Don't make my eyes bleed: a rant about business plans by Neil Davidson
neildavidson.com
neildavidson.com
However, business plans can easily fall into the same trap that bad powerpoint ends up in. That of authors hiding behind it instead of using it to tell a story. It's the story that really matters.
Fohr is able to leverage computer-photography and the film Carpathia to build a profitable, next generation film studio – a repeat of what Pixar did with computer-animation and Toy Story in the Nineties.
UPDATE (edited version based on feedback below): Fohr can use the first feature film we're making with "computer-photography" to build a new, publicly-owned film studio – a repeat of what Pixar did with Toy Story and computer-animation in the 1990s – if we can raise the funds to continue our technology leadership over the next two years.
I don't understand what your company mantra/slogan above means at all.
The words "leverage" and "next generation" ring MBA-speak alarm bells in my head. Generally, "leverage" can be substituted with the much simpler "use". And you don't get to decide if your technology is "next generation". The market will decide years later.
What do you mean by computer-photography?
I don't know the film Carpathia.
The analogy is very vague. What exactly are you repeating?
In your defense, this comes after three slides of prep which explain computer-photography, and how Fohr is like Pixar.
The words "leverage" and "next generation" ring MBA-speak alarm bells in my head. Generally, "leverage" can be substituted with the much simpler "use". And you don't get to decide if your technology is "next generation". The market will decide years later.
I meant "leverage" in the sense of "strategic advantage; power to act effectively". "Use" is better though, and I'll switch to that. I do think next generation applies here -- provided you think Toy Story was a next generation way to make animated films.
What do you mean by computer-photography?
I wrote a primer on it here: http://erichocean.com/fohr/lighting.html. In a nutshell, if a classically-trained Director of Photography can light the film's CGI environments using their existing, real-world knowledge of lighting, and if those "virtual lights" are identical to their real-world counterparts, the 3D rendering engine falls in the "computer-photography" category.
I don't know the film Carpathia.
Well, it hasn't been made yet. :) Hopefully you'll see it when it comes out, the release date is November 20, 2013.
The analogy is very vague. What exactly are you repeating?
Fohr is at the place, as a company, that Pixar was at before they made Toy Story. Our "Toy Story" is a film called Carpathia. Similar to Pixar, we can build a public company on the strength of our first film and computer-photography. (Pixar IPO'd a week after Toy Story came out, in 1995.)
Our basic investment thesis (why we think investors should invest in our tech side) is that we can take the same path Pixar did, leading to an IPO. (We can make Carpathia regardless, but we can only build an independent studio with investment on the tech side of our business.)
Hope this helps, and thanks for the feedback!
It's the production difference that actually gives us the Pixar-like edge -- we can iterate on the film, slowly closing in on the final film over a multi-year period. This allows every department time to do their best work. "Computerizing" the photography (just like "computerizing" the animation at Pixar) is what allows this to happen.
We've got special tooling to support it as well, but that's what makes it great in a nutshell: (much) better films at lower cost due to massive numbers of iterations from concept to final film.
Note: this could well be a personal grump of mine!
moving lighting into pre-production
To me, that sells it. It's concrete and it promises something that (I assume) directors would love to be able to do but can't (yet!) because it's pretty much impossible
Question - Which part of Pixar are you hoping to emulate? The studio part or the technology part? Will you concentrate on making films or on building a technology that you can licence?
Question - Which part of Pixar are you hoping to emulate? The studio part or the technology part? Will you concentrate on making films or on building a technology that you can licence?
I'm a filmmaker, and started looking into how Pixar was getting such good results in 1998. I decided at that time that it was their ability to start rough, iterate and fix things, as they moved towards the final product. In live-action filmmaking, we basically are always shooting "final" footage and don't get to iterate much at all.
Anyway, long story short, I wanted to iterate on live-action stuff, and it turns out that in order to get imagery before production that is valid when you get to production, you need 100% physically-correct lighting (or what I now call computer-photography).
