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Ask a Studio Head How To Get Into the Movie Business

Posted by Roblimo on Tue Jun 03, 2008 10:02 AM
from the you-ought-to-be-in-pictures dept.
Media Entertainment
Larry Meistrich started making movies with next to no money. He's the founder and chairman of NEHST Studios, "a diversified film production, financing and distribution company" that opened its doors in May, 2007. As the above links show, Larry is a serious expert on the inner workings of the movie and TV production business, with a long string of production successes on his resume. Ask him whatever you like. Usual interview rules apply. And who knows? Maybe NEHST will finance your next movie.
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[+] Studio Head Answers Your Questions About the Movie Business 115 comments
You asked Larry Meistrich, head of NEHST Studios, how to get into the movie business. And he has answered your questions. So read his answers, then get off your lazy behind, pick up that digital cinema camera, and go to work!
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  • IANAMM (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TrueJim (107565) on Tuesday June 03 2008, @10:06AM (#23638621) Homepage
    Whenever I've read biographies of folks who have gone on to become movie makers, the basic answer always seems to be the same: the way to get into the movie business is to start making movies.

    Grab your friends, find a camcorder, write a script, download some software, make a movie.

    Then make another.

    And another.

    Keep doing it until you get good at it. It take an incredible amount of time and determination. You spend a lot of money.

    Somewhere along the way you become part of the "movie making community." Profit!

    • Re:IANAMM (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 03 2008, @10:15AM (#23638757)
      Grab your friends, find a camcorder, write a script, download some software, make a movie.

      That's how you become a director or writer. It's not how you become a producer, crew member, agent or any of the other positions in the entertainment industry. You get those by bringing coffee to the people who already do those things.

    • I don't mean to break this to you in a rude kind of way, but that is how you get 'into' anything. Granted, if you want to fly 757s across the ocean, you'll have to aim a bit lower, but same applies, grab a book, read, do flight sims, save for flight lessons, get a job at the airport... blah blah blah...

      • Re:IANAMM (Score:5, Funny)

        by oodaloop (1229816) on Tuesday June 03 2008, @10:32AM (#23639037) Homepage
        Yeah, that's how I got into intelligence analysis. I just started handling classified documents, and pretty soon I got some recognition.

        • Yeah, that's how I got into intelligence analysis. I just started handling classified documents, and pretty soon I got some recognition.
          That works if you can cut a deal with the prosecution.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by skuzzlebutt (177224)
          Worked for Mitnick...

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Xiaran (836924)
        I once recall a story(not sure how true) about Robert Heinlein being tired of being asked "how do I become a writer?". His answer was always along the lines of Write something. Finish it. Sent it to a publisher and see if they will publish it. Repeat.

      • Re:IANAMM (Score:5, Interesting)

        by JWSmythe (446288) <jwsmythe@ j w smythe.com> on Tuesday June 03 2008, @11:39AM (#23640027) Homepage Journal

        Actually, you're off.

        To fly commercial aircraft such as that, you need a commercial rating, and thousands of hours of pilot in command time on multiengine heavy jet aircraft. For average joe, that's not going to happen.

        That was a goal of mine when I was a kid. I wanted to fly. I've flown small aircraft. I went to college at one of the best universities studying aeronautical science. When I wasn't in class, I was talking to people around town. I'd mention that I was going to school there, and they'd say "Oh, I got my bachelors in aeronautical science two/three/four years ago". They'd be working in restaurants, or small shops. Nothing like what they had just spent 4 years and a fortune trying to reach.

        Before I went to the university, I started learning to fly at a small airport. My instructor had graduated from there too. He was a flight instructor to build up his hours, so when he had thousands of hours he could hopefully get a job with some crappy airline. Until then, he was teaching people how to fly.

