by Voyage | Sep 5, 2014 | Entertainment Business
[video_player type="youtube" width="560" height="315" align="center" margin_top="0" margin_bottom="20"]aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cueW91dHViZS5jb20vd2F0Y2g/dj1vODZUcGFTQmNXdw==[/video_player] Congratulations to Nick Rosen and Pete Mortimer for their awesome, soon-to-be-released documentary, VALLEY UPRISING: YOSEMITE’S ROCK CLIMBING REVOLUTION The film is a raucous thrill ride up (and in some cases rapidly down) Yosemite’s sheer granite walls. The film tracks the history of “tuning in and dropping out” in Yosemite’s climbing scene, from the original pioneers of the Golden Era, to the Stone Masters of the late 20th century, to the crazy Stone Monkeys of today. Voyage is Executive Producing with Peter Sarsgaard narrating. The filmmaking team, who are members of our prestigious Professionals Program, received financing from The North Face, Clif Bar and others. The film is in the final stages of post-production and has a festival rollout beginning on September 11th. GO SEE IT!!! Archives December 2024 (2) November 2024 (2) October 2024 (3) September 2024 (2) April 2023 (1) January 2023 (1) December 2022 (1) October 2022 (1) June 2020 (1) April 2020 (1) February 2020 (1) January 2020 (1) October 2019 (1) August 2019 (1) June 2019 (1) January 2019 (1) April 2018 (1) March 2018 (1) February 2018 (1) January 2018 (1) December 2017 (1) November 2017 (1) October 2017 (2) July 2017 (4) April 2017 (1) February 2017 (1) January 2017 (1) December 2016 (1) November 2016 (1) October 2016 (1) September 2016 (2) June 2016 (1) May 2016 (1) April 2016 (1) February 2016 (3) January 2016 (1) December 2015 (2) November 2015 (1) October 2015 (2) September 2015 (2) August 2015 (2) July 2015 (1) June 2015 (1) April 2015 (1) March 2015 (1) February 2015 (2) January 2015 (3) December 2014 (2) October 2014 (1) September 2014 (3) August 2014 (3) June 2014 (2) May 2014 (5) April 2014 (3) February 2014 (1) January 2014 (1) December 2013 (1) April 2013 (1) December 2012 (1) July 2012 (1) April 2012 (2) March 2012 (2) December 2011 (1) November 2011 (3) October 2011 (4) September 2011 (5) August 2011 (3)...
by Voyage | Aug 21, 2014 | Entertainment Business, Producer Interviews, Screenwriting Tips
Learn what about a script will make producers sit up and take notice—from the advice of a talented Hollywood executive, Charlsey Adkins! As part of our ongoing series, which asks our producers about their work in the entertainment industry, I talked with the delightful Charlsey Adkins. Charlsey is a current Hollywood executive and Voyage producer, and here you can learn some of her insights on what makes scripts unique, fun to read, and interesting to producers—and what writers can do to make their script can stand out from the rest. With a bachelor’s degree in film and nearly a decade of experience in the industry, Adkins has a serious pedigree in production. Now the Vice President of Development and Production at Harbinger Pictures, Adkins was instrumental in bringing the acclaimed feature film THE HELP to screen. During her career, she has worked with many writers and learned a lot about what makes a script great and what makes it fall flat. I got to ask her about the kind of scripts that speak to her, and how writers can avoid common pitfalls that turn producers off their work. So, without further ado, here are… 5 Tips For Writing Your Best Script with Charlsey Adkins 1. VALUE YOUR WORK One aspect of a script that turns Adkins off particularly is when it is clear a writer hasn’t proofread their work before sending it off to a potential producer or financier. “I read lots of scripts,” says Adkins, “and I can tell when you care when you’re writing, and when you don’t care.” That care is most apparent in...