So, my goal is to emulate Pixar in the studio aspect -- how they develop and produce films. I'm not opposed to selling our technology, but I think that the core "tech" has very little to do with why Pixar is successful as an animation studio -- it's basically a legacy part of their business.
In fact, Pixar's Renderman division is in Seattle, and is run totally independently. (Most people think Pixar gets "first dibs" or whatever on new rendering features, but they don't. Pixar uses the latest version of Renderman like everyone else.)
Our computer-photography system, called Metropolis, can still run in real-time with arbitrary camera movements (e.g. Steadicam), even when actors are being composited live within the CGI environments, and even when the CGI environment contains animation (wind, water, etc). The camera operator sees the combined scene in the viewfinder, live.
"Metropolis replaces the soundstage with real-time CGI" ?
"Shoot with live CGI" ?
"With Metropolis, you can shoot a CGI feature in real-time" ? This is probably a little bit false as the final rendering is probably better than what you show the camera operator, but it gets the point across.
You don't get the same concept out of "real-time" or "instant" because game engines are "real-time CGI," and "instant" has an existing association with "pre-packaged" - e.g. "instant coffee."
"Automatic CGI" might also work. It's not 100% accurate but it would provoke people to say "what's so automatic about it?" And from there you can explain how now the camera operator can move around a CGI set freely, etc.
Thanks for everyone's contribution, it's very much appreciated. :)
- "Computer-photography" doesn't sound all that compelling, to be honest. How is this better than computer animation (CGI), as used by Pixar, Lucasfilm, et al.? Assume that the layperson -- investors included -- will have no idea what this phrase means. Instead, substitute a brief description of what "computer-photography" can do that makes it so compelling. Is it massively cheaper than traditional CGI? Is it more publicly accessible? Easier to use? Does it produce superior results? Let's assume, for a second, that it's cheaper than CGI and produces comparable results. In this case, I'd use the phrase "advanced, radically inexpensive computer animation technology." Or something to that effect.
- Strike the word "new" from the first sentence, because obviously it doesn't exist yet, and hence, the creation of the studio will be the creation of a new studio. Ditto either "feature" or "film," as the phrase "feature film" is redundant. (Yes, I'm aware that there are technical differences within the industry between a "feature film" and other types of film. But the word "feature," used as a noun, will suffice on its own).
- Describing your goal as simply "a repeat of...Pixar" makes it seem as though you're simply building a Pixar knockoff, a few decades after the fact. I like how you reference Pixar, because it gives the reader a good sense of what this is. But how is this different from Pixar, if not better than Pixar? Looking back at your "publicly owned" statement, would it be fair to call your studio a "Pixar for the people"? "Pixar for the YouTube set"? Or something to that effect? Tell us why the world needs Fohr, not why the world needs Pixar Clone.
"Tell us why the world needs Fohr, not why the world needs Pixar Clone."
A common complaint I hear is "Why can't Hollywood make movies as well as Pixar?" When people say this, by "Hollywood", they mean live-action, non-animated movies -- movies with real people in them.
The reason Hollywood can't make movies as well as Pixar is because Pixar cheats -- Pixar can do things that "Hollywood" cannot, due to technology differences in how the films are made.
Specifically, Pixar can iterate on each movie for years, making drastic changes to the story, timing, edit, music, dialogue, acting at any time. They literally "make" the film hundreds of times over a four year period.
In a way, Pixar starts very early on with the "minimum viable film", and mercilessly beats out every problem until the film is as good as they can make it. Then they release it to you and me.
Fohr has the tech and filmmaking system to take that same approach on a live-action film (the key tech needed to do so is computer-photography). So in the sense of "making better movies", we want Fohr to be a Pixar Clone. That's our whole goal.
Traditional screenwriting and filmmaking goes through a ton of iterations, too. Iterations (and MVP) are not the competitive differentiators you make them out to be in Pixar's case. Pixar's technology makes a huge difference, but so does its direction and, above all, its writing.