        As time went on, I found out the sad truth. If you want to be an airline pilot, you need to have been a military pilot with thousands of hours in multiengine jet aircraft, preferably heavy aircraft. You also have to have an excellent safety record. If you had serious incidents that were unclassified, they won't touch you. Even then, there's plenty of competition, and the pay isn't all that great. It's worthwhile to the airline to hire someone who already has their military pension, who's looking for a bit of supplemental income.

        I can't go into the military. I had surgery on one of my eyes, which categorically precludes me from joining the military at all. Even if I joined, because I don't have a bachelors degree, I can't obtain an officer rank, and therefore cannot be a pilot. I could be ground crew, but that's about it.

        Now, on to the on topic part. :)

        I lived in LA for a while. I knew quite a few "aspiring" actors, as well as extras and other somewhat connected people. My wife worked as an extra for years. They're treated as the cattle that fills in the gaps in a scene. To make it from nobody to being an actor/actress/producer/director takes a lot of knowing the right people, and an awful more dumb luck. Being in the right place, at the right time, with the right look, and the right attitude, is what it takes. Oh, and lets not forget the unions/guilds. If I remember the SAG rules correctly, it takes 3 vouchers to be considered, and those vouchers come from the studio or a few other people. If you don't have a SAG card, you can't get a speaking role. Occasionally (very occasionally) they need someone to say something, and that person didn't show, or whatever. They may like you, because you're personable, or because you got hinky with the right person in his/her trailer right before the shoot. (getting hinky doesn't qualify you for anything other than a STD, but it can help).

        Say they're shooting a commercial, and they need one more person to say "Ummm, that's good.", and you get picked out of the dozens of other extras they have standing around, then you may get a voucher, and may (oh my gosh) be on your way to advanced extradom, where you can get crappy walk-on parts and say your one line.

        I don't have much of an interest in standing in front of a camera. A few extra parts came up on the extra lines (you call in and see what they're looking for), where they needed a car, a dog, or whatever. My wife and our dog showed up on CSI New York once. :) Stupid dog never barked, but they edited it in, but it was only about 2 seconds of video, and all you could see is the back of my wife's head in one shot, and her leg in another.

        I was looking at something more interesting to me. Consulting for IT stuff on movies and/or tv

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by JWSmythe (446288)

            Not to skip the rest, but.... :)

            The surgery wasn't lasik. I actually had a congenital cataract in one eye. It started getting worse about the time I was 18. I joined the military when I was 19, and they kicked me out when my vision couldn't be corrected to 20/20 with glasses. Right after I got out, I went and had it surgically removed. That was right around 1992 or 1993. I've had no bad effects from the surgery, but it removes me from the possibility of serving in the mil

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by Vastad (1299101)

              Wish you all the best then good sir. It's posts like yours that make /. a daily joy for me.

              On topic: I think some earlier posters are right on the money regarding skipping the whole process of expecting someone else to make you a star.

              Buy a domain name. Get a good hosting deal with generous download allowances. Build that website, call your friends, write a script, get a digital video camera, play with Sony Vegas or Adobe Premiere.

              My own IRL example: A girl from my high school got featured in the A

    • Re:IANAMM (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Jarik_Tentsu (1065748) on Tuesday June 03 2008, @11:54AM (#23640225)
      As an amateur director and special effects editor, my work tends to be high in special effects and fancy stuff - muzzle flashes, lightsabers, explosions etc - all computer rendered. All look cool, but all of them look amateur. There's no way you can make something fancy like that look professionally done.

      So my question is, if you want to make work to impress people in the industry, do they prefer simple things, done professionally, or things that have potential in being extravagant, but still have that 'amateur' feel?

      My other question is how much are screenwriters/director's controlled by their sponsors/studios? How much freedom do they get in their movies?

      ~Jarik
      • The job you're talking about is a visual effects artist.

        Special effects are on set, visual effects are post production. A visual effects editor is an editor whose job is not to edit the movie, but to edit the VFX shots from different post houses into the cut. On a big budget effects driven flick, you might have multiple houses (ILM, DD, and 5 smaller houses) working on the same movie. These houses will be sending editorial updated composites all the time, and it's the job of a VFX editor to manage the cut,

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by shidarin'ou (762483)
            If you start doing compositing more heavily, I recommend downloading the Personal Learning Edition of Fusion. It's a great way to migrate to a node based (rather than a layer based like After Effects) interface (http://www.eyeonline.com/) and it's fully featured and relatively cheap compared to some of the other solutions out there. Also fully featured, but now unsupported, is Shake, but I always found Shake to be a lot less user friendly- but Apple keeps slashing the price on a license so it's getting very
  • Like anything else, it's not as much 'what' you know as 'who' you know.

    The question I would have is this: How do you get your demo in front of the right people? Persistence? Dumb luck? A little of both perhaps?
    • Pitch it to a studio (who will most likely say no) then when the studio gets bought out a short time later, come back and claim they said yes the first time.

      Its how Lucas got his first film (THX 1138) made. (he pitched it to Warner Bros who said no, then Warner Bros was brought out by someone else, then Lucas went back and said that Warner had said yes pre-buyout and got enough money to make his film)
  • I have tried that, seemed to get them to remember me pretty well. Although the next day sucked once my brain returned to its former position in my skull I had a whole list of new contacts in my phone and was actually on the "will answer your call" list.
  • With respect to your film's score, how do you handle an allegation that the composer plagiarized [wikipedia.org] part of the score from something he had heard a decade ago on the radio? Or how do you prevent such cases from occurring?

    • Re:Liability for composing the soundtrack? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gEvil (beta) (945888) on Tuesday June 03 2008, @10:37AM (#23639111)
      I know someone who does temp music for films. He puts pre-existing music and songs to the rough cuts of the movies to help pad them out for screenings and whatnot. This is to ensure that the correct tension and feeling are created during key scenes. According to him, some of the less-than-honest composer types will simply lift the music that he's chosen for the temp cuts, and then change a few intervals here and there to get around any plagiarism issues.
      • I know for a fact this happens with startling regularity.

        At very high levels that, coincidentally, are difficult to reach this does not happen as much. Before one gets their "big break" there's LOTS of plagarism.

  • I'm already in the movie business... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 03 2008, @10:12AM (#23638709)
    As a distributor. ;D

  • What do I do with my immortal soul? (Score:5, Funny)

    by MightyYar (622222) on Tuesday June 03 2008, @10:15AM (#23638747)
    What about my immortal soul? Do I need to contact the devil directly, or will the studios arrange the transaction for me?
  • Thanks for taking some questions.

    The Internet has a number of plays out there for self-distribution and self-promotion. A lot of these avenues are relatively fresh, so it is hard to tell, but by your judgment, are there any self-promotion or self-distribution avenues that are absolutely must-have for an indie movie maker? I'm thinking perhaps of things like the Withoutabox [withoutabox.com] system, or Massify [massify.com].

    Is it prudent to publish on YouTube before making any other distribution deals to get the word out? Or does this put you in an unattractive bargaining position with potential distributors, online or off, such that your content is already out there, even though in lo-res quality?

    As for "And who knows? Maybe NEHST will finance your next movie." see my site [bangamovie.com]. ;-)

    And thanks again.

  • Is it possible to make a profit with union labor? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 03 2008, @10:17AM (#23638779)
    The movie industry is notorious for being a heavily unionized, "closed shop" industry, with all the overhead and deatherbedding that implies. Is it possible for an independent studio to make a profit while obeying Hollywood's labyrinth, payroll-padding union rules?
    • Don't film in Hollywood. Hire only non-union film wannabes that will work for peanuts.

      With the internet, does it matter where the film production takes place? I think not.

    • Yes, it is possible for an independent film to make a profit. Directors have to start somewhere and many of them start by making their own films and selling distribution rights. You must do it yourself.

