MadSmatter

There are lots of things you can and can't control when it comes to making a profit. Our keys were:

-Keep budget low, even for a small movie. Reach profit sooner as a result.

-Get as many influencers as we can, especially since we can't get stars. The influencers will drive audience better than ads and so forth when release happens.

-Make a movie that audiences will want, rather than a movie that you would want. Put the audience in the passenger seat, rather than the trunk.

Good question. Most people think, when I first tell them this, that we didn't submit because we weren't good enough to play in festivals. But the film has actually done solidly with critics, so that wasn't our issue, as I expected. The issue is that with huge fests like Sundance, they have started taking a majority of star power films in their program. What was once made for the little guys is now mostly for the medium players. On top of that, the submissions closed as we were nearing the end of post-production, and I didn't have interest in waiting up to three months to submit to a festival. We went directly to sales, and played festivals for our grassroots audience.

And regarding Jim, I used a personal plea from a mutual friend, and told him that I wrote the part with him in mind. We made it work with his schedule, gave him what his reps asked for, and make sure to be professional at every step. At the Q&A at our premiere, he said it was the most pro set he had ever been on, and was shocked by that since we were all like 22 years old or less.

Of course. We were working on a SAG ULB level, so points were crucial for both actors and producers. But surprisingly, points aren't too valuable to bigger actors, because they're so used to them getting swallowed up that they'd rather just have money in hand. Myself and the other producers put all our payment in back end points just so everyone would trust that the points actually meant something. That's a great tactic, albeit a starving-artist one.

It's so true that professors don't speak enough about profit, but so much of that comes from the fact that the business has changed so much, even since a couple years ago. It's the wild, wild west.