Director/sales agent Julian Richards on film finance, sales and making a profit.

Julian: “The tail doesn’t necessarily wag the dog”

In yesterday’s blog, Julian Richards – part film director, part film sales businessman – talked about the two horror films he made this year – Daddy’s Girl and Reborn.

In today’s blog, he puts on his sales agent hat…

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JOHN: You direct movies but you also work as a sales agent, through your company Jinga Films. Surely film-making and sales are two different mind-sets.

JULIAN: It’s full of contradictions: sales and production. But it does improve your skills in terms of film-making and the tail doesn’t necessarily wag the dog. Making decisions from a sales point of view can be creative.

JOHN: Directing is a vocation and sales is a profession.

JULIAN: But I enjoy it as well, maybe because I have achieved a certain level of success with it, which was kind of unexpected. Also it provides me with a regular income and quite a degree of autonomy.

JOHN: You have said that horror films are better money-makers than thrillers.

JULIAN: Absolutely. Horror has a very loyal fan base. People don’t go and see a horror film because of the cast. They go to see the core ingredients of the genre. Whereas a thriller needs a central cast member that is going to draw the audience in.

There are basically three niches in the mainstream movie market – there’s horror, Faith and sports documentaries.

JOHN: And sex.

JULIAN: And sex. Porn.

JOHN: Why Faith?

JULIAN: Because there’s an awful lot of Christians out there who will watch a film that is Faith based. And not just Christians. Other religions as well. A film like The Shack.

Prophets and profits are good bedfellows

JOHN: The Shack?

JULIAN: It is from a best-selling, Faith-based novel. I think it made something like $60 million in the US on something like a $20 million production.

JOHN: The rule-of-thumb used to be that the break-even point for a movie was 2½ times your negative cost.

JULIAN: Probably the same now. But another statistic is that it costs around $20 million to release a film theatrically in the US on 1,000 screens for the first week. So you can make a film for $100,000 but it is still going to cost $20 million to get it in theatres.

From a business and investment point of view, a lot of people talk about Box Office Gross… “Oh! I made a film for $100.000 and it made $25 million at the box office!” … But when you subtract $20 million for P&A – Prints and Advertising – then the whole idea of profit comes right down.

When somebody says to me: “The film made such-and-such, I am not interested in Box Office; I am interested in how much the film sold for to distributors via the sales agent. What really matters is the money that comes back to the sales agent from the distributor. That is the only money that ever comes back. The rest is consumed by marketing costs. What comes back is surprisingly small.

Right now, I think the sweet spot is around $300,000. That is what most horror films will sell for, outside of the studio system, no matter what the budget. So, if you make the film for $100,000, you are in profit. If you make it for $1 million, someone is losing a lot of money.

JOHN: There can be tax incentives.

JULIAN: Yes.. If you make a film in the UK, you make 25% back. If you shoot in Georgia in Eastern Europe, you get 25% back. But you can’t really make a film for $100,000 and expect it to compete in the market. What are you going to do? An anthology? A single location? It’s gonna look cheap and you are entering a very competitive market. There is too much product and the shelf space has shrunk enormously.

A few years ago, you might have been able to get a ‘found footage’ film or an anthology into that space. Now you maybe even need ‘cast’ because it’s become so competitive.

You need to find money that doesn’t need to be returned to the investor – which is usually some kind of tax deal or it’s…

JOHN: …money laundering.”

JULIAN: (LAUGHS) Well, there’s that and there’s a lot of that goes on.

JOHN: Can I print that?”

Julian Richards (right) directing

JULIAN: Yeah. I’ve been involved in a number of productions where that has been an issue. The question of it being ‘laundering’ or being ‘avoidance’ is another issue. There are a lot of grey areas with finance through the EIS and the SEIS and Sale & Leaseback. I have worked with producers who are now in prison, serving 9-year sentences for raising finance through tax incentive schemes that they thought were kosher but, retrospectively, ten years down the line, they have been the subject on an HMRC witch hunt. So it is scary.