      Don't blame the creative and production unions for everything. They continue to be a response to the unreasonable demands that Producers put on them. The creative and production sides have worked for decades to protect the value and safety of their work.

      Now, Joe Schmoe indie studio guy won't put it to you
  • It's about a killer robot driving instructor, who travels back in time for some reason.

    Did I mention his best friend's a talking pie?
  • How quick to react / adapt is a movie studio to making a horrible, horrible movie? Do they learn from the process and apply the lessons to the next pic, or is every movie created in isolation of the other?

  • with a long string of production successes on his resume.

    I'm sorry, but someone who has ONE major hit in his entire career is not someone you look to for advice on 'breaking into the movie business.' He was executive producer on Sling Blade- more than ten years ago. The rest is made-for-TV stuff and 15 minute shorts. Another shining star on his resume: a 2009 remake of The Saint. Yeah, that movie with Val Kilmer. That would make it the second remake of the 1962 film...

    • I had the same mentality until I lived in Los Angeles. The people you see being stalked by paparazzi are the tiny tip of the iceberg -- there are tens of thousands of people making careers in the entertainment industry whom you've never heard of. When you flip channels through 30 different shows before deciding that "nothing is on", that's the work of 30 directors, 90 producers and hundreds of actors and crew who are earning a good living but whom you don't consider "successful".
    • And the only credit he deserves on "Sling Blade" is "recognizing the feature film potential of something that had already been done as a play and short film years earlier." It was nice that he was able to help Thornton secure some money from Miramax for it, but "Sling Blade" belongs ENTIRELY to Thornton and always did.

  • Selling a Script (Score:5, Interesting)

    by oskard (715652) on Tuesday June 03 2008, @10:22AM (#23638855)
    How do you sell a script? I don't mean monetarily, but how does one pitch an idea for a script without getting it shot down?

    I have lots of ideas for screenplays, and I realize that the chance of anyone important ever reading them is about a million to one. But even my best scripts sound like crap in an 'elevator pitch.' How does one work around this?

  • Profits, or lack thereof (Score:5, Funny)

    by TubeSteak (669689) on Tuesday June 03 2008, @10:22AM (#23638861) Journal
    A) What's up with Hollywood accounting?

    B) And how can I apply it to my tax returns?

    I'd love to be able to show that I've never made a profit even after taking in millions.
  • I already know the answer: suck Satan's dick.

    • I already know the answer: suck Satan's dick.

      You forgot the other half. You know, no-KY (it's Hell after all)...

  • I just have one question (Score:3, Funny)

    by Opportunist (166417) on Tuesday June 03 2008, @10:28AM (#23638961)
    How does Uwe Boll keep finding people to pump money into his trash?

    I mean, let's be honest here. That guy didn't make a single movie worth the time it takes to watch it, let's not talk about money. His movies are invariably in every "worst. movies. ever." list there is. And even trash movie fans won't touch his junk with a ten foot pole.

    Can anyone explain the miracle of where he gets his funding? I mean, if you can solve that mystery, it should be trivial to get money just the same way. I mean, people who are willing to pump money into a movie that you know will bomb might actually finance a movie that has a slim chance to be gold.

  • How not to sell the rights? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gnujoshua (540710) on Tuesday June 03 2008, @10:29AM (#23638983) Homepage
    It seems that with independent film making, the common path is: 1) get small to medium budget, 2) produce movie, 3) show movie at film festival, 4) sell rights to big producer. Is there way to get your movie to "go big" without doing this fourth step and not starting with a big budget?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Lumpy (12016)
      Is there way to get your movie to "go big" without doing this fourth step and not starting with a big budget?

      yes.
      0 - find and get 16mm film camera and lenses. 35mm is better. shoot on this video will NOT get you in the big festivals.

