The Heart Of Show Business With Alexia Melocchi
Information is power. From Mindset to Tactics to Implement- this is a deep dive into how Hollywood truly works with inspirational and empowering interviews of Business Leaders and Creators around the world. Get to know global creative and thought leaders from Hollywood and beyond as they share their knowledge and engage in unique conversations led by a successful Hollywood insider on navigating Show Business and making an impact in all areas of life. Explore the journeys that made a difference in the path to success of accomplished creatives and thought leaders around the world.
The Heart Of Show Business With Alexia Melocchi
How to sell a movie: all about film markets with Sales Agent and Financier Michael Favelle
Ever wondered what powers the heartbeat of the global film market? Join me, Alexia Melocchi, on an informative conversation with Michael Favelle, the mastermind behind Odin's Eye Entertainment, as we bring up the twists and turns that today's filmmakers and sales agents navigate. From dissecting the vital role of film festivals and market attendance to examining the strategic slow dance of distribution deals, our conversation is a treasure trove of insider knowledge. Michael's anecdotes and seasoned insights illuminate the stark contrast between the old days of content acquisition and the competitive cinematic landscape of the present.
Hear it all from the pros on how the intricate world of film sales and distribution is, where patience is a virtue in a culture of instant gratification. We lay out the evolving strategies within the industry, the importance of global market understanding, and the increasing role of sales agents in production to minimize risk. The episode is filled with stories from the front lines, such as an unforgettable pitch at AFM, offering both laughs and invaluable lessons for anyone eager to stake a claim in the world of film distribution.
As we wrap up this backstage pass, I stress the art of networking, the right way to reach out during pivotal film festivals like Cannes and Berlin, and my willingness to lend a helping hand. Your participation in our podcast community is not only valued but vital. So, subscribe, share, and review; your feedback propels us forward. Allow our dialogue with Michael Favelle to guide you to the very pulse of show business, where every insight could be the nudge you need in this dynamic industry.
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Welcome to the Heart of Show business. I am your host, alexia Melochi. I believe in great storytelling and that every successful artist has a deep desire to express something from the heart to create a ripple effect in our society. Emotion and entertainment are closely tied together. My guests and I want to give you insider access to how the film, television and music industry works. We will cover Dreams Come True, the Road, life's Travel, journey, beginnings and a lot of insight and inspiration in between.
Speaker 1:I am a successful film and television entrepreneur who came to America as a teenager to pursue my show business dreams. Are you ready for some unfiltered real talk with entertainment visionaries from all over the world? Then let's roll sound and action. Well, hello, hello to the listeners of the Heart of Show business podcast. New season, new year.
Speaker 1:And guess what? I am bringing in some amazing friends from a long, long time ago, and one of them is actually sitting right here in front of me in this pre-Berlin film market, because by the time we drop this, it's going to be Berlin time, so you're going to want to listen so you can learn if you're going to Berlin. With me is my Aussie friend, michael Favel, who is a CEO of Odin's Eye Entertainment, which is a major player in the distribution, sales, production, financing the whole works has been in the business for 25 plus years. I beat him by five years, so that makes me a senior not by age, hopefully and so I have him here because we're going to have an amazing discussion. Of course, odin's Eye does animation and obviously production, and so many will talk about all that, but I am just so excited and therefore, michael, welcome to my show.
Speaker 2:Hi, thanks for having me on. It's great to see you.
Speaker 1:It's so great to have you here and, as I was saying before, off the record, but I literally put the Canfone Festival background for those of you that will see the YouTube version of it in your honor. The famous Quazette because for some of you that don't know that but Odin's Eyes always has the prime, prime office spot during the Canfone Festival that literally faces the red carpet. So he's a fabulous host. He invites those he likes hopefully, and not those he doesn't like to his office during opening night and everything, and we all get to see the red carpet and what's happening and take pictures, and of course, we did that this year. Michael, when are we going to see those great photos that you're taking every year? You have yet to do a video?
Speaker 2:Oh God, no, I haven't done a video. Yeah, I don't have to think about doing that.