JOHN: Elsewhere, you have said there is no real theatrical market for horror films in the UK, Germany and America. The market is really places like Vietnam.

JULIAN: Yeah. Latin America and South East Asia. The reason being that, in the past, these films never went to those territories, because the cost of a 35mm print was too expensive. Now that it has all been digitised, releasing a film theatrically in Vietnam or in Peru is achievable. It’s pretty cheap, apart from the licensing fee, which is a nightmare: they will charge a distributor $500 to use a digital projector which is really crushing for any independent film scenario.

JOHN: I’m surprised there is any theatrical distribution left. Surely everything gets pirated out of profit by Indonesian and Serbian and Western criminals?

JULIAN: Erm… You can buy yourself what they call a ‘black window’. In China, the Chinese distributors have to pay the pirates a sum of money to hold back the piracy of the film so they have a ‘black window’ to release their film.

JOHN: How long is the black window?

JULIAN: I don’t know. Probably about three months.

JOHN: I’m surprised the Chinese government tolerates piracy in such a sensitive cultural area as movies.

JULIAN: If you do it legitimately in China, you run into all sorts of problems: to do with censorship and the quota. You CAN get independent films through, but you are up against all the Hollywood studio films. If you are just doing transactional VOD, though, then all of those rules and regulations don’t apply in the same way, so it is possible to get a small, independent horror movie released in China.

The anti-hero of Julian’s latest film as director – Reborn

Julian Richards: horror, Brookside and Carrie Reborn for the Z Generation?

Julian Richards is an interesting Welshman.

Part film director and part film sales businessman through his company Jinga Films. He has made two horror films this year.

I was invited (not by him) to see his movie Daddy’s Girl at the recent Raindance festival in London. When I saw it, I had reservations about it.

So I was interested to see his even newer movie Reborn, the pitch for which is: “A stillborn baby girl is abducted by a morgue attendant and brought back to life by electrokinetic power. On her sixteenth birthday she escapes captivity and sets out to find her birth mother leaving a trail of destruction behind her.”

The poster pitch is: CARRIE FOR THE Z GENERATION.

Yesterday, Reborn had its North American premiere at the Another Hole in the Head festival in San Francisco.

So I had a chat with Julian Richards.

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JOHN: Daddy’s Girl… The first half or so was torture porn, which I disliked, then the female central character looks in a mirror and the whole film changes – it turns on a sixpence – and becomes totally different.

JULIAN: Well… Daddy’s Girl was an interesting journey… I first came across the script 12 years ago and to get to make it 12 years later was a bit of a challenge. There were several characters in a story and the big twist at the end is you discover they are all the same character. When we got to make it, after 12 years, the first thing the producer said to me was: We were not going to do that.

He was right, because, under the circumstances, we would have needed an enormous amount of control with the casting, which we didn’t have working in Tbilisi in Georgia and on the budget we had. We had a deadline to start shooting which was four weeks away and, even shifting the story in a different direction, the whole casting and crewing experience was a… a game of musical chairs. It really was.

Daddy’s Girl starts as ‘torture porn’, ends somewhere different

JOHN: It’s set in the US. Why shoot in Georgia – the Eastern European country not the US state?

JULIAN: Because there was a tax incentive to shoot there and, in terms of labour costs, it’s probably the cheapest place in Europe at the moment

JOHN: The producers were Indians based in Dubai.

JULIAN: Yes. They had been shooting Bollywood films in Georgia and now they wanted to make horror films.

JOHN: So, in the original, the central girl had multiple personalities who were on screen as different people?

JULIAN: When all the characters in the story were her, it was part of her fractured view of the world. And her mother as well. There was a lot more of her almost being haunted. Haunted by the suicide of her mother. It was supernatural but actually more psychological.

JOHN: We can’t really talk about the very end of the film. But it ends up in a totally different place from where you might assume it would from the beginning.

