Cinema's Secret Formulas: The Differential

#9: Our sales system is need of a major repair -- and the 01.26.25 Edition of The5

It’s a long and lonely road all of must walk — but we are never as alone as it may look. (Photo: Vanessa Hope)

Before we begin, at the end of this post, you will find the latest edition of The5, my curation of links and ponders that my effect your creative practice — particularly those that are NonDē filmworkers.

This is what you have to look forward to…

HFF’s The5: 01.26.25 Edition

1. Is Sundance due for a major pivot?

2. If they double-down, we need to build the support

3. Is there a market at Sundance any more?

4. Where should all filmmakers move to now?

5. I want a film festival focused newsletter please

---

And now on with our show! Cinema’s Secret Formulas… revealed!

How many film schools are there? How many books have been written about our business? How many webinars go on every week aiming to provide you with all you need to succeed? How many festival panels on the state of our industry? Certainly the answer to all, is far more than we need.

Yet here we are. And despite living in this moment in this time of plenty, still so much goes unspoken, undiscussed, and unfortunately unrealized. So what’s one to do, particularly when you found a way in, tried to pull as many as possible with you, but even as you worked your way to that spot near the exit door, the room hasn’t changed that much? Folks are silent. Few tried to truly share. The folks that were actually proactively kind or generous to you, you can count on one hand. Do you just stop and do like they do? Or perhaps you still believe that people will change? That things will get better? Or is it time to modify one’s expectations?

Let’s keep offering up what others don’t, or rarely do. Why do that, you ask? Why when so much is provided, yet so much remains buried under the surface? Most aren’t complaining that they are missing out, are they? Is our community truly probing why aren’t things better? What aren’t they? Why aren’t we? Makes me wonder. Doesn’t it make you wonder too?

You didn’t ask for a collection of secret formulas. No one did. My younger self would want it though. So this older bag of bones provides. What if I had been prepared with such understanding from the get go? Would I have done things differently? Would I have had to learn all this for myself, even if someone I respected had shared it with me?

It is enough for me that I would have wanted them. It is enough for me that I did learn these things and then saw how they have affected my professional creative practices. Those factors alone make we want to share them. And so I do.

So I will continue to share these Secret Formulas. For awhile or maybe longer. I hope you appreciate them. I’d always be open to discussing them more.

May I tell you about the latest one I’d like to offer?

---

The Differential

I first spotted The Differential in the 90’s when we were making a multiple of movies a year at our company Good Machine. Others were doing the same thing and the industry started to see that something was happening with NY-based American Indie Film. It was catching on, first with audience, and then with buyers. But it felt to many of us that those buyers weren’t really paying what they were worth, or even paying close to what the value to them was. Sound familiar?

The nice thing is that when you see something repeated over and over, you can use it to anticipate future actions. Will it stay the same or evolve into something else? Is there anything you can do to accelerate or enhance that evolution? What is the utility inherent in it that is repeated in that action?

The Differential was one such situation, and I (and others) saw where it could lead. We are back in a new era of The Differential and we should see again where it may lead. I have some thoughts on that. Perhaps you do too.

---

The Differential

(and what its current existence may mean for the Cinema Ecosystem):

There is a huge difference between the perceived value of cinema projects — both made and in a packaged pre-sale form— and their actual value to those who distribute them. Artists, their backers, and collaborators only benefit when that gap can be significantly tightened.

Currently, The Differential is wider than it has ever been…