Box Office || Events || News || Production Charts
 Sponsor: Columbus Screenplay Discovery Awards Columbus Discovery Awards Winners |
Hosted by Mark Vega, Esq. |
Artist View Entertainment cleared an important hurdle this AFM: it celebrates its fifth anniversary, an accomplishment to which many start-up companies aspire but not many achieve. President Scott Jones launched the company in 1991 with five films and smiles when he tells you he now carries over 60 titles. He's finally the guy he was looking for when he was a producer five years ago. Jones is solely a sales agent who keeps his clients happy by providing monthly, instead of quarterly, accountings. His producers keep coming back because they like the minimum prices set out for their products in the company contracts and they also like that Jones isn't scared off by performance clauses. Claudia Norman, Director of International Sales, is quick to boast of one client who has brought other producers into Artist View by using the line "I love my distributor. . ."
Jones hasn't funded any films they've acquired, but he is willing to waive commissions for a market if completion funds for a project can be taken out of early sales. Jones only hoped to add three films per market but saw himself take 24 last year. Seven films were in post-production during the 1995 October MIFED. Only one film remains in post-production during this AFM. Jones doesn't want to be in the business of providing finishing funds, but he will do it if it allows the producers to retain the copyright to their films. The one thing he hates to see is a desperate producer giving away a significant portion of the rights to his or her film at the last minute in order to obtain the monies required to finish post-production.
Today Artist View sells to all foreign video and TV markets and plans eventually to cater to theatrical buyers. Jones currently represents the work of between five and ten producer teams that have already committed to provide him with their next few films. Of course, Jones adds, "each new production increases in quality and has an increased chance of eventually tapping into a theatrical market." As an example, Jones first offered the film Squanderers from producers John Sjogren and Scott Ziehl at AFM three years ago and earned enough money for the producers to begin their second film The Mosaic Project in September, license it at MIFED in October and have it completed by the following AFM. Jones followed a similar sales pattern for the team's current project, Red Line, a 35mm feature starring Michael Madsen, Dom DeLouise and Chad McQueen. Slowly but deliberately, Jones' clients are working their way toward the ever-elusive theatrical release and the increasing profits that follow.
Films represented by Jones still cost only about a million dollars, but that's slowly changing too. As for genre, Jones prides himself on knowing the television markets well and thus advises his producer clients who are making action pictures to make sure they are "television safe" in order to maximize the sales potential of the property without increasing production costs through shooting coverage and preparing two separate versions of the film for sale. As for changes in the buying and selling process, Jones says the days are gone when every deal was closed at AFM. Jones says today, "you spend every day of the year selling and close most deals between markets." Jones is on the road at least half of the year. He goes to NATPE in January, AFM in February, MIPTV in April, Cannes in May, DISCOP in June, MIPCON in September, MIFED in October and (occasionally) MIPASIA in December. Jones carries two one-hour Jim Carrey movies from the early 1980s that Jones has successfully sold as a pair, convincing buyers to promote the duo as a two-hour special on Jim Carrey's first movies.
First-time producers, Sean Entin and Scott Tiano of Bridge Pictures, try to look cool as they pass the huge poster board of their AFM debut California Roll that occupies the entryway easel in the Artist View suite at the Loews Hotel. The pair are anxious to hear sales figures about their project and are busy answering pages and phone calls from their team members who are busy setting up the next Bridge Pictures picture. Even so, I happened to catch a glimpse of their reaction to the California Roll poster as they exited the suite. They let escape to each other two conspiratorial grins. Yep, they pulled it off. Their first film is under their belt and they're not rookies anymore. I just loved those grins. Scott Jones probably does too.