JULIAN: That was actually the producer’s idea. And it was what we needed because, if you take out all of those elements – about all the characters being the same character – she becomes two separate characters and so I think the end worked for what we needed to do with that kind of film.

Reborn poster: Carrie for the Z Generation

JOHN: We can’t really talk about the end of Reborn either because of the multiple twists. But I think you have some sort of writer’s gene in you, as well as director’s. The end of Reborn is a writer’s ending. And, earlier in your career, you wrote something for Stephen Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment.

JULIAN: When I graduated from film school, I went to LA for a year and my first job was writing a screenplay for Amblin, based on a novel Chris Westwood, a friend of mine, had written: Calling All Monsters. It was very much an In The Mouth of Madness kind of story, about an author haunted by his own creations. But, when Amblin turned into Dreamworks, new people came in, looked at all the old projects and it got caught in turnaround and never happened.

JOHN: So then you came back to the UK to…

JULIAN: …direct on the TV series Brookside and to get my first movie Darklands off the ground.

Darklands was screened at a film festival in Korea and (movie producer/director) Roger Corman was on the jury. He released The Wicker Man in the US and he came up to me after Darklands was screened and said: “I’d like to release Darklands in the US.” 

“I was jumping for joy. Corman was a god.”

So I was jumping for joy. Corman was a god to me. I introduced him to the producer of the film, but they couldn’t work out a deal so it never got released there. The producer’s company went bust and it took me 16 years to get the rights back. I eventually got it released in the US a couple of years ago.

JOHN: You seem to be attracted to horror. You directed the body-under-the-patio plot on Brookside. So you brought horror into TV soaps?

JULIAN: No. That was just the timing. I was there when they happened to be doing the body under the patio, the lesbian kiss and the plague that wiped out half the cast. I did episodes in each of those storylines. 

JOHN: What is the attraction of horror? Just that it sells? Why are you not making RomCom movies? They sell. 

JULIAN: I’m not driven to horror by money. It was a boyhood fascination and passion I had. I started making films on super 8 when I was 13.

JOHN: What was the 13-year-old you’s first film?

JULIAN: The Curse of Cormac, based on a graphic story strip in a House of Hammer magazine.

JOHN: You used to read House of Hammer?

JULIAN: I did. And Monster Mag and Fangoria magazine.

JOHN: So an early fascination with horror.

JULIAN: Yes. Stephen King’s book Danse Macabre was very interesting: defining the key ingredients of horror as suspense, surprise and gross-out. If you are going to make a successful horror film, it is going to have all those three ingredients.

JOHN: Reborn is difficult to categorise. It is not in one little box.

“You are sympathetic with the monster. Tess appealed to me.”

JULIAN: What attracted me was it was a classic horror story. I love monster movies where you are sympathetic with the monster and Tess (the ‘reborn’ daughter) appealed to me. When I read the story, I was torn between whether it was Tess’ story or Lena’s (her mother) and I decided the story was actually Lena’s. Tess is an anti-hero. Lena’s objective is to get back into her career as an actress and that’s how I came up with the ending.

JOHN: Which we can’t talk about.

JULIAN: No… But, from a meta point of view, I wanted it to have a new, contemporary twist at the end. Let’s have fun with it.

JOHN: You are involved in an upcoming anthology film called Deathcember.

JULIAN: Yes. It’s based round the idea of an advent calendar and every time you open up a window, that opens up a new story. The German producers have chosen 24 directors and I am one of them.

JOHN: How long is your section?

JULIAN: Five minutes. We will probably be shooting it in February/March next year, ready for the Sitges festival in September.

JOHN: And you are possibly making Rabies.

JULIAN: I am in talks with the Israeli producers about possibly shooting that in Wales. Based on my experience of shooting Reborn in Tbilisi, Georgia, as America, I could probably shoot in Wales for the US too. A tree is a tree. As long as the cars and costumes look American, then it feels American.

