Artist View’s Scott Jones on Success in Indie Film Market

NEW YORK: Scott Jones, the president of Artist View Entertainment, tells World Screen that the key to success in independent movies is to know what the market needs.

Jones started his career owning video retail outlets, and then served as executive producer on more than a dozen feature films. He channeled his passion for financing and marketing films into his own company, Artist View Entertainment, which he founded in 1991. As the company’s president, he has been building relationships with producers, shepherding their projects into movies that can find homes on U.S. free- and pay-TV networks and also satisfy the needs of international broadcasters.

WS: Since you set up Artist View have you focused on certain genres of movies or do you try to offer a broad range to your clients?
JONES: The company was always set up to have a wide variety of product available. I used to own video stores and grew up with the idea that you had to have something new for every section of the store. So when I switched into this company I kept the same philosophy because one minute you are sitting with a buyer from Disney Channel and the next minute you are talking to a DVD buyer from anywhere in the world. Normally the video client is looking for something that is more action or action adventure thriller, where the Disney Channel person isn’t looking for that. We’re very focused on being a sales and marketing company and want to offer something to anyone who came through the door. We have a wide variety of genres available.

WS: What is Artist View able to offer producers as the landscape becomes more complex?
JONES: The toughest part of our job is to make sure that we communicate with producers and explain what the market is like. There is no sugar coating the fact that it has changed and that if you made a movie 10 years ago, you’re probably not going to have the same results today, depending on what movie it is. We get involved early with producers, we review their scripts, we talk about who we think is going work casting-wise. We really talk about the budgets and how much they want to spend on the movie and say, does that make sense in this marketplace today? If you are going to make this kind of movie for this amount of money, are you crazy or not? We offer the “Are you crazy?” element! [Think of other businesses] you don’t throw up a bunch of cheap condos in a high rent area. We supply the producers with the research and development. If you want to make this type of movie then it should be in this budget range, it should have this much set aside for your cast. If you do those things, you are making a product that the market should be interested in.

WS: What is the DVD market like today?
JONES: It’s no secret that with every feature, p DVD is becoming a smaller and smaller part of the business, but what is quite interesting from my perspective on the independent side, at least in America, is that when video stores like Blockbuster and Hollywood used to buy independent movies, the most that an indie label could sell them was around 35,000 to 40,000 units. But today Redbox can order that same amount of these pictures, which means that the same demand is there, but the model has changed and dramatically. Their orders have replaced the orders of Blockbuster and Hollywood of yesterday.

WS: And the economics have changed?
JONES: Yes, and that’s the key, isn’t it? If you order from Redbox it’s $1 a night. So all of a sudden it works at a dollar a night because Redbox doesn’t have the overhead of the bricks and mortar that Hollywood and Blockbuster did.

WS: As the indie movie business has changed, have television broadcasters played a greater role in your business compared to 10 or 15 years ago?
JONES: We saw that change coming many years ago. We started to focus a lot on TV movies and the pay- and free-television business because we saw the decline in the video numbers almost 10 years ago. The funny thing about the digital world is that it’s made the business even more niche-driven, so you really have to know what those specific channels want. For example, you are not going to sell a family movie to Syfy channel. You are not going to sell a sci-fi film to ABC Family. You really have to pay attention to what these buyers are looking for.

WS: Is there still a good market for TV movies in the U.S.?
JONES: They have to be very specific. Thankfully there are channels like Lifetime and Syfy and to a lesser degree now ABC Family and some others, that if you have the right content, they will still buy independent product. But we still depend on the pay-TV channels especially Showtime and Starz, to a lesser degree HBO because they have a bit of a different model. You can get lucky with the odd basic cable deal, and then of course, there is this new channel called Netflix! They fall right in between. They are offering what the video stores of yesterday did: you can watch what you want when you want. These on-demand channels are going to continue to play a big part as the business continues to develop. How that is ultimately going to affect our business, it’s a little too early to really define. But I believe that in the next couple of years we will start get a better idea of how we can monetize the situation and where the opportunities will be.

WS: Is Netflix buying TV movies or are they only after theatricals and TV product?
JONES: They buy a wide variety of movies, whether they are TV or straight-to-video or theatrical. There have a big demand to fill because everybody has different tastes in entertainment and they are trying to cover that demand the best they can.

WS: What has been international demand for you movies?
JONES: We spent a lot of years building relationships with the majority of broadcasters around the world and they have been our bread and butter since the decline of the DVD business. They are very specific about what they want. The quality of the programming has to be there. Certain channels are looking for certain types of movies. If you happen to have a female-driven thriller that would appeal to Lifetime, there are also specific female channels in Europe that are most likely going to be interested in that film. Once again, you have to know what your customers are looking for.

WS: Has one of your company’s successful strategies been the ability to act as a bridge between the producers and the market?
JONES: I’d certainly like to think so! We’re not a production company. We specialize in sales and marketing so it’s my job to give the producers I deal with as much information about the market as I can. If I give them that info then my goal is that they are going to become the best filmmakers that they can be. I personally don’t care if I ever walked on a set again! It’s not my passion! But putting together a great art campaign, putting together 30-second to 2-minute promo for a movie, we have all the energy and we still love doing that. That’s where our passion is. I’m not interested in telling filmmakers how to point the camera, and they are not interested in telling me how to put together a deal with somebody in Europe. There are lots of jobs for everybody! And that is how that bridge is formed. There is enough respect—I trust that you are going to make a great movie and once you do it’s still my baby, too. So let’s go offer it to the world and have some success.