Speaker 2:It shouldn't be too hard these days, with all the bonus technology that exists, to make one's life a little bit easier. Yeah, no, I definitely do that. It's such a great spot and we're fortunate to have it. Hopefully we'll be there again this year. It's one thing, like many, that I have to book. We've just been focused on Berlin, getting ready for the European film market at the moment. So that's for us. Our preparation is like everyone. It's obviously just the basic logistics, just that kind of housekeeping of where we're going to stay, where is our booth going to be, what is our booth going to look like, but also, obviously, the building of the slate and making sure that we've got something new to talk about with distributors to keep them coming back each time.
Speaker 2:So it's always yeah, I'd like to say that there are quiet times in the business, but there's very few, and certainly in the lead up to the month before a market is always the busiest.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, absolutely. And you know what? One of the discussions that I'm having with so many of my sales agent friends and producer friends is that what filmmakers and creatives don't really understand is how expensive it is for all of us to go into those places. And so I think it's important to discuss, because everybody's saying I just need to go get a sales agent for my project, I just need to go there. And when they don't get the yes say from your company or anybody else's company, they do not factor the amount of time and expenses and investment that it takes from Odin's eye or whoever to market a movie, especially in this time. So how do you feel the business has changed, both from attending markets are markets still useful? And also, you know, in terms of the difficulty of, you know, selling movies in general.
Speaker 2:Hmm, well, look, things have changed quite a bit over the last several, really the last decade I suppose. They've changed dramatically and you know, the specific value of festivals has, you know, changed in in certain ways as as well. I think the major, the major change is that, you know, for producers I personally don't think going to a lot of festivals is is necessary the last thing they just sales agents. In the past used to take dedicated acquisitions people to markets to cover films, to meet with producers, and some certainly still do, but they definitely do not do it to the same extent that they previously have. Some, you know, big sales agents Like I'm not, I don't want to name anyone, but you know some of the bigger ones have very explicit you know, no, you know no pitch meetings. They won't take anyone, they won't take any materials. You have to put it through there. You know, if you don't know the person that you're supposed to, then you've got to put, put it through the general thing. You know the general email or whatever. Nowadays, yeah, we like we used to take someone, these days we don't. Typically it's it's rare for us to take an acquisitions person and typically we will have you know what, I guess everyone you know either you know just slightly disparagingly would refer to as the door bitch in the, in the, the, the olden days, even the newer days. I think that it's still kind of, still kind of exists because that's kind of you know, it's that you know, firm. But thank you, leave your like for us. It's thanks for coming.
Speaker 2:We are here to focus on selling out the films that we have already acquired before the market. We're happy to receive your material and we will take it and we will look at it later. We might look at it during the market, just like flip through the materials. We'll have a quick look and see if it's something that justifies us Dedicating time to that. You know our job at the markets is to work for the Producers who are actually paying for us to be there in the first place.
Speaker 2:You know we are fronting the money to do it. So we are taking, you know, the risk, or the sales agents are taking the risk of, you know, spending that that money In the expectation that they will be able to recoup it from the sales that they do so anytime that they're, you know, devoting to those other activities like acquiring films you know are not, it's not really a something that's for a coupable, you know. So we, and pretty much everyone else, really prefers to look at the materials ahead of time and have a pre-booked meeting if we're interested. I Think the old, you know very little has ever come from. You know, door door knocking in. In my experience Some markets have you know, better quality and Then others.
Speaker 2:I guess there's a. You know there's a cost to attending can for, you know, for a lot of you know, just say, specifically for Americans, whereas the bar for AFM is perhaps a bit lower. So you know there can be, you know, a different level of quality. You know, when some of you know some of the most ridiculous projects we've ever seen have come out of AFM. They're hilarious, but you know, yeah, that's I guess.
Speaker 2:So long answer to a small part of the question. I suppose you know other markets still relevant. Yeah, like it's still worth going and because, especially if you're, you know, starting out, you, you need to build a network, you, you, it's the relationships that do take time to to build and it's certainly much better, having met the people in person that you're going to entrust, if you're a producer to entrust, you know, your film to, and the same goes for us, as you know, sales agents and distributors. But we're, we're certainly not going to the same amount of markets that that we used to. You know we used to, you know, ten years ago we would be going to, you know, nine or ten markets or more, a dozen markets a year.