JOHN: There must be a more personal film you really want to make.

JULIAN: I would love to make a film in Brazil.

JOHN: Your wife is Brazilian.

JULIAN: Yes. I have this idea which is basically Elite Squad meets Cannibal Holocaust – about a crack force of urban cops who fight the cartels. It’s political theatre… My idea is that they are sent into the jungle to fight the indigenous… It is illogical to take urban fighters to the jungle, but the politicians do it to make a statement. They take them out of the favelas of Rio and put them into the jungle of Manaus.

JOHN: Sounds like a thriller.

JULIAN: It’s action and it’s political. They will fight tribes that have had little contact with humanity and maybe they will be cannibals and all kinds of things as well. I am taking it down the horror route.

JOHN: You want to do something serious but mask it with genre elements?

JULIAN: A little bit of both. I always like to do that. I did that with Darklands with Welsh nationalism.

… TO BE CONTINUED TOMORROW …

North Korea, Manchester’s Living Dead and the influence of House of Hammer

Some things make you feel old.

So I received this e-mail. It read:

It’s not great, but you won’t sleep through it…

Wow, you’re still alive! I remember reading your stuff in the House of Hammer magazine when I was 11 or 12 years old. In fact, I was thinking about you when I watched The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue on YouTube a wee while ago. What did you write about it in your review? Something along the lines of: “The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue is no great horror film… But you certainly won’t sleep through it”?!

I used to write feature articles and occasionally reviews for film magazines, including House of Hammer, which was oddly published by Marvel Comics UK and had a wider horror scope than just movies by Hammer Films. It later transformed into House of Horror.

The e-mail I received was from an Ian Smith. He added: “Did you write a feature about David Cronenberg and his first four movies (Stereo, Crimes of the Future, Shivers and Rabid) in House of Hammer — somewhere around issues 13 – 16?  If so, you also acquainted me with the World of Cronenberg for the first time — another feather in your cap! I seem to remember Mark Gatiss fondly waving a copy of House of Hammer on a BBC documentary he did about British horror movies.”

The Blood and Porridge website

So I thought Ian Smith might be worth talking to because, born in Northern Ireland and brought up both there and in Scotland, he currently lives in Sri Lanka and spent time in England, Switzerland, Japan, Ethiopia, India, Libya, Tunisia and, he says, “a part of the Korean peninsula that isn’t visited very often”. His website is titled Blood and Porridge.

So I talked to him via Skype in Sri Lanka, shortly after he had come back from a month working in Burma. He works as a teacher-trainer for people wanting to teach English as a foreign language.

When he finds the time, he writes short stories – horror, science fiction, fantasy and, he says, “even ‘mainstream’ ones set in humdrum wee Scottish and Irish towns and villages”. He has also published non-fiction on topics ranging from travel to Scottish amateur league football teams, from linguistic relativity to vampire movies. He has written under the pseudonyms Steve Cashell, Rab Foster, Eoin Henderson, Paul MacAlister, Jim Mountfield and, he says, “occasionally, under my own boring name”.

“So,” I said to him, “a part of the Korean peninsula that isn’t visited very often?”

“Yes,” he replied, “I spent two years working in North Korea with the British Council.”

“Which years?” I asked.

North Korea: People’s Paradise with a hint of a nuclear bomb

“2005-2007. That’s when they became a nuclear power. I remember I was with the British Ambassador that night and he was looking quite rattled and I told him: Well, you’ve joined that exclusive club. There can’t be many ambassadors who were in a country that suddenly went nuclear. It did not cheer him up.”

“Where were the bugs?” I asked. “The first time I was in North Korea we went, for some reason, to the Indian ambassador’s residence and he started off by just pointing silently to the radiogram, which was where the main bug was.”

