Product Placement - Case Study (Heinz Ez Squeeze)

In some ways product placement for our indie films is trivial.  For example, set designer Margaret McDonald was telling me recently how she gets Woolwooths to supply free groceries for set dressing.

However, real product integration is something that provides the producer with real value - either with money upfront or marketing support later on.  As much as we'd like to save $50 on set dressing - for a $10 million film it's not exactly value for the producer.  So I thought I'd look at some examples of successful product integrations to see how others do it.

Example 1 - Heinz 'EZ Squeeze' bottle.

Marketing Brief:  Heinz Ketchup had a new 'EZ Squeeze' bottle.

They'd worked for years to get people to recognise their old bottle - now they were taking a totally different product to the market.  Not only that - but the bottle was used quite differently too .. so would the public accept this new shape?


So Heinz worked with a US company called 'International Promotion' to include the new bottle into product integration on TV and film so that the consumer 'would consider the EZ Squeeze bottle as an everyday household product'.

Case Study: Estimating Film ROI - Crash (2004)

We often use box office receipts as a metric when we consider how much ROI investors in a film can expect.  Clearly the entire box office receipts don't magically appear in the production company's bank account - but how much does?

There are some lousy distribution deals ... but imagine that you have a non-studio film that distributors really want.  Let's even imagine that the film is successful - it covers the distributor's P&A spend and returns money. What could you reasonably expect your income from the film to be?

There are a few estimates out there - I've always used the 'one third of box office' guideline - so if a film makes $30 million in box office we can expect about $10 million to eventually filter back to the production company.  Clearly this guess has limitations - it won't work for a film that was a hit on DVD but a flop in the theatres.  But it is a start to estimating how much money will be coming in to pay back the production budget - hopefully leaving something over for the investors

But how accurate is this estimate?

How to get Benderspink to read your screenplay (Offer Closed)

Note - this offer is now closed.  It successfully raised over $8,600 for the Heart Foundation.  

Benderspink represents screenwriters as well as producing their own films.  They were behind the Oscar nominated 'History of Violence' as well as a pile of other successful films - 'The Ring' & 'The Butterfly Effect' are probably my favourites. (They were also behind 'Cats & Dogs' if you prefer family films)

Do you want them to read your screenplay?  Well, thanks to Daniel Vang & friend-of-the-blog Joe Nienalt, you have a chance to skip a gatekeeper or two.

If you wonder why Joe Neinalt's name sounds familiar - he's the writer who picked up a six-figure deal to write a movie to be filmed in Russian - despite not speaking a word of the language. (I had a chat with him here when the deal was announced.)

Here are the details from Joe:

The Catwoman/Clerks Paradox

Catwoman is famous as a financial disaster.  It was a film with a reported budget of $100 million(*) - but only generated $82 million in theatrical ticket sales.

Clerks is famous as a huge financial success.  Shot on a budget of only $27k(*), it still managed to bring in about $3.9 million in ticket sales.

Which would you rather have invested in?  There's an obvious answer.
Here's the real paradox - if you were a distributor (or an exhibitor) ... which film would you prefer to be showing?

A shortcut to pre-selling distribution rights

'Going Back' was a movie about a group of Marines returning to Vietnam to relive their war experiences.

The film's budget was estimated to be about $4 to $4.5 million and the producer had deal with Hilltop Entertainment who was finding international presales for the film.  Harel Goldstein at Hilltop was banking on a deal with a German conglomerate that would supply at least $3 to $3.5 million for the film.

And then disaster struck .. the deal with the Germans fell through.  And this happened only days before the meeting with the bank to cashflow the finance.

The good news was the Goldstein managed to come up with ten distribution contracts for five international territories.  In only days!
It was pretty impressive - he even managed to sell the French TV rights for $550k.

It was an amazing feat of salesmanship.  He even managed a distribution agreement for another film 'Ignition' about the space race as well.

It was all going well until the time of the 2001 Cannes Film Festival when someone noticed that there was something a little odd about the distribution agreements.

More than a little odd.  The distribution agreements had been, to use the polite legal term, 'visibly altered' .. and in fact it looked like someone had physically cut and pasted signatures onto the documents.

How on earth did they expect to get away with it?

The end result was that Harel Goldstein entered into a plea agreement ... but forgot to mention the minor point that the plan to defraud was actually his idea.  So ended up being sentenced to four years jail.

Maybe there isn't really a short cut to getting those distribution agreements after all.

Private Film Investing - More bad examples

There seems to be a rash of prosecutions in the USA over indie film investments.

Example 1:  "There for Hope" 

Here's a blurb about the film.  http://comedymovies2011.alotoffilms.com/usa/there-for-hope.html

Pretty impressive cast list for an indie film :

Martin Sheen, Diane Ladd, Britney Spears, Nick Nolte, Brian Krause, John Carroll Lynch, Gedde Watanabe, Mark Rolston, Voyo Goric

Absurdly impressive.  And it doesn't even make sense.  It almost looks as if someone had picked some random famous names and claimed that they were involved in the film!

Independent Film Finance Success Study - The King's Speech

If we want investors for our independent films then there is only question to consider: "What benefit will the investors get by putting money into this film?"

I've read plenty of indie film offer documents and prospectuses recently, and it's clear that they are doing their best to talk up the possibility of box office return.

But, sadly, we know that the reality for independent films is harsh.  Really harsh.  Even if the film gets international distribution and great box office returns we know most of that money won't filter back to the investors.

It is sobering to read the prospectus of a respected independent film fund only to find that 'You can be an extra!' and 'You get movie memorabilia!' are still being touted as serious benefits.  And this is a film fund which, by definition, is only open to high net worth individuals

So I thought I'd look at some reasonably recent film funding decisions to see what I can learn.  Why did investors put money into these independent films?

I'll start with a recent success story: "The King's Speech"