AFM - American Film Market.

So these past few weeks have been spent preparing for the American Film Market, or AFM. It’s been a long, twisty journey for Lilith thus far, as we’d been accepted to a few festivals but were advised to preserve our world premiere status for future opportunities. And now we’ve come to the market.

There are two primary markets for film - the Marché du Film at Cannes (which is not associated with the Cannes Film Festival) and the American Film Market (which is not associated with the AFI Fest). There are smaller markets, but these are the primary two that draws everyone’s attention.

AFM takes its annual residence in beautiful Santa Monica, CA.

So what goes on at a film market? Pretty much what you would think - a group of vendors sell their wares to buyers from around the world. In this case the vendors are either production companies or sales agents, and the buyers are distributors and networks from across the globe. Lilith is in the mix with over 5,000 other films waiting to be sold in different territories.

Five thousand films. That’s a lot of competition. And most of those films aren’t from 2011, they extend as far back as 2008-09. They range in every genre, format and budget, and it’s up to the sales agents to get the eyes of the buyers in that mess. It’s no easy task.

We had almost a dozen sales agents interested in Lilith, and we ended up going with a smaller boutique firm, because I felt they understood how to position the film best. There are gains and losses to be made in every decision, and the positive of going with a smaller firm is that they will focus on your film, and it won’t get lost in a large bunch of films on their docket. The downside is that these smaller firms don’t have the budgets to mount lavish marketing campaigns or the means to secure large venue screenings of the film - they have to find other ways of getting attention. I felt my sales agents were very creative and intuitive on how and who they wanted to approach, all the while keeping the costs down.

So who are these buyers, then? We’ve all read of the bidding wars by distributors like The Weinstein Company or Sony Pictures Classic in the back rooms of Sundance and Toronto, but there are many other buyers out there than the prestigious mini-majors.

Every country has a television network, and a large percentage of them have privatized cable networks. Many of them have local theater chains and a public that is hungry to be entertained, but the local television / film production is too small to fill that demand. And while everyone would like to see Transformers and Harry Potter, these films are seasonal and are very expensive to distribute, an expense that is generally undertaken by the studio because foreign territories are the primary cash cow for the entertainment industry.

But there is an entire year’s worth of programming to fill in these countries, and these networks generally can’t afford the hefty price tags of the latest blockbusters, so they look to smaller fare to fill their demand. And every country has a different idea of what they find entertaining - when I lived in Poland, I saw American films that I’d never heard of on television, and almost all of them were as serious as a heart attack. I guess that’s what people in Poland, at that time, liked to watch.

So everyone has a demand to be filled, and the markets provide the supply. A single film can be sold to dozens of territories, and the take can be from a few thousand dollars per territory (which adds up), all the way to tens of thousands of dollars per territory, and the film can haul in a few hundred thousand dollars in sales revenue. It can go either way. Of course a majority of the success of a film relies upon whether it is good or not, and other considerations are star cast and genre requirements. Horror, action and suspense films tend to sell well, as do screwball comedies (nuanced comedy is a little tougher, because comedy doesn’t always culturally translate) and films with copius T&A. You don’t have to know a foreign language or culture to understand sex and violence on the screen.

Is this a hard sell to make? BTW I absolutely LOVE ‘Tokyo Gore Police.’

Lilith has garnered some pre-AFM buzz from the good people at Dread Central and Shock Til You Drop, and I’ve made some pretty cool posters for the film in addition to the series of commissioned posters that we already have. The trailer has gotten a strong response, and Julia’s star is rising. And it doesn’t hurt that she’s easy on the eyes. Always a plus when trying to have your film stand out from the crowd.

Julia’s eyes are easy on my eyes. From ‘Lilith.’

We’ve done our homework and worked really hard, and now we have to just sell sell sell. I’ve done whatever I can, and now it’s up to my sales agent to work his magic. I’m going in with low expectations - the global economy has done a doozy on film buying, both at markets and at festivals, but that doesn’t mean the demand for good films is any less. In my heart I know Lilith is an extremely high quality offering - good cast, excellent performances, remarkable visuals, a sonic palette that is unprecedented, and plus it’s an unusual story, not your average fare. There are many reasons why it sticks out from the crowd, but the crowd is huge. Massive. I just want Lilith to find a home with people who appreciate her, and hopefully we’ll make some money in the process. We’ll see how it goes.

Wish us luck, and please don’t forget to subscribe to the Lilith facebook page for more details and updates on the film!