May 5th, 2011
Can Filmmaking Be Lean?
Posted by: Travis | 3 Comments »
When I first moved to Los Angeles about 5 years ago, I came here to “make it” as a screenwriter. I’ve since learned much more about the industry than I ever cared to. As I’ve learned more about startups and software development, I’ve started wondering if the lean methodology could be applied to industries other than software development. Given my background, I wanted to try and match lean methods to filmmaking.
The current filmmaking development process is, for all intents and purposes, broken. I’ve seen this first hand being a part of the development process on two screenplays, both of which never received the coveted greenlight. Part of the reason for this, is that film development executives have, as one exec I met with at New Regency so eloquently put it, “no fucking idea” what studios and audiences want anymore.
Year after year, producers and “industry insiders” are stunned by a few films that break open the box office. We’ve seen this with 300, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Slumdog Millionaire and most recently with Inception. Simply put, nobody thought any of these films would make any money. On the flip-side, several films that studios and industry insiders thought would be successful have bombed (Bruno, Land of the Lost, GI Joe, etc.).
The reason for this is that they’re now competing with numerous entertainment outlets that didn’t exist in the “golden age” of Hollywood. Nowadays, we can choose what we want to watch, when and how. We’ve also become a more savvy audience since we can learn about the movie before we take the plunge and buy that $15 ticket. And I’m not just talking about critical reviews or even the (now extremely influential) cadre of internet critics. I’m talking about the social networks that serve as instant reviews on movies and have managed to tank “surefire hits.”
What I mean to illustrate with this is that the film industry has lost touch with its audience. This is where the lean startup/startup accelerator model could come into play.
How to Start a Film Startup
First, let’s get one thing out of the way. Films are startups. Each film starts with a prototype (the script) usually created by a hacker (screenwriter) or two (a writing team). These people can also be looked at as founders. When a screenwriter starts a new project, they are simply “developing” a prototype. Sometimes they’ll team up with a development executive, usually they work alone. Once the prototype of the product is ready, the founders of the product take it out to pitch. They meet with potential investors to try and get the product to the next stage of development. This can either be for further refinement of the product with a production company, or for the production of the product. After the film has been made, it’s released to market, preceded by massively expensive advertising and PR campaigns. Everyone then crosses their fingers hoping that all of the elements were correct and that consumers will shell out money for it.
Lean startup methodologists work on the concept of finding a problem or pain-point, then utilizing the scientific method to massage your answer or solution into perfect market fit. As Paul Graham put it, look at something people are trying to do, and figure out how to do it in a way that doesn’t suck. Well a lot of people are trying to make movies and most of them suck at it. The reason is twofold, they’re not making what people want to see and they’re making films behind closed doors.
Graham outlined the keys to a successful startup:
My idea for the Lean Film is one that is developed cheaply, with a proven team, in an open format. Why don’t we develop films out in the open, inviting the potential audience to participate in refining the product to something that they want to see? It could work like this:
Film more faster.
Like in the TechStars program, we offer $8,000 to each “founder” of a project which are chosen from a pool of qualified applicants. We could take single writers, but we would prefer writer/producer or writer/director teams. The product can be at any stage but we’d prefer ones that are either in early script stage or just an idea. The reason being that it’s easier to tweak the story based on feedback early on.
The founders are then teamed up with “mentors” and taken through an intensive 4-month development process during which they make contacts throughout Hollywood, take master-classes taught by big names in the business and openly interact with their audience to continually mould their product into something that’s not only good, but market-proven.
At the end of the 4-month process, the team pitches their product to potential investors, producers, studio executives, etc. The product would not only include the screenplay but any talent attachments, media materials, etc produced by the two over the course of the program. Whatever the filmmakers need in order to secure that greenlight.
This is still an early concept. I’d appreciate any feedback, ideas or help.
I like the idea, I’m also really working on developing movies in a different, more entertaining fashion!
Wouldn’t involving an audience spoil the surprise though?
Isn’t it better when we get something we weren’t expecting like The Matrix / Donnie Darko & similar??
I thought about a similar project a while ago. To act as an umbrella for startup young filmmakers, maybe even to obtain some governmental subvention. But it wasn’t about Hollywood. Actually, it was not even for America…
The (sad) thing is that the cinematographic field is nothing like software field, at least when it comes to the final part of selling the product. It is about the product reception and the product consumption.
For product consumption it should be obvious – you see the movie once, then in most of the cases, forget about it, whereas with a software (entertainment) equivalent – games, there is another story. Also there are software products that you’ll come to use every day over and over again. I dare to say that when it comes to marketing and then usage, even the cars and software products bear a closer resemblance than it is with software and movies.
The product reception… There are two aspects to specify and both come from the fact that movies are more prone than other kind of products to biased consumers appreciation. First, like any brand-related product, there is the publisher company that is to be remembered. The average Joe doesn’t know nor care about the screenwriters or directors like he doesn’t care about the engineers behind some engineered product (including here the software engineering). If not anything else, he cares about the brand. …and second – that one thing that deepens the difference between movies and the engineered products, is that movies are FIRST OF ALL – about actors! That average Joe remembers the faces! You as a screenwriter, director, producer or whoever you are, in the big picture all you’ll ever do is only a sideway job. And that is something hard to digest and hard to live with. In my (personal and subjective) opinion, I find it to be a corrupt (and corruptive) structure. CG is slowly changing this. There will be a time where movies and movie production would be more like software and software development, where the actual creativity and talent will be the main factor for success. But till then, we are still living in a dark age, where the kind of project you are calling for is still ahead of it’s time.
Great post Travis, I actually find myself using movie making as a metaphor for startups all the time. I’ve also had this conversation with my friend @tibbon where we apply the lean approach to film making and there are definitely a lot of possibilities. He’s working on a lean documentary that looks like it could be a neat fit for your idea here. I would wonder about the writing aspect of things though. I agree with @edoardo that giving away the plot could be a problem. I’m assuming the level of transparency or frequency of “releases” of each film would differ based on the topic, purpose, etc.