What separates Pixar from the me-toos of the world is everything it has in addition to its technology.
Finally, it's a mistake to think that Pixar and "Hollywood" are separated. Pixar was founded as a tech company, but its clients and collaborators have been Hollywood studios and filmmakers from the get-go. There were more than a few strands of Hollywood DNA in Pixar's genome even before the Disney merger.
Technology is great, but writing is still king. The dustbin of history is littered with technically brilliant, but emotionally hollow films. Be careful here. No less a titan of the business than George Lucas made the mistake of thinking pure tech trumped writing, and look at how his prequels turned out.
Pixar isn't the first, or only, place that can iterate - that's been how animated films have always been made. (Yes computer-based animation allows faster iteration than hand-drawn, but Pixar doesn't iterated on fully-rendered either.)
> Fohr has the tech and filmmaking system to take that same approach on a live-action film (the key tech needed to do so is computer-photography).
I agree that this is a big thing, but Pixar isn't just, or even mostly, iteration, it's the folks doing the iteration.
Even if you have John Lasseter, start as a tech company and sell to folks who think that they are JL. Use that money to support your JL.
It should be self-evident that you need very good filmmakers making films -- no technology "makes" a film. But it should also be obvious that Pixar doesn't have a monopoly on "good" filmmakers. What they do have is a monopoly on iteration, due to their use of computerized-animation. Fohr ends that monopoly.
I think we probably agree here. I would further argue that Pixar's people might not be as successful on the live-action side, since the ability to iterate is gone. As exhibit A, I would present Andrew Stanton and John Carter (of Mars), which does not look promising at all. (This is not true for all Pixar directors though, I think Brad Bird will do very well with MI4.)
To be clear: Andrew Stanton is a very good director...when he can iterate, like he did on Finding Nemo and Wall-E. Take away that ability and he struggles, as would be expected. It takes a different kind of skill to make a good film when you can only shoot final footage -- skill Andrew hasn't yet developed to my knowledge.
Live-action filmmaking has more in common with dancing than it does with drawing, and animation is not at all like dancing -- there's no real-time performance aspect to animation like there is with live-action. Expertise in one type of film production does not imply expertise in the other.
Bear in mind that even Pixar didn't launch with Toy Story. The company was founded in 1979, and Toy Story debuted in 1995. In those intervening 16 years, the company did a lot of white-label work in the B2B space, for such clients as George Lucas, PepsiCo, and Disney. It also produced a few short films and interstitials. All of this was part of a slow, steady ramp-up to its first feature-length production. And that production, Toy Story, was as much a triumph of writing and voice talent as it was a triumph of animation technology.
If you've got a great piece of tech on your hands, consider the B2B (or B2-prosumer) space before diving into the deep end. There are a lot of young, hungry filmmakers and mini-studios out there right now who would kill for the chance to do Pixar-quality animation on a decidedly less-than-Pixar budget. You could make some nice coin, and help build your industry credibility and reputation, by providing animation services to these entities. Ditto advertising agencies. Just food for thought.
Finally, I apologize for sounding dickish in these comments. I'm just trying to be constructive, but firm. What you're doing sounds very cool, and I'm rooting for you. I just want to make sure you've got the best pitch (and plan) you can. Betting the farm on a single feature is an incredibly risky strategy. Conversely, if your tech is really solid and groundbreaking, there's no reason why you can't turn a tidy profit with it as you move up the storytelling learning curve.
He's been teaching himself to draw for a year or so, thus the format. :)
I agree that "If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself."
But this doesn't mean that all you need to know is, what a six year old knows. I notice that we tend to believe that having profound knowledge of your business is unnecessary.
But we don't need to bore everybody with this information.
Tagline is: "The Game Show We Can All Play"
Any feedback welcome, thanks
Compliments Customer Drive Development very well.