Microcinema Flashback - Breath Mints, Microcinema and the American Film Market (2004)

The last of my microcinema articles which was printed online as the microcinema revolution neared its end. This one talks about the American Film Market and the lessons we can learn from it for the microcinema filmmaker. Funny how things had, well, not changed much as far as quality film creation during these years in microcinema. As many amateur filmmakers cried foul at the lack of respect for their work, in reality, most of the product created during this immensely prolific time were just bad cinema.

From May 2004.

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Breath Mints, Microcinema and the American Film Market
By Pete Bauer

After the Round table that produced a theoretical "ten commandments" of microcinema, there was some heated discussion on the Microcinema Scene message boards about the topic. One of the outcomes of that discussion was that, as Mike Amato stated so succinctly, some microcinema filmmakers are "Breath Mints" and some are "Candy Mints." Breath Mints are those microcinema filmmakers who want their projects to "smell nice" and would love to make movies for a career. Candy Mints are those who simply have fun making movies and don't have any real movie making career ambitions.

Well, this article is for all of the Breath Mints out there.

For those of you who are hoping that your creative jaunts in microcinema will somehow propel you into the fray that is the Hollywood movie machine, there is a simple way to see if your projects are up to snuff, to see just how far microcinema has to go to reach any sort of globally accepted quality level... attend an American Film Market (AFM).

If you've never been to the AFM, I strongly suggest you attend one. It is the place where films are screened and sold, primarily by U.S.-based distributors to international markets, however there are some U.S. distribution rights that are acquired from domestic and international films too. Everything from the next big Universal release to latest batch of Troma films are there. I attended the AFM in 1999 to see how the process worked as friends of mine assisted their distributor to get our low-budget action flick out into the market.

When you go to the AFM, what you will find is a very large group of below average films vying for the limited international distribution deals. If you can't actually attend the AFM, it wouldn't hurt to at least pick up the AFM edition of the Hollywood Reporter (usually comes out the month of the market... February this year, moving to November next year). In it you will find a lot of information about the films, a lot of advertising for films looking for distribution and a detailed list of every company and the films they have to offer. When scanning this years Hollywood Reporter, some interesting things come to mind in regards to microcinema.

First, some real distribution companies make the absolute worst posters. Its amazing how cheesy these things are. Maybe its on purpose, maybe in some twisted way they sell because they look stupid. I don't know, but there is enough of them that it makes me wonder.

Along with bad posters, there's a lot of movies with actors that scream "this movies going to suck, but at least you'll recognize the name of the star." Names like Eric Roberts, Gary Busey and Lorenzo Lamas come to mind. I've often been of the mind that I'd rather have the right no-name actor in a movie than the wrong name actor. But, that may not help me sell anything. The President of MTI Home Video says in the mag "I'll take all the Eric Roberts films I can find" because they fill a niche market. Scanning through you'll also find out that movies such as Ginger Snaps 2 & 3 are in post-production and that Corman's The Keeper of Time looks A LOT like Lord of the Rings.


You'll also find the estimated prices for worldwide markets. For films budgeted between $750,000-$1 million (the lowest budget covered), for example, you could make:

- between $30,000-$90,000 from the German/Austria market.
- $10,000-$15,000 in Malaysia.
- $2,000-$5,000 in Pakistan.

Compare that for films between $6 million-$12 million:

- you could make $500,000-$1.1 million in German/Austria market.
- $90,000-$150,000 in Malaysia.
- $20,000-$30,000 in Pakistan.

But even in Hollywood, making your money back is hard work. Consider that if you were in the lowest category ($750,000 - $1 million budget) the MOST you could make back (if their estimates are correct in the magazine) if you sold to ALL of the international markets at their HIGHEST value is $1.24 million. For the $6 million - $12 million budget range, the most you could make is just under $11 million. Of course, there are other ways to make money on a film (domestic, etc.) but this clearly shows that international sales has its limitations. I guess the key is to make a movie that LOOKS like $750,000 film, but costs much less. I don't think the technology used in microcinema is there yet, but perhaps someday it will.

What does all of this have to do with the Breath Mints of microcinema? I think you could safely say that many of the films at the AFM are what we most of us would consider crap. But, if you look at the difference in production value, story and acting, most are vastly superior to what is available on the microcinema scene. Granted, the nature of the microcinema scene promotes experimentation and imitation from learning filmmakers. But, I also get a sense from a lot of microcinema filmmakers that because we made a movie over 74 minutes long, people should consider it just as valid or valuable as the features Hollywood churns out. Yet, most microcinema efforts don't equate in quality to any of the features available at the AFM. As sad as a movie like SCI-FIGHTERS starring Lorenzo Lamas and Don "The Dragon" Wilson looks, it would still kick most of our microcinema asses.

In the end, as microcinema filmmakers, we may not give a crap about Hollywood's financial paradigm. Like Candy Mints, we may just make movies for ourselves. But, if one thinks that their next microcinema effort is going to be able to compete with even the lowest quality product selling at the AFM, unfortunately for the Breath Mints, we still have a long way to go.