by Voyage | Aug 13, 2014 | Entertainment Business, Producer Interviews, Screenwriting Tips, The Expert Network
An expert producer’s look at the past, present, and future of serial programming Last week, I had the pleasure of talking with Kelly Hayes, a current Hollywood producer and Voyage team member, about what it’s like to work in all corners of the industry, and how the classic forms of development for network, cable, and film compare to the emerging market of digital streaming. This is the first of an ongoing series that asks our producers about their work in the entertainment industry so that YOU can learn from their wealth of experience! Hayes’ many credits have ranged from formats in scripted and reality television, film, and digital streaming series. Today, he has a lot of plates spinning in every market you can think of, with ongoing projects in half-hour comedy, hour-long drama, reality, and feature film. To say he’s got a bit of experience is an understatement. Although Hayes started his career in film, an economic downturn coupled with the WGA strike of 2008 served to destabilize the film industry, and prompted Hayes to look into other options. Television was his next best choice to keep following his passion—and it took some relearning to make it work. Looking Ahead The biggest change to the process of development in film and television was the notion of planning much further ahead into the future of the project. “It’s ’where do I see this show at episode 100?’” says Hayes of the development process for the life of a series, “versus, ‘I have 90 minutes to tell my story and then it’s done.’” The core of making a great...
by Voyage | Aug 7, 2014 | Audience, Entertainment Business
Last week, Voyage announced the latest film we’ve produced, Valley Uprising: Yosemite’s Rock Climbing Revolution–an in-depth documentary about the history of thrill-seekers climbing Yosemite’s treacherous granite cliff faces. Soon after the announcement, we received a pretty interesting email, which brought up some questions about Voyage’s project selection process–Why would we spend money on such a specific-interest documentary? How could we ensure we broke even on marketing a project with such a relatively small target audience? After all, rock climbers and adrenaline-junkies are such a small and specific part of the overall moviegoing audience…isn’t the goal to reach as many of the “4 Quadrants” as possible? As with any other film we’ve helped develop, we’re very excited for and confident in Valley Uprising’s success. But this email created an interesting opportunity for us to debunk several myths about the industry, financing, and what makes a marketable project. Plus some details about how smaller films get financed—and many of them can be applied to non-documentary film projects as well. So if you’ve been burning with some of the same questions, now’s as good a time as any to clear up a few misconceptions you might have about the niche filmmaking process! Misconception #1: Producing a niche film will put you into debt A financially successful film can be measured in not just its total sales, but rather more accurately in its percentage of return on investment, or “ROI”. Of the top three genres with the highest returns on investment, two may surprise you. The first on the list is horror—less surprising, since many low-budget horror flicks like The Blair Witch...
by Voyage | May 7, 2014 | Entertainment Business
The entertainment industry is a strange, complex, and absolutely unique sector of business. As such, the people who participate in it on the ground level are prone to misconceptions about how things actually get done behind closed doors. The primary assumption that gets made is that the industry is first and foremost interested in artistic form and expression. While that’s not entirely false, the truth is that the entertainment business is, well, a business. Whenever you’re asking for other people’s money or other institutions money to help you make something, you’re participating in a market, not just artistic expression. At first glance, the role of a writer looks similar to that of a painter: the screen is a blank canvas, and your ideas are the paint that you use to communicate to others a fully-formed artistic expression. If your form of expression resonates with somebody, great! You can sell or show your painting and attract the attention that your artwork deserves. In the world of the average painter, the sort of distance between themselves and a customer is very short. But this doesn’t quite hold true for the film world. In film, the distance between the writer and the audience is much larger. Even in an independent film, the writer must understand the larger context of satisfying the needs of actors, directors, and collaborators–all of which require money. You’re in the business of satisfying the needs of all the organizations that finance the realization of your work. The point is, you’re really entering a significant marketplace world in which there are a lot of people making efforts to express...
by Voyage | May 2, 2014 | Audience, Entertainment Business
Know Your Market We always recommend starting at the end of the game. The end of the game is when you have audiences watching your content. Ultimately they are the buyers of the material and everyone else between you and them is basically trying to interpret and predict their needs, so you too will be well served to understand who your audience is and then develop the right product that they will want to “consume”. If you don’t know who your audience is, then you really don’t know what market you’re operating within. When I say market, I mean like are you operating as a studio, like a studio project. Is this a cable television project? Is it a network television project? Is it a meaning maker project? Is it an indie film? Is it a digital web series? What is the market that you’re operating within? In turn if you don’t know what market you’re in, then you won’t know how to potentially do two things: 1. Budget: You won’t know how to write the right material, meaning you won’t be creating the type of material that’s needed for that kind of market at the right price, meaning you can’t make $150 million web series, but you can make $150 million studio movie. That’s just a broad example of how the market’s going to dictate the budget. 2. Tone: You won’t know how to write your screenplay to hit a specific budget or you won’t know what budget you need to target and then you won’t know the correct tone. For example, a made for TV movie has...
