Ticket to Hollywood

On July 1st, I had the stupendous fortune to be one of 5 participants in a film-making workshop with David Heavener.?This hour and a half was life changing. I have always dreamed of writing the screenplay, the musical score, and starring as an actor in a film I helped create. After this workshop, I have the information and the process to do just that!Here were my main takeaways...

• Developing a title that describes the film with punch and allure. The title should really draw you in and engage you so that you want to watch the film.
• Creating a tagline for the film that gives you a real sense of what the film is about and 'sells' the film so that people want to go see it.
• Writing a short summary which is basically a longer version of the tag-line that includes a brief description of the overall story.
• Designing a movie poster that gives you a good sense of what the movie is about and creates excitement.
• How to find investors to help you finance the film. There are lots of websites where filmmakers can go to find investors who are looking for interesting projects. You can also use Kickstarter or similar websites.
• How to get hooked up with distributors. The key to this is to get the word out early and send out notices that your film is in pre-production. If you have a great title, tagline, short summary, and poster, you are miles ahead of most filmmakers so distributors are more likely to take you seriously.
• How to make a profit on a film project. One of the main reasons a lot of movies lose money is that they rely on the extremely expensive Hollywood infrastructure. If you do your movie independently and do a good job selling it then the odds are good that the project will be profitable.

David is even willing to mentor us through the process. I set a goal to present my screenplay at The American Film Market this fall in Los Angeles!A HUGE thank you to Vin and Susan Morreale at VSMEntertainment for including a notice of this workshop on their Email mailing list, of which I am a member.