Speaker 2:And you know, in festivals and different things, these days, you know we tend to skip a lot and Really just focus on on the major ones, because the, the costs are exorbitant and you know technology has, you know, obviously Powered up through and from COVID and people are now quite happy to take virtual meetings and you know kind of prefer it because it is more time, it's more time effective.
Speaker 2:Frankly, you know it's a lot more to the point, is a lot more business oriented. You know it's certainly more difficult to make a relationship over zoom, but I think if you're Intune and you know in the moment with the person that you're talking to and not, you know, with other people or have other things going on, then you can. You know. You know we sell over, over zoom for certain markets. We, I mean really selling these days is a 365, you know plus days a year thing. You know you don't necessarily we from a sales agent, but so you don't necessarily wait to launch a movie at a festival. We're quite happy to introduce it beforehand. These days the markets are really the markets really meet and greet markets. Now, in a lot of ways there's not the same instant gratification that we used to get of closing a ton of sales very quickly. It still happens for certain types of films in certain genres, for certain buyers and certain territories, but everything takes a lot longer.
Speaker 1:The big if it's an acquisitions perspective.
Speaker 2:Producers are trying to get the A24s or whoever. So before it maybe comes to me, we would have to wait for perhaps them to pass on it, unless obviously we have a relationship existing and the same with distribution. Distributors have to even the biggest independent distributors in a territory kind of have to wait for streamers and the global studios to decide whether they're going to buy a certain film or not. And all these delays at each level. Just things happen a lot slower these days. They still happen, but just not in the same way that they used to.
Speaker 2:Except for sort of rare, there's always outliers who will launch and sell immediately. But whenever the strategy of the seller is to go for a worldwide streamer or global studio first and not the independent, international, separate international territories, it does take a lot longer. We have to carry the films longer at festivals, which means we're having to take it to malt maybe two more festivals than we used to in the past to do the same amount of sales. But we'll meet and greet the distributors, we'll show them stuff, they'll then take it home, they'll watch it, they'll review it, they'll read it, they'll run their numbers, they'll come back with their offers and typically we're closing for deals immediately after the market and then for the next three months from that particular launch.
Speaker 1:I love what you said and this is super interesting because, from the filmmakers and creators' perspective, I love what you said because what I think that happens is when people have to travel overseas, they are forced to get to know the global marketplace not just the US marketplace, like Australia being a major player, obviously, in both production and distribution and all these incredible opportunities to film there and I think that because they're spending more money to go to those markets when it's outside of their home base, they're forced to have to learn about all this AI before they come in. They're not just gonna be walking by and just going, hey, I have a project to pitch, and they're like what is like? They don't even know what you're doing, they have no idea who. You are just kind of seeing what sticks to the wall, and I remember, in fact, that you are notorious for posting on Facebook sometimes some of the most out there pitches that you hear from people that just walk on the room, and I honestly you should have a collection of those and find them on your timeline and just even publish a little book about like what not to say, because this is the thing that people need to learn that this is a global industry and it takes a lot of damn work, even for companies like yourself.
Speaker 1:You know you're not gonna go. Oh, I just have the best idea in the world and I'm gonna give it to Tom Cruise and you're gonna be throwing money at me and they just clueless, clueless, and I love that they are. Finally, they're doing educational platforms in the different I know you're in South by Southwest Australia. Like there is the opportunities, like you said, now with Zoom, and that's the beauty of technology is that we're able to learn more about one another and, like you said, it's so much better. People, if you wanted to talk to Michael or anybody in his team, is to set up a Zoom with his team. They're gonna have a lot more time to talk to you, just like I am right now then running at a market when they're trying to close a sale, they're trying to chase after a buyer who owes them money or not, and they're not gonna have the bandwidth to listen to you right.
Speaker 2:We absolutely don't have it at market unless you have a dedicated person, and they're typically going to. If it's a company that has the resources to do that, they're probably doing it because they're also producing and, as a lot of the biggest sales agents are, it's really the only way that the business has survived, if it wasn't for sales agents becoming producers. Companies like XYZ have built incredible businesses around identifying talent and basically packaging the projects with them and developing it with them, and we do the same kind of thing where we, when we've bought people to market, we've targeted the people that we know can deliver. Everyone is so risk averse. Projects really have to be bulletproof at so many different levels, and that's something that, yes, a lot of first timers or inexperienced producers will come into these markets and get the shock of their life when they find that doors are actually not open for them, and they can find it extremely frustrating. There's tons of resources out there, like this podcast, for example, where people are talking about these things. Film festivals local film festivals typically have kind of panels and discussions with different people. A lot of it is now recorded and easily available on the web of what to do and what not to do and it's not too hard, but yes, there's been some wild ones, the ones that AFM are typically, historically, they've been the most entertaining.
Speaker 2:There was one guy who came in as he came dressed as the lead character of the movie, which involved a movie about a famous music producer who had allegedly shot someone and was on trial for this thing, and this certain person had this huge afro. So he came in with this huge afro acting as the character and wanted to do his pitch because it was so ridiculous and it was probably the end of the day and we needed a bit of levity. We indulged the pitch and ended up looking at the footage that was shot and it was stuff that definitely would appear on. It would make it. It would look amazing. I can't tell you. It would definitely be something that would appear on the. Do you know the podcast? What is it? How did this get made?
Speaker 1:Oh, yes, I love that yeah.
Speaker 2:It would be a high rater on that one. It's up there with Burdemic in terms of awful things. Anyway, major digression. But I like, I'm discreet, but I'm also like, yeah, this is something that is ridiculous and yeah.
Speaker 1:It's educational and it's educational. I think it's funny. You're reminding me of the time when I went to see the mummy, the movie, and it was packed and it was the original mummy, I think, with Brendan Fraser or something, and I remember that we're just watching one of those ridiculous moments with like cheesy lines and all of a sudden you're hearing a voice that says how did this get missed? Of course it must have been a writer. It was probably like a professional writer. It was like pulling his hair out and everybody started laughing. So you're just reminding me of that and you're also reminding me of and I need to ask you that because I still, to this day, hear that all the time Maybe we can pre-sell this movie. I know there's gonna be pre-sells on it so I can finance it, and I'd love for you to give me your two cents on pre-sell market.
Speaker 2:Sure God. Pre-sell market also has changed a lot. It's right now. It's exceedingly difficult.
Speaker 2:The pay one window has collapsed really since May or probably March last year. Like, for those who don't might not know that what that is is basically that's the first window after theatrical. So it'd be like, you know, this streaming this might be the streaming window, for example. That would be a major part of revenue for whoever is distributing it and kind of for the distributor, the ability to have that deal or a certainty of a certain price and a certain volume of those deals for those distributors. That has fallen away in the US first, and then it kind of also started happening in other territories as well and it all sort of happened very, very quickly. So that, combined with the strike obviously made, you know, just makes the distributors who are like, yeah, we now have to have the amount of movies that we're acquiring and those streaming platforms and studios also decrease the price at the same time. So you've got downward pressure on advances from distributors as well as downward, basically a demand issue. The demand has gone down. So from a sales perspective, it means that only certain movies, certain types of movies, are going to really work as pre-sale, which means that they're either at the moment, quite expensive action packages that companies like Hyland or Sierra Affinity might put together where there's like a legacy media stars, so like at Mill Gibson, a John Travolta, a new page, yes, exactly All those guys that are like yep, ok, they are guaranteed and very clear, action-oriented stuff. Anything that maybe lacks those kind of names or is sort of outside of those that genre has become very difficult, unless, of course, it's directed driven prestige picture that might be put together by A24 or Film Nation. For us smaller guys, it's really trying to find those pre-sale packages where it's like OK, there's a clear audience, there's a clear market, clear requirement for a distributor or a certain name and the other kind of movies that we're putting together. So like we're trying to put quite a few in the action space, which is something that we've not done a lot of in the past.
Speaker 2:It's still exceedingly difficult to lock in talent, talent prices as of today, what is it? January, mid-jan, haven't come down. Yeah, they're still asking the pre. Well, the pandemic pricing and the streaming wall pricing. So the new normal or new reality price of what class they're going to get on an independent movie, sort of yet to balance out. So the moment I feel a lot are asked, unfortunately asking more than what the market can sustain and bear, and so distributors and packages are not being able to be completed as a result. It's super frustrating. I don't think it's ever been as difficult to package and put something together. I mean, if you've got like a shark movie with a B name in it, then yes, okay, that's something that the market can handle. Or if you've got like a horror genre picture that's maybe like in the elevated genre space but super low budget, like two million or so, with a B name in it or someone that has some kind of meaning for that genre, then that is also something that can get up and get pre-sold.
