Hollywood Is Not A Movie Making Town, This Is What It Really Is - Pedro Correa

Pedro, you've said that Hollywood is not a movie making town, it's a movie marketing town. — Mhm. Yes. Uh it is absolutely a movie marketing town over anything. I uh the romantic side of me wishes it were a movie making town. Um but ultimately we're selling products and uh advertising is a big part of that uh to making a return on that product. So, uh, if you can market your movie, that's a really, really important part of the process. And depending on who you ask, some people might even say it's the most important part of the process. Uh, I, as a filmmaker, don't like to say that, but it is very important. — Can you talk about your attempts to raise financing for My Dead movie? — Yeah. — You completed a few years back. — Yeah. So raising money for My Dead uh is the ultimate rejection therapy. to go back to that. Uh, if you're financing a film, the first thing I think a lot of people turn towards is Hollywood itself, which can be tricky because financeers in Hollywood, they make their core income off of financing films, which is great, but they're also very, very attuned to what makes money in a safe way and what is a risk. And depending on the type of filmmaker or writer you are, you really have to objectively look at yourself and your project and be like, is this is there any risk in this project? Because if there is, you're probably going to get a lot of nos from, you know, film financers, uh, people who do that as a career. Uh, and what I mean by that is oftent times, I mean, to put it simply, like horror films that are pretty straightforward, um, that is a good example of something that, uh, is tried and true and you don't usually need as many uh, A-list actors or even name actors at all. And um, because uh, a lot of the times you realize that countries around the world, you can scream in any language as they say. Uh so uh versus like something that's like a comedy or an intellectual drama or something that's a little bit more cerebral, sometimes the translation doesn't carry over. So I often tell people when they're financing their movies at an indie level, look outside of Hollywood, look to people who are looking to get in Hollywood, who, you know, either want the adventure uh of it or want to kind of take a little bit of a risk with their money. you know, um there's kind of safe assets and there's risky assets and usually films land in kind of the riskier territory, but a potato farmer who's doing really well, who wants to just shake it up and have some excitement and have an adventure in their life might be more willing to invest in an indie movie that's a little bit more cerebral than, you know, insert company here that you already know in Hollywood. Does having grown up in you know you grew up part time uh in Qatar did that help you in any way to realize that American movies or celebrities are popular all over the world and how much pull they have? — Oh absolutely. I mean I can't tell you um any I mean I'm embarrassed to say this. I wish I knew more Middle Eastern films or even uh you know times are changing a little bit with like globalization and everything. I mean, obviously everyone is obsessed with like South Korean movies and South Korean directors. Um, but especially when I was growing up, uh, and this is partly of who I was around to, but I didn't know any of that. And I was still living across the world, only seeing, you know, Marvel or like the comedies sometimes, but the comedies in Qar would be censored. You'd be watching a scene and then it would just go like, "Wait, what happened? " — Oh, wow. and like it would skip like five minutes ahead because there was something that was taboo. Um, and it's uh it's censored in movie theaters. Um, and so uh but nonetheless those movies typically were always American — and the television shows uh were there certain channels that were only Qatari and then the rest were Americanized? Yeah. I mean, when I was living there, the only channels were uh were Middle Eastern, you know, sometimes Saudi Arabia, sometimes like Kuwait, but um I mean, back then there wasn't really or streaming just became a thing. Um and to even get to that, you would need a VPN uh to mask your IP address to uh tell the internet that I'm in America and I can watch Netflix. But uh times have changed a little bit. uh you can actually watch streaming services in places like Qar but they have their own sort of territory of films and there's two parts to that. Number one it's like what the filmmakers

