In Victoria’s presentation, she discussed film production and defined it as the process of drafting a script and getting the best hands to work with. She comprehensively discussed the important steps to look out for before releasing a movie and number one on the list was ”Release” this entails asking yourself so many questions like, where do I want this film to sell? where do I want to make my money from? let’s assume the movie made it to the cinema what’s your expectation? How much money do you want to make? How many people do I think will bring out money from their pocket to buy a ticket? And if I don’t want to go to the cinema where do I want to go to? Oh you got a Netflix deal.. how many people will use their data to watch your film? will they watch Bridgeton over my film? Okay I couldn’t get Netflix, I got an African magic deal or Startime.. it will be nice to ask these platforms about their turnovers, do people really watch their films? If you figure this out before creating the film it will help you manage a whole lot of thing.
Secondly, Victoria spoke on marketing Strategy she said most people think when everybody in this room knows they are releasing a film that is a good marketing strategy but at the end of the day can it convert? We all know this particular film is coming out but can we bring out money to watch this film, if we don’t get to do that can we say the strategy failed?
Thirdly positioning, Victoria explained that this is something distributors are very particular about. she said movies are positioned because we know if we do not do this we will just release a film without seeing results. Every day people are producing movies but what is that difference in content A that content B will derive more satisfaction and more returns? This is where we call in distributors.
Distributors will tell you we have to position this film rightly we need to look at the date and look for memes to make this movie stand out.
Fourthly Consumer, Victoria opined that we are all consumers but we discover that when you make your own film you struggle to find consumers but we are all consumers. There are couple of times you make a film and the film is rated 18 and when you were creating this film you said everyone would watch it but you rated it 18, which means that people who are under 18 would not watch this film thus less revenue. Lastly Finance, she said there is no story without money no matter how little you want to tell it you have to spend money, the producer the cast and crew need to get paid now this should be your checklist you need to have sat down to program before you create that film.
We have different film distributors in Nigeria. We have Filmone, silverbird, Genesis and they all do the same thing which is the producer making profit. Victoria defined a film distributor as a middleman who stands between the producer and the consumer. The first thing a distributor do is review the film and give you feedback, there are many pointers such as cast, duration, story and technical quality. If the film distributors like your film they give you a contract they choose a release date and they send the film to the exhibitors and give them film assets. You have your agent or aggravators these are people who sell on your behalf you don’t need to do the whole work it was in those days when you have someone say I am a producer and then you will have to go to alaba market but now things have changed you have your agent or aggravators who will speak in your stead.
WATCH FULL VIDEO