      1 - have a GOOD and INNOVATIVE script. (most important)
      2 - get good actors for free.
      2.5 - get a good DP for free.
      3 - get a good editor for free.
      4 - show movie to dentists and other rich people that wish to do the things that rich people do and get them to front you the cash to
      • "2.5 - get a good DP for free."

        In my experience, a good DP costs at least four times your companions usual hourly rate.
  • How about simplifying the article title to something everybody already knows?

    _GIVE_ head to get into the movie business.

    There, I fixed it for you.

  • the War on Piracy (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bzipitidoo (647217) <bzipitidoo@bigfoot.com> on Tuesday June 03 2008, @10:36AM (#23639097) Journal

    I can say that I've never pirated one of your films. Never even heard of you until this article. I have no idea whether I'd want to see one, and probably am not going to trouble finding out.

    As one who is in the same business as the MAFIAA, what have you to say about piracy and copyright, and the lawsuits by your fellow entertainment providers?

  • Ask Donald Trump How to Install Drywall (Score:3, Funny)

    by pezpunk (205653) on Tuesday June 03 2008, @10:45AM (#23639231) Homepage
    how very useful his insights must be!

  • Wait a Minute.... (Long) (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mpapet (761907) on Tuesday June 03 2008, @10:52AM (#23639327) Homepage
    First of all, he's a "studio head" that has two movies, and a "studio" that's been around for about 1 year. http://www.nehst.com/index.php?page=news [nehst.com]

    Let's get down to the brass tacks... ... We are funding pictures in the 2 to 50 million dollar range. We are also pursuing co-production opportunities, distributing completed projects, gap financing, and finishing projects in need of completion.....

    Which means someone is providing production seed money and he's the face in front of the money.

    Here's a the how-to for you sysadmins that want to become Directors.

    1. Have a great premise. Remake one of shakespere's plays. (again) Keep the story happening in one or two places you can film in for 8-10 hours at a time without interruption or legal overhead.
    2. Have a great script. You've got to turn your re-hashed Classic into a _great_ script.

    ---Pause to Decide----

    You know you are doing a good job if it has been hard work getting this far. This is where you decide if you want to make it yourself or try to shop the script taking the very real risk that a good script from a nobody will probably get knocked off with no financial recourse available.

    ---I want the Whole Enchilada---

    3. Shop your script to every dentist, lawyer, bigwig in town. You need ~$50-100,000 to get a decent-looking production. They get some control, so when they want a cameo or their granddaughter to have a role, the answer is "yes." Believe me, this is how it's done everywhere.
    4. Production planning marathon during every waking hour you are not working your day job.
    5. Hire filming staff. Make sure your lighting person understands working digital.
    6. Take a two-week vacation from your day job in which you will shoot your film.
    7. Edit a rough cut. Show to your backers and ask for more money for a good editing, foley, etc.

    8. Sell! Sell! Sell! Film festivals, cable tv, independent movie houses. Sell! Sell!

    That should be about 2-5 years work for the average fully-employed sysadmin. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

    You will have earned your movie-making stripes and can call yourself a director!!

  • Getting a little camera time (Score:3, Interesting)

    by McFly69 (603543) on Tuesday June 03 2008, @11:50AM (#23640193) Homepage
    For a person who is interested in the film industry, what is the best way to get a little camera time? In particular how does a person (in Boston, MA) find out where and when a movies are going to be recorded so they be a stand-in? Perhaps even interview for a small role? Thank you

  • Documentaries? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by GeorgeK (642310) on Tuesday June 03 2008, @11:59AM (#23640281) Homepage
    Q: Would making documentaries offer a superior risk/reward ratio compared to feature films, especially if someone is just starting out? What suggestions would you offer to succeed in documentaries?

  • Who would you trust with your first script? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by joe.terry (816692) on Tuesday June 03 2008, @12:04PM (#23640345) Homepage
    The question is ... do you go to the writers guild and pay them $35 bucks or whatever, first? Do you go to an agent? If you have a killer script, that you can't film, where do you go first?

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