or the studio uh has sold to that territory like if they've made a deal with the Middle East to show their movies there or not. And then the other side of that is does it get past sort of the censorship uh jungle which is loosening a little bit but I can't tell you how much. — Can we talk about the concept trailer that you made for My Dead movie and then how did that change things for you? — Yeah, absolutely. So, um we made a concept trailer. I was pitching the script at first uh to anyone and everyone I knew and was having no luck raising financing. Uh, and I get it. At the time I was like, they just don't see the vision. They don't understand. Um, and that was more of just a reaction rather than a solution. Well, then I started listening to myself and I was like, oh, they just don't see the vision. We just need to show them the vision. So, we made a concept trailer for it. And, uh, I think that is the future. Uh, you know, sometimes I'll help filmmakers make their own kind of concept trailers. Um, but uh, so I do have a bias, but I really I still do this for my own projects. Uh, and maybe it's just because I'm not like a, you know, I didn't grow up pitching necessarily. I was a little artist trapped in my room, you know, and didn't know the first thing about business or pitching when I was like growing up. But now on the other side, I realize that uh if that is you, you need to show not tell even more, right? You need to use whatever your superpower is and use that to your advantage. So if you're not good in front of kind of a boardroom of people or on a call or a Zoom, then you want to make sure to kind of get through some of those objections before they come up for these people. And my way of doing that is concept trailers where I can show, you know, from beginning to end, uh, cutting off a little bit of the end just to tease them and get them to then read the script to, you know, just give them the concept of the piece, uh, before they even ask, right? So they're not like, "Oh, okay, cool. I read the script, but like what's it going to look like? " Or like, "How's it going to feel? Is it a little bit more of a drama than a comedy? " like especially if it's mixed genre that becomes so much more important to really express what you're going for and concept trailers are that so when we started pitching a concept trailer for my dead dad that really changed the game most finance years or I would say what is it half our finance years didn't even read the actual script which as a writer I was like really um but uh ultimately I get it you know uh and what is the goal do you want people to read your script and pat you on the back or do you want to make your movie is kind of how I look at it. — Just to clarify, half the people read the script that you pitched for My Dead for financing. How many people watched the concept trailer? And how did you know? — So, all the investors we sent the script to, but the reason I know that half of our investors only watch the concept trailer is because they were in like that. Like, it takes you a long time to read scripts. And so we pitched them the trailer as like an opener to uh to then send the script. But at that point it was already a yes for some of them where it was like great like what's the next step? And it's like well the next step would be reading the script you know like oh well you don't want to see all our mood boards and things like that you know but if you get the yes then take the yes. Uh so that's that was kind of the process for us where um much later in the game people don't even want to people want to hear less. You want to sell them kind of on your concept and just move on, right? I think a lot of the times the biggest mistake in pitching is just giving them more homework. Uh whether it's hey I want you to read the script or hey I want to like tell you this whole podcast about where it came from. But uh again, depends who you're talking to, but if it's financeers, the goal is to get financing and bring them into your project. And if they say yes, then that's what you're looking for. And the concept trailer was the quickest way for me in my experience to getting to that yes. — And you can see through the analytics that someone didn't watch it or did watch it or where they stopped. — Yeah. Absolutely. And the great thing about concept trailers, too, is that people love watching movie trailers. People show up early to movies to watch the trailers. You know, I always joked about there should be like a festival of just movie trailers. Um, and there are trailer uh award shows and things like that for that reason, but um, everyone has time to watch a trailer. Nearly nobody has a time to read a full script is what it comes down to. — How exactly did you get people to watch your concept trailer that were in the industry? — It's a good question. And so it's kind of a mixture between cold outreach and

just anything you can do. But uh this kind of goes back to just getting through the nose of you want to make sure that you're doing the numbers, you're doing the reps. Um and often times people will pitch their project and be like, I tried everything. You know, I reached out uh to all my people on my list. And then I'll ask them, I'll be like, how many people was that? And they like my top five. I'm like, you top five? What are you talking about? There's like actually like 5,000 producers in the industry. What do you know, you haven't even scratched the surface and like good producers too. Maybe not that many, but like a lot is my point. Um, so I have conditioned myself, especially when I talk to younger filmmakers and even check in with what I'm doing. if I haven't reached out to a hundred filmmakers uh or a hundred people whether those are producers or whether those are financeers um uh I won't even consider that I've gotten a no really is how I look at it and a big part of that is understanding how to use you know email in an effective way right um I think it's important uh if you are serious especially if you're a young producer to understand a little bit about business and how to present projects. Um, uh, doesn't even take that long of time, right? Just understand how to quickly get somebody's attention in an email, in a DM on Instagram, um, and what not to overload them with and, uh, just to get the conversation going. Thank you for watching the video all the way to the end. Here is a complimentary question from our book, Story Questions.