If it’s a TV show, will it be scheduled in a good time slot,
on a hot or cold network? Will it be pre-empted by world
events and lost in the shuffle? All of these things have a
direct bearing on the project’s ultimate success. As with
every other kind of artistic endeavor, once a product is
delivered to the marketplace, everything else is outside
of their control.

A movie producer figures out what a project is going to cost,
raises the money, gets it produced and then waits. You need
to have a divining rod when selecting projects, as it will be six
months to two years before the audience finally gets to see it.
Will today’s “hot topic” still be relevant? Will the critics be
kind or take pot shots at it? Will it be properly promoted in
an increasingly crowded field? With a theatrical movie, it’s
a one shot deal: all the eggs in one opening weekend basket.
There’s a quick hook waiting for a film that doesn’t perform
as expected.

Execs yank a new TV series off the air after two or three
episodes if it doesn’t immediately attract the anticipated
audience. Back in the old days, a show was on the
schedule for an entire season of 26 – 39 episodes until
people got used to it and knew where and when to look
for it. All In The Family and Seinfeld are only two
examples of mega-hit series that wouldn’t have made
it in today’s hair trigger climate. Sometimes a TV show
deserves a second, third and fourth chance until the actors
settle into their roles and the writers find their voices.

On a daily basis during the actual production period, the
producer gets to referee the ongoing battle between the
Show vs. the Business. Sometimes the producer decides
in favor of art over commerce and fights with the studio/
financier for a little more time and money to make
something better. Then there is the prick bastard producer
hired by the studio to ride herd over a group of profligate
kids who pulls the plug just as a climactic moment is about
to be shot and doesn’t really care about anything other than
the bottom line. The director yells at you because he or she
didn’t get all the coverage they needed to complete the scene.
The creative producer diplomatically points out that if they
had been better at clock management or hadn’t screwed
around on a particular scene earlier in the day or were
unwilling to compromise their creative vision, they
would’ve finished within the agreed upon time frame and
gotten the day’s work in the can.

When big egos are involved and you don’t own or happen
to be related to someone who owns the studio, the producer
becomes the referee who tries to call a fair game. You know
going into the enterprise that it’s going to be rough going and
there’s a good chance you will be a casualty. When it’s a big
time feature film director, fugetaboutit. They have the power
to pretty much do whatever they want, the budget be damned.
They often operate under the Eric Von Stroheim philosophy
of not-so-secretly wanting to bankrupt any company that is
myopic enough to hire them. The business be damned
because they are only interested in making art.  

If you have gone a little bit over budget, the financiers
grumble but all is forgiven if the audience loves the show.
If the show doesn’t find its intended audience and the
producer brought it in under budget, they want to know,
“Why didn’t you spend the damn money and make it
better?” If the show turns out poorly and went terribly
over budget, the not-so-subtle message is get out of
here and don’t darken our doorway again. One way
or another, if things go wrong it is usually the
producer’s fault. They are the most convenient
scapegoat and someone must be blamed.

Art is an amazing game. Nobody’s right and nobody’s
wrong and everyone has an opinion. One man’s junk is
another man’s fortune.  What somebody is willing to
pay for something isn’t always an accurate reflection of
what it’s really worth. The perceived value or the previous
success of the evaluator is often what drives the marketplace.  

The audience doesn’t know how much the average
movie-of-the-week or TV show costs, nor should they
care. It doesn’t matter to them that the star had
pneumonia, bad weather washed away the sets or the
director was going through a messy divorce and had a
drinking problem. These are the producer’s problem.
All that matters at the end of the day is did the project
live up to its promise? Was the audience satisfied? You’ll
certainly never find out by thinking about it. Sooner or
later, somebody has to take the plunge and commit to
financing this risky art form.

There are only two ways to win with any project – at
the box office or attracting critical acclaim and the
two rarely coincide. Titanic was originally budgeted
at $100 million. There was much howling and gnashing
of teeth when the film approached the $200 million
mark. The critics and naysayers had their knives out.
The pundits and rumor- mongers had a
field day about the impending disaster. Leo who? Kate
what? Where are the big stars? Not since Heaven’s
Gate had a studio been so hornswoggled. It was a
debacle akin to “Seward’s Folly”, the purchase
of Alaska for $19 million, and look how they both
turned out.

To date, Titanic has grossed over $2 Billion, the biggest
film gross in the history of the cinema. Who knew?
Certainly not the so-called experts. Each studio would
love to have one of those projects impact its bottom
line every year and be more than happy to go through
the birth pains. That’s if the return on investment (ROI)
could be guaranteed. Just because you spend big money
on a project doesn’t guarantee it’s going to work. A great
opening weekend doesn’t always mean the studio will
ever see a profit on a particular film. If it doesn’t have
“legs”, if it doesn’t stay in the theaters very long because
the word of mouth has killed it, a mega budget film
can go down in flames just like a an ultra low budget
film. The audience doesn’t really care how much it cost
– only if it lived up to it’s billing.

Every year a couple of small independent films break
out of the pack and flies in the face of conventional
thinking. The following films, and many more, were
produced outside of the studio system for budgets
less than $2,000,000. Some have won Academy Awards.
Some have spawned film sequels or successful TV series. An
independent producer had an idea or found a script they fell
in love with, raised the money and without the oversight
committee watering down the premise, went off and
produced a little gem of a movie. Next, they had to find a
distributor with some guts who was willing to spend money
on a speculative venture call the P&A fund (prints and
advertising). The average film print costs under 1500.
The lion’s share of the P&A money goes for buying thirty
and sixty second TV spots and a couple of ads in the trade
papers to let everyone know that the movie exists.

Once in the marketplace word of mouth, the absolute best
form of advertising, kicked in and the audiences lined up
around the block to see these micro-budget movies. These
films not only proved to be very profitable but also launched
the careers of many big stars and directors: