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by Richard Gazowsky

Welcome to my second article on obtaining funding for Christian films. The Christian film market is a completely different animal than the mainstream movie market. A medium sized mainstream film would have a budget in the $50 to $60 million range. The project would usually feature one or more major stars. This is not so true in the current Christian film market. There are a couple of factors that drive this. I’d like to mention just a few. First, finding an actor that has wide audience appeal and that the Christian audience will also accept is one small but important element that the filmmaker should address. Medium budget films unlike big budget and no-budget films can benefit greatly by having a well-known actor or actress attached to the project. For some reason medium budget projects are the hardest to sell when it comes to distribution.

In my humble opinion a medium budget Christian film would cost from $5 to $14 million to produce. The vast majority of Christian films that have made it to the theatrical screen have been budgeted in this category and this appears to be the current goal for 99% of Christian filmmakers. Most feel that if they can get this type of a budget they have ‘arrived’ on the Hollywood scene. The reason for this is very simple. When your budget is above $2 to $3 million you can use professional equipment and people to shoot your film, which means you should have a marketable ‘look’ to your production. As even the most casual observer would know just getting the right look is not enough. The theaters are filled with films that have ‘the look’ and are losing money. So having ‘the look’ isn’t enough. Many of you might say, “You forgot our main sales point is that our film is Christian and there is a huge Christian market out there that will come to our film just because it is Christian and they are Christian.” I hate to say it but this simply is not true. Just being Christian is not enough. As a matter of fact in today’s current state of affairs some Christians might read it as a sign of low quality production. For a moment, think back to “The Passion of the Christ.” Did everybody go to that film because Mel Gibson is a clear solid man of the Christian faith? Or did they go to the film because of its relevance, controversy, social impact, and just plain old curiosity? In the entertainment industry there is a thing called the ‘X-Factor,’ which is that very real but impossible to identify element that causes audiences to love one film and hate another. Marketing agencies have been trying to break this down for a hundred years but they are probably farther from the truth today than they were in the beginning. Now let me make it clear that I am not bringing up these factors to confuse the issue but instead I would like to bring clarity to the importance of what a medium budget film CAN do in the marketplace.

In my opinion Tyler Perry has become the King of the Medium Budget Film. He understands the stories that turn the cranks of a large segment of society. He plucks that chord loud and hard. He only needs to spend $5 to $10 million dollars in production because the weight of his films is found in the scripts, stories and choice of actors. By doing this he has created the rare element of having his name be the draw to the picture, which is very similar to the power of another famous producer, Jerry Bruckheimer. If you would look at the money that Tyler Perry is drawing in it is amazing as he maximizes the power that a medium budget film has. This type of film does not have to pay a star (it’s just a waste of money) and does not need some new special effects that have never been seen before. It’s just good, solid storytelling. It will feed your family and let you go home with a full tummy: kind of a Denny’s/IHOP experience which is where a lot of money in the food market goes.

With this thought in mind you need to understand how to tap into this market. The biggest mistake is to make a medium budget film and then brag on it like it has huge, epic scenes and it’s the next “Lawrence of Arabia.” What you’ve done is set your audience up to judge your film by a standard you already know you haven’t met. When Frank and Sally Jo Christian go to the theater and see your “$10 million epic production,” what they see is a made-for-television movie that doesn’t even compare in quality level to a medium budget mainstream film. You would have been better to advertise your film as a No-Budget movie with a great story and let the audience be surprised by it’s quality. Mel Gibson put his low budget, $20 million movie “The Passion of the Christ” right out in front so his audience was not expecting an epic picture. But they found an epic story and they couldn’t stop themselves from coming back for more. Face it; medium budget films are only driven by epic scripts. The great news is that it doesn’t take a lot of money to develop a script. Tyler Perry has the unusual anointing of being a gifted script writer that can hit a ‘home run’ nearly every time. Ben Hecht was so good that he could hack out a three-hour movie script in less than a week. By the way, that script was “Gone With the Wind,” which he never did get credit for. Of course, that’s because he was up for an Oscar for “Wuthering Heights” at the same time.

