The Sam Bailey Pitch

How is it that I've gotten this far in my career? That's a question everybody asks.

Today I was working up a Sam Bailey pitch with Kat, and found myself pretty much explaining the process of how I got to be where I am. Prior to pulling in folks like Gerard, Dave, Aimee, Sheila, and so on... that anchor of production value that allowed me to reach out to those people was based on my relationships with the production companies for whom I've done cold-calling as a financier.

From there, here's how we put Sam Bailey together:

Movies like Twilight and The DaVinci Code (and even Ink) have made modern fantasy the one genre where dramatic performances are consistently yielding blockbusters. This genre is the one place where a filmmaker can provide the performers and the investors with an equally compelling motivation. Our market shares a space with the superhero films and the horror genre, without the demand for effects work. With that in mind:

Sam Bailey has a vital, unique, beautiful script that plays directly to the strengths of today’s marketplace. Until now, no filmmaker has taken modern fantasy out of that huge, operatic scope and closely observed the characters and lives of the people who actually live in these worlds. Most films gloss over the paradoxes inherent in an immortal life, and Sam Bailey embraces them. Thanks to our unique, compelling script:

Sam Bailey has the Oscar-Winning production value of a theatrically successful independent film. Our Director of Photography has shot some of the most beautiful commercial footage of the last ten years, and is providing Sam Bailey with rich, elegant visuals. Our composer is providing the production with a classic, European-style concerto to enhance the flavor of the film. Our relationships in post-production are enabling us to get expensive editing and sound fascilities on an equity basis. Boston is a film-friendly city location-wise, and we are able to find locations that resonate the rich, antiquated tones of modern fantasy – simultaneous to expressing our down-to-earth approach – on a budget that does not express the true value of the film. With the production we've already assembled and the value of our equity incentives, we've found Oscar-Winning talent excited to work with us on the production team. Our budget for Sam Bailey is a realistic appraisal of what an excellent, dramatic, tonally rich film will cost below-the-line. Because we can provide such a high degree of creative excellence:

We have an extremely dedicated, tight-knit, talented and tireless production team at the core of this film. Having this production value at our disposal has enabled us to pull together a group of extraordinary people, from the line producer to our 8 Sided ensemble performers. This team has already been working relentlessly for over a year to lay the infrastructure for Sam Bailey’s success, from the script to the budget and business plan. During that time, our team has also been working on another objective, essential to our success:

On the internet, we’re already building our audience! From viral marketing to our social media network, Sam Bailey’s cast and crew have already built a following of thousands of people. On twitter, we broadcast daily to an audience spread across several social and viral accounts. Our Eventful campaign is underway, our Facebook is growing daily, and we have a fully interactive online social network of our own at www.8sidedforum.com, where budding filmmakers and curious audience members are getting to know our artists and craftsmen personally! What’s more, viral campaigns like www.whoissambailey.com allow our audience to live in a world where it’s possible for a man to live 600 years. Our work has proven that social media can give a small group of dedicated producers the tools to successfully market an independent platform release. In turn, that success has led us to:

Sam Bailey is already in negotiations with exhibitors for a platform release! All our social media efforts have given us the ability to enter a dialogue with the arthouse cinema chains, and now we are presented with a favorable set of terms and an achievable set of conditions. We’re well on our way to opening Sam Bailey in 5 screens, with a concrete and viable plan for expansion based on social networking, viral marketing, and festival-based awareness. Thanks to our audience, production value, and exit strategies:

Sam Bailey is earning the attention of larger financing institutions and a-list performers. When we began this journey, our plan for financing revolved around the experience our producers have with private equity. Because we’ve made the most of our own creative strengths and the financial strengths of today’s film marketplace, Sam Bailey is attracting the attention of people like you. On the one hand, the creative mission we are realizing is very, very rewarding. This is a challenging film, and we are very careful to provide our creators with the support they need to meet that challenge head on. On the other hand, we have systematically mitigated and addressed every risk of film production – while opening ourselves to the tremendous upside that independent theatrical releases can offer. With that in mind, consider that:

This films only costs $500,000! I’m not saying it’s easy to produce an excellent, successful, theatrically competitive independent film on a microbudget. It’s not. At the same time, all this value is the direct result of our relentless insistence on doing exactly that. At this point, our success has earned the trust of Oscar-Winning talent, of nationally known cinema chains, of well-known production and post-production companies, and most importantly of our audience. In turn, having that global collaboration makes it even easier to create the production value we set out to create. Our employees and collaborators have the experience to ensure and guide our success, and we have the vision – and frankly, the impulsiveness – to pull something like this together in the first place. We’re in a perfect position to use the wisdom of our senior team members (and the breadth of our audience), to leverage and temper the valuable recklessness of our own youth to create something… worthy.

This film is worthy. Going back to the beginning, this is a movie that leverages the market trends, at shockingly little expense, to open ourselves to the likelihood of creating a beautiful, meaningful, important movie that affects it’s audience and delivers a fantastic ROI. In the process, we get to take advantage of marketing opportunities in social media that the competition is only beginning to understand. This team is made up of grounded, creative leaders hell-bent on excellence, and we’ve put together something better even than the sum of its parts. Sam Bailey is happening because it is worthy.