, but it's not for everybody."
Whatever the approach, Bailey said, "the basic goal remains the same: You want to get your film to an audience. That's what we do. We hope people come here to see the films we've selected. But we're aware they're also here to buy and sell."