I brought Ben Hecht into this subject for more than just referencing a good writer but also for an insight that he had concerning what a good solid script is. He said,” Not only was the plot the same but the characters in it never varied. The characters must always be good or bad (and never human) in order not to confuse the plot of Virtue Triumphing. This could be best achieved by stereotypes that are a fraction removed from those in the comic strips.” Before you go intellectual on me listen to what Ben just said. This is the key to reaching a vast audience with a medium budget film. Your characters need to be just a fraction deeper than a comic strip character. Don’t listen to the gobbledygook that you hear from film school professors that tell you to go horrendously three-dimensional. You have to remember that you have a captive audience for a very short amount of time and that the entire audience must come to the same conclusion about each of your characters so that the film’s impact hits them together. Their response is the success of your film. Nobody understood this greater than the old fathers of Hollywood, especially one of my favorites, Irving Thalberg. He would take their million dollar Hollywood productions down to a poor Los Angeles suburb and would show the film to an audience that for the most part, had never even graduated from high school. When the audience responded negatively to the film he would go back and re-shoot it until the audience loved it. This is why at every Oscars they give away a special award called the “Irving Thalberg Award.” It is because this young man had an anointing that created Hollywood and, yes, it was his anointing that brought us most of the great classics.

For most of us filmmakers the medium budget film is do-able. It would stretch and strain our budgets to the max, but to be honest, there is enough passion around us from Christians desiring to see the market influenced by the Godly that our ability to conquer it should be attainable if we are on the mission that God has truly sent us on.

So now we come to the heart of the subject. What is the key to raising the money for a medium budget film? My advice is for you to lock in all of the main elements before you present it to your financiers. Let’s look at the following:

•The one to four page treatment of your script should be so entertaining that it makes the reading of the script unnecessary. (Remember this doesn’t cost any money. Its just talent)

•The script should be followed by a storyboard with at least two of your scenes pictured along with a soundtrack that features the actual actor’s voices as well as a synthesized version of your score. It should show the total entertainment value of the film.

•You should show verbal commitments from either a distributor, like Fox Faith, or some proof that you can four-wall the picture at theaters by yourself. This is becoming increasingly more profitable for independent filmmakers.

•Before you try to sell your production to investors make your pitch to cable networks. They are always looking for fresh productions and their commitment to you might be the tipping point for investors to join you in the venture.

•Get a verbal commitment from a DVD distributor like Madacy Entertainment. These guys are big, fast and honest. The main key is to shop your investor that they WILL be getting their money back.

•The story is obviously the most important sales point. You should have it developed into a clear pitch line. This means that you need a simple statement that is no longer than one sentence that paints the appropriate representation of a picture of your script. Here is an example of a famous pitch line: “Romeo and Juliet on a boat,” which was, of course, the pitch line used by James Cameron for the movie “Titanic.” The pitch line for our Big Budget film is, “Star Wars meets the Ten Commandments.” That’s the pitch line for the film “Gravity: The Shadow of Joseph,” which is the working title for our latest project.

If you have all these elements together it might be time for you to enter into the process that Habakkuk talks about. “Write the vision down, make it plain so they may run, those who read it. Though the vision tarries, wait for it for it shall surely come.”

On each project we have always spent a period of time waiting for the Father to initiate the project. On our last film we waited until a ministerial friend of mine handed me a check for $8,000 and said, “Now, Richard, start your film.” I knew that the amount he gave me was only enough to rent a camera for two days from Panavision. But at the same time I knew it was God’s green light. Without any hesitation we started to gather the crew, perform inexpensive casting calls, finish the storyboard and start planning shooting days. To my amazement by shooting day we had over $200,000 in the bank account and soon we were into 16 days of production. I am a firm believer that when God says, “Go,” He means NOW.

No man in the Scripture understood his journey as he took his first step. And for someone of your high caliber nothing else could be truer. As Paul said of Abraham, “He went forth and knew not wither he went.” Part Three to follow, “No-Budget films”

Richard Gazowsky pastors a church in San Francisco called The Voice of Pentecost, and is also president of Christian WYSIWYG Filmworks. He has directed the films, “Guardians” and “The Roman Trilogy.”