[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Film Courage: How many times has a screenwriter or director reached out to you and instead of pitching their own ideas have said to you, “I’d like to help you make your idea.”
Shaked Berenson, Producer/Filmmaker: Not often. Not often. Usually, when people reach out to us, like I said, we don’t take unsolicited material.
We do have an RFP list, a request for proposal, where periodically from our conversations with the vendors that we are placing films with we’re looking right now for YA whatever, TV series or so we do send what we’re looking for.
There is a form online that people can actually go and join the RFP list.
The fact that you fill up the form doesn’t mean we accept everyone.
Sadly, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, we work with people that we’ve worked with in the past and the people that have been working.
The bad news is that yes, if you’re just an 18-year-old coming on to film school in Minnesota, whatever, it’s going to be very hard to suddenly get money from us and go make a movie.
But the good thing is that if you are working with us, we keep financing the same filmmakers and What’s the next thing you want to do? Sounds great. We’ll come in for half.
We’ll keep working with the same companies and the same people because you’re part of the team.
I always say making a film is like marriage. It’s not dating.
You need to know there are going to be very bad days, that it’s supposed to be sunny and it’s raining.
Or the actor is sick or you’re going to have very high highs that you got into Sundance and Variety gave you good reviews.
You need to, just like marriage, know that you can be a team and you can kind of like ride it and have very serious discussions.
But when you come out in front of the kids, be a united front and all that.
It’s a very risky business to just bring somebody to your house and like, Oh, you know, I’ll make a movie with you.
It’s like you need to spend a lot of time with those people.
I always say look, scripts can change.
You can hire somebody to polish them.
You can just say, “Hey, I don’t like the script. I don’t like this project…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).
About:
Shaked Berenson has marketed, sold, and released over 1,000 films and television series. As a Board Member at the Independent Film & Television Alliance (IFTA™) and a public speaker, Shaked has been a vocal advocate for independent filmmakers and for shortening the content distribution supply chain.
Shaked started his career as a coder, paying for his UCLA education by designing database architecture and running several e-commerce sites. His rare background in both tech and the film business allowed him to bridge creativity and analytics and design a tool that truly leverages both.
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