Event Preview: AFM

The American Film Market (AFM) will open its doors at the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel on November 4 and run for a week. Besides welcoming distributors, producers and buyers from around the world and offering conferences of particular interest to them, this year the AFM is reaching out to niche groups within the indie film community.

The AFM has always offered conferences and roundtables that address issues impacting the independent film industry. Alongside the usual conferences on financing, pitching, production and distribution, this year AFM is including two new ones, the first on China, in which leaders from the Chinese film industry will share what makes producing in China different from producing in other countries.

“We want to bring the West up to speed on the business climate, cultural nuances and different business models that exist in China,” says Jonathan Wolf, the managing director of the AFM.

The second new conference is on film festivals. “We’re bringing more information to producers, not only on how to find the right festival that is best for their film—you just don’t apply to 1,000 festivals—but equally important, once you’ve been selected for a festival, then what? How do you leverage that and make the most of it before, during and, even more importantly, after the festival?” explains Wolf.

In addition, Wolf believes the AFM provides value for people working in film festivals, such as festival directors, curators, artistic directors and programmers. “Everyone they get their films from is under one roof for a week,” he says. “We have over 100 world premieres and another 300 or 400 films screened that have maybe been to only one festival. And the festival community, if they are going to travel at all, can truly benefit from being in Hollywood around the global industry. We are going to do some private seminars, where they will be talking about curatorial best practices, how to produce, how to fundraise.”

These professionals from film festivals will also be invited to one of the AFM Carousel Cocktails, another new initiative at the AFM this year. These cocktails were born from the desire to meet the needs of the diverse group of AFM attendees that are not buyers or sellers.

“We have three constituents who come to the AFM,” says Wolf. “One group is the sellers—the distributors bringing films and taking exhibition space. The second group is the buyers coming from all over the world, buying for every media and every territory. In general, the primary reason they come is to meet with each other for screenings and meetings. The third group is what we can loosely call everyone else. It’s the production community and all those who bring films forward: producers, writers, film commissioners, bankers and lawyers. That group truly values face-to-face opportunities; this is why people get on a plane.”

To facilitate the face-to-face opportunities, AFM is setting up the Carousel Cocktails. “For four nights on the Santa Monica Pier we are going to take over the historic merry-go-round, also called the carousel, and have a cocktail party for about 400 people,” explains Wolf. “It’s just for those who are not buyers or sellers, who are all too busy having meetings. This is for all the production community, of which close to 3,000 have credentials that are neither buyer nor seller. When they register, they pick the cocktail [party] they want to go to and each evening has a theme. The first evening is Genre Night, the second is Meet the Festivals, the third evening is Micro-Budget Night and the fourth evening will be Closing Night.”

As in other years, the major concern for producers attending the AFM will be how to get their film made. “Most producers are like artists who can’t afford their canvas,” says Wolf. “They have a tremendous passion, so the first focus is always, how do I get my art financed? This is why we have conferences on pitching and on finance. The AFM is all about commerce. More deals are done at the AFM on presales than on films that are finished.”

Top of mind for distributors continues to be the ever-changing marketplace, explains Wolf. When distributors start to develop a project or take on a project, they need to be able to anticipate how it will meet the marketplace. “I’m not talking about subject matter or genres,” he says. “I’m talking about budget versus what the marketplace can afford. It’s changing quickly and has been for the last few years.”

Wolf is expecting some 8,000 attendees, as in past years. “The size of the industry can’t grow dramatically, because the consumer only has a certain amount of time for long-form,” he explains. “We see increases from Asia and elsewhere. We see long-term trends, but like a supertanker out in the ocean, it turns very slowly.”

More importantly, Wolf’s primary goal is to enhance the AFM’s relevance for the production community. “We do this by making sure that all the buyers know all the sellers will be here. All the sellers and the production community know they are going to have access to the industry. They are going to be educated and learn and they are going to be able to connect and network. Those for us are the three pillars: the access, the education and the networking.”