“The only thing I noticed,” said Ian, “was that, when I picked up my telephone I would sometimes hear clicking noises. There was obviously someone listening in. I had freedom to go pretty much anywhere in Pyongyang, though occasionally I would spot someone behind me who was obviously keeping an eye on me.”

“Did you get out of Pyongyang much?” I asked.

“Just a little bit. I was generally restricted to the city but there are a couple of places you can go to which are on the official tourist trail. You can go about 30 miles down the road to the beach; and there’s a couple of mountains you can go to. Most of the time I was in Pyongyang and then they’d fly me over to Beijing every couple of months for a break.”

“Much-needed,” I suggested.

“Well,” said Ian, “I have to say I didn’t actually mind the job too much. I got on quite well with the North Korean people: they had a very nice, dark sense of humour.”

“Really?” I asked, surprised anyone risked showing any sense of humour in the People’s Paradise.

Ian Smith: a very well-travelled man

“They were very British, actually,” said Ian. “Always slagging each other off. I guess you probably need it in that environment. I enjoyed working there. You just had to not think too much about the wider picture.”

“What were you doing there?” I asked.

“I was training-up some teachers of English – giving them some training on the job.”

“Who is getting taught English in North Korea?” I asked.

“It’s quite a big thing,” said Ian. “At the time, Kim Jong-il had said he wanted everyone to speak English because it was the international language for business. Even in the more secluded countries, they now realise there’s a need for it.”

“It sounds dangerous,” I said. “North Koreans would actually be able to talk to foreigners.”

“Well, it’s a two-edged sword,” agreed Ian.

“What did you think when you were told you were going to North Korea?”

“I saw it advertised and applied. I had been in Newcastle-upon-Tyne for three years.”

“So anywhere was better?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t say that, but I felt it was definitely time for a bit of a change.”

“You read House of Hammer when you were about 11 or 12,” I said. “I always imagined I was writing for 16 or 17 year olds.”

Unusually cheerful-looking House of Hammer

“Well,” said Ian.”you couldn’t get into the cinema to see these films and your parents wouldn’t let you stay up late to see them on TV, so it was a kind of forbidden fruit thing. Someone said: The scariest horror films are the ones you are too young to get in to see. You just imagine them being much worse than they actually are.”

“And now you write yourself,” I said.

“I do a bit of writing. I write a lot of horror stories. I usually get two or three published each year. Sometimes hard copies, sometimes internet magazines. I’m not going to make any money out of it. It’s all moved online, but the problem is you get paid less now, if at all.”

“Why did you want to be a writer?”

“It’s just something that seemed obvious to me. Even when I was a kid, I was writing stuff in exercise jotters.”

“And now it’s all gone electronic,” I said.

“I think with a lot of those horror and fantasy writers from the 1970s and 1980s – their actual book market dried up and a lot of them started doing stuff on the internet and self-published – Tanith Lee, who died a few weeks ago published dozens and dozens of books in the last decade or so, but all electronic. Her fanbase would download it.”

“Your next story?” I asked.

One of the online markets for Ian’s work

“The Groove. It should be appearing soon in a Kindle magazine called Hellfire Crossroads.  It’s a traditional revenge-from-beyond-the-grave story like the ones that used to be in those horror comics all those years ago. In it, the guy who has died is a sort of John Peel music obsessive who has this horrible, bitchy wife. The guy has left these requests for music to be played at his funeral but she ignores them and plays Angels by Robbie Williams. I just thought that, if something was guaranteed to bring me back from the grave in a fit of revenge, it would be that.”

“A sort of Hammer Horrory idea,” I said.

“I was reading,” said Ian, “an interview with the director Julian Richards, who made a film called Darklands in the late 1990s, which kick-started the new movement in British horror movies and he said, when he was a kid, the first film he did was on super-8 and he basically found the story in House of Hammer because they used to do these horror stories at the back – Van Helsing’s Terror Tales – he spent three years turning that into a film. So, in a way, House of Hammer was quite influential.”

“I guess every little helps,” I said.