Speaker 1:But and animation as well, right Cause I know you do a lot of animation and I think maybe animation also works because it has a shelf life and that is longer and you're not necessarily so tied to names, because if you have cute little characters like the ones that I see animal crackers and somebody with a cat and you know I love cats- and you have one too.
Speaker 2:Bad cat on chooby at the moment. As a chooby original in the US, I can watch that this has just gotta be like.
Speaker 1:But those work because those are concept driven right and they're very broad, typically yeah, typically, yeah, typically they're very broad, they're very family.
Speaker 2:The ones that work tend to be sort of in the 12 year old plus kind of area where it also works for family, and I've found it's been easier to Like, certainly during the pandemic time. Obviously animation kept coming through. They had some Took them a little while to change up their structures for production, but they typically did continue delivering movies, which was great for us because we, thank God, still had some revenue coming in and that definitely helped out our business. But yeah, their family, their broad, their universally, obviously universal, they're easy to dub into different languages. So we still find animation is set right now Animation is, even as a finished film, animation with no names is easier to sell than a finished film with a B name or something.
Speaker 2:But at the same time, animation is also exceedingly difficult to finance at the moment, but for different reasons. I mean, yes, the pay one window is still also an issue, but the more difficult part is the bigger territory, pre-sales, like. We used to have huge pre-sales to China, that's gone. We used to have big money to Korea, that's gone. Their market's pretty much decimated. At the moment it's still maybe only 30% of pre-pandemic levels.
Speaker 2:You know, france and Germany are difficult to pre-sell because their TV market has consolidated so much and is so heavily controlled by Disney and the studios in terms of output that there's very little room. So local distributors can't guarantee that again, that they can get a pre-sale for that TV slot. So, yeah, it's still difficult, it's doable. But the project has to be very precise. It has to maximize the different tax incentives in different corners of the globe with different co-production structures. Budgets have had to come down, yeah, so it's a very difficult space as well, but I'm it's a, you know, personal passion of mine. So you know, I wanted to be an animator when I was a kid, so it's fun.
Speaker 1:No, it's fun and plus, you know what it makes sense. Coming full circle with the conversation at the beginning of our podcast is that you know more and more sales companies have to produce, and they because if they're going to be running numbers and they have to be advising other producers where to go, where to get tax credits, how like there is, it's a normal evolution that you would want to be more hands on the versus just selling for commission, because, as we all remember and it's it's a tale as all this time.
Speaker 1:But when you're doing great sales is because the movie is great, and when you don't do, is because you suck as a sales agent and not because the movie did.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Exactly, you know, and if the movie sells, really well, it's the producer who's like yes, it's the film that did it was there, was all about the film, and you know, of course, it's always a bit of both. I mean, we can only that we, you know sales, as you can typically only do what the film allows us to do. You know there's, yes, of course, there's some variation between you know different sales agents, but you know it's that you've always got to find the right sales agent for the right movie. You know, my advice to people is always, like, you know, look at their, look at their lineup is do they have anything on their lineup that is similar to all the same as the, the movie that you're making? If not, don't waste their time. Don't waste your time. Find someone else who is in that specific space. Don't try and go.
Speaker 2:Oh well, a 24 have a huge brand and they can sell anything wherever they want. It's like well, no, I'm not necessarily. You know they're known for specific things. They have specific buyers that they work with and specific distributors that they work with for a particular type of movie. You know, and yeah, there's been a lot of evolution. I mean a lot of like more the art house people that would be more director driven and more festival film driven in the past. They're all moving more into the commercial space. There's been a lot of companies moving into the animation space and so it's becoming more crowded in in these space, these areas, which is fine, you know. Everyone's got to. You know, keep going. But I think the used car salesman's men of the past, you know, have left long left the business because it's just not building anymore.
