[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Film Courage: You decided to attend AFM here in Santa Monica, what was your plan going into the event?
Brandon Loran Maxwell, Writer, Speaker, Prize Winning Essayist, Film Director, and Entrepreneur: My plan going into the event was to try to find some interest in distribution. We wanted the film to be out there more than just the app that we had created.
I did things a little differently as you know. I raised money and built our own app and then we streamed our film on our own app so we could build a subscriber base to make more projects and to make some of our money back. We wanted to take it to the next step but that meant you needed to find distributors who were interested.
I linked up with an entertainment attorney basically to go down there with me and represent us and reach out to some of those distributors ahead of time to try to get meetings.
Film Courage: What was that like when you walked through the doors of the hotel or AFM?
Brandon: My initial thought was it’s the type of thing I don’t like. I don’t like networking events. I don’t like these big events where you just have a million people who are starving to make it in one spot. I don’t think that’s the best way to get things done.
I have a friend who’s worked at Nickelodeon and a few other places who I met early in my film Journey who recommended that I should still go to AFM because whether or not you like that type of environment, it’s still a big deal and there are still deals that happen.
So we went down there and our lawyer got some meetings and we made our pitches.
Film Courage: Maybe we could hear a little bit more about what you learned and what happened while at AFM?
Brandon: What I learned is nobody is special. It’s just a numbers game to most of these companies. You are one out of a million different films. You can tell them that the film made $50 million and you don’t have a distributor and none of them care. You’re another film because at this point in the game they all do it by numbers. They put out a certain amount of films every week, every month, every year and they’ve calculated they’re going to get this much money back and that’s how they…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).
WATCH ‘AMERICAN HOMEBOY’
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About:
Brandon Loran Maxwell is a writer, speaker, prize winning essayist, film director, and entrepreneur. His writings and commentary have appeared at The Hill, Salon, Townhall, The Washington Examiner, The Oregonian, and The Foundation For Economic Education, among others. In 2022, his writings were cited at the U.S. Supreme Court (United States Of America vs. Helaman Hansen). In addition, Brandon regularly speaks on a variety of social topics, and has been cited or profiled by outlets such as The Los Angeles Times, Vox, NPR, The Washington Post, The Blaze, and The Oregonian. His personal essay “Notes From An American Prisoner” was awarded a Writer’s Digest prize in 2014, and his one-act play “Petal By Petal” about drug and alcohol addiction was performed at The Little Theater in 2009. He holds a B.S. in political science and resides on the West Coast.
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