We Need To Rebuild -- And Build It Back Better

Part Six in All That Is Good & Bad In The FKAFilmBiz 2024

Today I am racing a bit to finish this series. I feel a greater need to get it done than to make it great. It is only a post and this is only a newsletter. I need to leave something for a book, right? Ha.

Is it all breaking down, or just readying itself for repair?

Or perhaps you want to use this link to get 20% off an annual subscription at 2024 prices. Time is running out!

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Problems With The FKATheFilmBiz, 2024, #101-125 (F-L)

101. Financing / Need for secondary market: Staged financing is a process, but a secondary market would be a mechanism. Many believe that blockchain and web3 could deliver a secondary market mechanism for the cinema industry but they aren’t the only way. Secondary markets bring better predictive analysis to all industries, while also diversifying their investor class. Right now the only people that participate in financing are those that have enough capital that they can let it sit still for three or more years until sales cycles are completed. There is no way to keep that investment liquid, but there could be. Filmmaking is ultimately about creating value, but our current system is built only to extract that value.

102. Financing / Not Philanthropy: let’s be direct: investment in new talent now is only the realm of philanthropy, but it doesn’t have to be.

103. First Principles / Neglect thereof: neither organizations, companies, or individuals appear to be committed to trying to define and declare them, yet 1Ps are a phenomenal tool for prioritization, action, and clarity. People fear surrendering flexibility, but that is their misunderstanding ; it is by making a commitment to something that we are able to determine its true applicability, and only once we have weighed things can we determine what we need to hold or discard.

104. First Principles/ what does indie stand for? what are its attributes? How come we never bothered to define these in the first place? You think it might have something to do with the mud we are buried in now? How else could we have forty years of doing the wrong thing? We never prioritized the sustainability of the “indie” system itself.

105. “Foreign Value”: This myth that certain actors have value overseas has lasted long past its shelf life. No one brings additional dollars to your budget. The question is whether the project is viable at your budget or not. I don’t care who is in your movie; the truth is they aren’t going to buy it unless some of the team just had a hit or not.