Jeff Deverett, Film Producer, Entrepreneur, Writer, Director: It’s like no different than any other business, opening a restaurant, what do you think your customer base is going to be and how many meals you’re going to sell? Building a condominium complex, what’s the revenue going to be? It’s just like that, maybe a little less predictable than that because it’s a movie.
Film Courage: How do you articulate distribution and sales forecasts to investors?
Jeff: Well articulate them, I show them charts and basically I show them what I believe the revenue generation is going to look like over what period of time which is the cash flow analysis. Then I put it into a nice concise chart so that they can see it in sort of a one-page. That’s how I articulate it. Now how do I create it? I do my own sales forecast because I have enough distribution experience to sort of know what to expect, what the levels are, what people are paying. It changes all the time obviously because as the market develops and as new customers come in or different technology whatever so you have to constantly keep revisiting that. But you generally do a revenue forecast based on either comparable movies that have gone in the past (not too far in the past) that you can compare to based on your own experience, based on what you believe you’re going to get from a certain marketplace and you do them at I do what five different levels – low, semi-low, medium, medium-high, high. I do five levels. Some people do ten levels, some people do three levels. You could do one level but it’s so I show what sort of the average that we can expect is. What the home run is, what the disaster is but a lot of people pay for that. There’s companies that you can buy revenue forecasts from that do it as a service and you pay a lot of money. Actually I’ve seen lots of those forecasts. I don’t think they’re so credible but you need something. You’ve got to show something to investors to say that you’ve done your homework and this is what a credible company that has compared it to sort of movies has shown. The reason I don’t think they’re so credible is several reasons. One is they’re using movies that have played 10 years ago. They’re talking home video numbers, home video doesn’t even exist anymore. They’re comparing completely different technologies and release patterns. Two is they’re usually using movies that are bigger at budgets than what an indie film would be. They’re comparing my movie to Home Alone. Hello!? I mean they’re not even in the same league. They’re different businesses but it’s a family audience and this and that type of thing. I’m [financially] responsible but I’m so critical financially. I’ve got to make sure that it makes sense and sometimes the comps as they call it (the comparables) are not as credible as when you talk to say a sales rep who is in the market right now, who deals with today’s audience and today’s platforms and you sit them down and say What do you think? And it doesn’t matter what 10 movies did 10 years ago. What matters is what they think because they’re out there interacting with customers all the time and selling movies to them. Now I also have relationships with some agents and distributors around the world. I’m able to call them up and say Okay, what do you think? Nobody gives definitive answers they give Well, it could be this, it could be that, it could be at least you get a ballpark and it is a ballpark but you say to your investors Here’s the ballpark, here’s the range…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
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BIO:
Jeff Deverett is a producer, director, writer, and actor known for Full Out 2: You Got This! (2020), ism (2019), The Samuel Project (2018), Kiss & Cry (2017), Full Out (2015), King of the Camp (2008) and My Brother’s Keeper (2004). Jeff’s successful film and TV career began with distribution with New World Entertainment, Astral Communications, Anchor Bay Entertainment and his own company, Deverett Media Group. In this Film Courage video interview he talks about how to make a profitable movie and briefly touches on AFM [American Film Market], MIPCOM and MIPTV media markets.
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