Starting up a Production Company

I've been starting up a Space Opera side project; it's part hobby, part ambition, part potential company. I haven't figured out how I'll set the body up, I'd like it to be close to a co-operative whatever the formal structure is. The principle is that everybody can get a share based on what they put into it. I've using the phrase "production company" loosely since it may not actually be a company.

I'd like all roles to be based on people receiving a percentage share of the profits. Profits are unlikely to be achieved in the first few attempts, so I'm looking for people who are committing to a year or more of part-time involvement. Less involvement, less percentage share, more involvement, more percentage share. It's nice and simple at that level, gets more complicated the deeper you delve. It's similar to what's going on at Spinneyhead Presents, especially Venn.tv, but I'm likely to be more formal about what people are getting themselves into.

1 Who are we looking for

Compositors, 3d modellers, animators, script-writers, "set" designers, costume designers, legal advisors

It will be based in Manchester, UK because that's where I am, but we should be able to accommodate remote involvement if we have the right tools and the right approach.

2 My Roles

As I'm driving this forward, I'm happy taking on the following roles:

Director*, Producer, Composer, Sound Designer, Accounts, Website Designer+, Website Administrator+

*I'm happy to share direction if the right person wants to get involved.

+I can provide hosting and let someone else design if needs be. Otherwise if I end up doing it, it'll be a Drupal site, a bit simpler to this one though and probably more community-oriented. I may look further into Filmforge, a version of Drupal for filmmaking communities.

3 Extra needs

Hardware, tech and props, we'll need:

greenscreen/blue screen background
lighting
props
costumes
editing software
camera or two
microphones

These can either be bought, cobbled together or sourced from donations/sponsorship. Depending on how we progress, I may have access to some of it.

4 Editing Software

As for editing software, I've tried a few of the freeware/open source offerings and there's nothing suitable from my perspective. So we'd have to pick up something. Possibly FCP. As for modelling and animation, I quite liked Blender especially the rate at which it's progressing and increasing in functionality.

5 Licence

I'll have to get my head around this part. The short answer is that everyone has a right to what they create. I like the idea of it being upfront and fair.

However, the creator would have to provide a licence to the organisation to use and modify their creation. It will have to have some obligations in the licence, e.g. if you decide to get involved and create something, then if you back out after a couple of months, the organisation should still have the right to use your creation. I'd like it if the organisation would let people leave nicely, always better that way, but I'm aware that if a costume has been filmed, then the actor, director, cameraman, etc have already put effort into that shot so it would be awkward to remove it. So there you go, the organisation would have a right to use the creation, but may not exercise it.

Same goes for scripts, audio, video, models, etc.

We'll get some legal advice before going too far down this route. Mainly what I don't want is for someone to back out, then claim after 5 years (e.g. when it's published on network tv) that they have a right to more profits than the share that they originally signed up to. It's a matter of protecting everyone's investment (investment of time, creativity and money).

6 No Copying

Similarly, I don't want to infringe on anyone else's copyright. So this will not be a piece of fan fiction nor will it feature 3D models of ships that we don't have a licence for. Original content only, through and through.

By adhering to this, we should have a greater distribution potential.

7 Production values

"As good as it can be and that little bit better"

I want to find something between a good tv series and a quality movie out of Hollywood.

I know that we're likely to be deficient in a few areas, especially equipment, experienced actors, experienced modellers/animators, but there are a lot of aspiring people in this world. Just because they don't have the high-paying studio job doesn't mean they can't produce the quality. It does mean that there is increased risk in that they're unproven. But let's take that risk. Worst comes to the worst, we don't use their input and we get someone else in. It's a delay. It happens even with professionals. It'll be frustrating but it won't stop the project dead.

I also know we won't be using massive rendering farms running the most up-to-date software. We'll have to make do. But if it takes a week instead of a few hours to render a sequence, then we will live with that.

Organisation Structure
I referred to a typical issue with start-up production organisations in an earlier article. It revolves around trying to be fair to all involved, but acknowledging the worth of every input.

For instance, if one member has spent a year creating a product, how does another member get a share of the profits if they're only adding in a few hours worth? That doesn't allowed for the skewed financing and earnings in typical movies. For instance, on big budget movies, actors end up with a lot of the money, but the time they spend on a project isn't as much as a composer. That's assuming they have equal talent as well. How can a young 21 year old actor have as much experience and talent as a 50 year old composing veteran. What it doesn't take into account is the ability to pull in the public. Very few soundtrack composers have world-wide stature and I can't remember anybody saying they wanted to go and see a movie that night because of who scored the soundtrack.

The counter-side to this is that actors who will get involved in the startup projects are less likely to be major Hollywood players and so shouldn't be able to command the higher shares.

I'm half-tempted to try a few different but openly-declared ways of funding this.

I'll address them in another article. If you've got any information on your own organisation structure, let me know or post it in a comment. I'm interested to hear how others have done it.