Speaker 1:So last question is what is all this? Because I've always wanted to ask you to, by the way, what's all this I stand for? I always wanted to ask you that.
Speaker 2:You mean like where did? Where did the name come from?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, you gotta, you gotta have it, you gotta have a name. And you know, naming companies is really difficult and you know, in some ways I, in some ways I wish I had a like a boring company name that was like just started with an A and it was, you know nothing, a bit strange. You know, oden now is, you know, known more because of the Marvel movies. When I started the company, however, it Oden was, you know, quite obscure in terms of, you know, mythologies and things like that Everyone knew of, like you know, the Greek, you know legends and things like that, although you know things from Rome, but not so much about Nordic mythology, which I've particularly been interested in.
Speaker 2:And initially we're going to call the company Oden just Oden Entertainment or Oden Productions, something like that. But Tom Cruise apparently had a company that was called that. So we're like all right, we'll, we want to stay away from, you know, you know, upsetting Mr Tom, and so we're like okay, but you know Oden's eye, okay, so Oden gave up one of his eyes for, in return for wisdom and foresight, he was a shapeshifter, so he was constantly changing and evolving. He would give inspiration to worthy poets and writers.
Speaker 2:He was also the God of War and could be extremely vengeful. But we, you know we try to. We don't like to think of ourselves in that way, but we will also, you know. But we will stand firm on what we believe and you know we stick by people and you know we'll fight the good fight if it's required. So yeah, that's kind of why Oden's eye and how that came to be. You know, I had some buy. I had one buy essay once that he the reason he had previously not taken a meeting with me is because he thought my company name was stupid.
Speaker 1:Wow, but it's so memorable and I honestly don't think it's stupid. It's a conversation stuff that. And now I know what you represent, Michael, which is very in line, I have to say.
Speaker 1:You are what you declare yourself to be, and so you know and I have to say I mean I have to bring you back, because this is, I mean, we could be talking for hours about the distribution business and I'm sure there will be more to say six months down the road when there's going to be yet another change and we'll we'll have to bring you back. So, summing it up for the end, and you know that that's coming, I'm doing it the whole actor studio style. Okay, take a pic either. How do you, michael, not the company define yourself in three words, or the other window. Number two is any life mantra, business mantra that you want to share, that has worked for you in your life, that could inspire someone else when they hear that.
Speaker 2:Look, okay, this business is really tough for everyone and life is tough. There's something that I've always sort of followed and I recently heard that it's sort of a phrase that Tom Hanks used as well in difficult parts of his life which was this to shall pass, and you know, that's on the. You know, how do you survive in this business? That's kind of the philosophy that I've had to take. Is this to shall pass? And that can I?
Speaker 2:Can you know, if there's a problem and something that's stressing me out, is there something that, if there's something I can, if there's something I can't do about it, well, okay, fine, there's nothing I can do about it, I'm not going to stress about it. If there is something I can do about it, well, that's great, I have, there are things that can be done and I can take those steps. So I kind of try to think in in those ways to, you know, kind of separate myself from the problem or the equation and try to be Vulcan about it. You know, being you know a bit of a you know sci-fi nerd, yeah, so it would be those kind of two things I love that, because you're sort of giving a double, double meeting to this this to shall pass, it's.
Speaker 1:You can either surrender and this to shall pass, or you can take action, and whatever the result is, this to shall pass. So I think that's a perfect ending to this wonderful podcast interview. Michael has been such a joy to have you here. We've been trying for a while now. I am going to bring you back you can mark my words on it because I'm sure there's going to be so many questions about what we just talked about. So thank you for coming on my show and then, of course, anybody who's listened to it.
Speaker 1:If you know we're going to be posting the website of Odin's Eye. Please don't go knock on the door during Cannes or Berlin unless you have a meeting. And they said yes, but you can always write to Michael's wonderful team that you can also find on the website. And then you can also contact me, and you know I might be able to like twist his arm a little bit. But if you like this episode, please subscribe, share, review. I make zero dollars on it, but I do love to give back to our community and Michael knows that and he's one of those people as well. So I have a beautiful evening day. Wherever you are in the world, this is the heart of show business, and over and out. If you have any questions or comments or feedback for us, you can reach me directly at the heart of showbusinesscom.