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advice, budget, buildup, counter, deal, film, filmmaker, four step plan, goals, ideas, inspire, money, movie, movie maker, necessity, negotiation, process, Production, selfish, student, teach
I’ll be honest: I had a terrible day today and wasn’t sure if I’d make this post tonight or tomorrow. However, since I feel like that wouldn’t be fair to those of you who are loyal readers, I figured I could try and knock it out tonight.
We meant to talk about how negotiating a film deal goes. So we’re going to proceed based on three assumptions. First, that you have submitted your film to a festival and were accepted. Second, that you were successful with your film and are now being approached by several distributors. And third, that you have more than one project in the pipeline. If you’ve stuck with me so far, hopefully this won’t be too far from reality.
So if you’ve got distributors on the line, here’s how this is going to play out:
- Set up appointments with each distributor over the next two or three days. Don’t try and do it all at once. That’s crazy talk.
- Don’t order too much food. You’ll make yourself sick. And you can focus on the deal.
- Meet with each distributor and discuss their deals.
Essentially, there are four steps to the negotiation. These steps are pretty much the same for every person, with some minor adjustments.
- The Initial Deal. Make sure they offer first, otherwise you’ll come off as an amateur and they’ll take advantage of you. It’s what they do.
- The Counter Deal. This is where adjustment comes into play. Essentially, all those things we talked about over the last couple of weeks come into play. You know they are low-balling you and so you offer a counter deal because you want to maintain as much control as possible while also earning the most money. Now, at your first meeting, this is more about you demonstrating that you can negotiate. For the next ones, it’s used as kind of a tease. You say you have other offers like A, B, or C.
- The New Deal. Now that they see you’re not one to be taken lightly, they come back with another deal. Pretty straightforward. Maybe a bit better than their last deal or even the other guys’ deals.
- The Buildup. You finish with a “I’ll let you know” as you head to your next meeting.
After each meeting, take into consideration what each deal offers and then make a decision. It’s not difficult, depending on how well you know yourself. But if you talk to somebody and get multiple offers and rush in, you might regret your decision. So the purpose of all this is to get the best deal for yourself. It is a bit selfish, but in this case, it’s the one time you can be.