Today we're taking our global travels to Miami Beach, Florida, and we're talking with Joanne Butcher.
Joanne is a business mentor, counselor, and advisor to filmmakers, especially independent filmmakers that need to get funded, produced, and distributed. Joanne contributes to the creative space by helping creative people get their work up and out into the world,
Joanne helps filmmakers plug the gap between making a film and ensuring the film reaches its intended viewers aka the distribution gap. Her clients include artists who have gone to the very best film schools and those who followed their lifes’ purpose and went down the film path without any formal training.
Joanne has been in this industry for the past 25 years. Her career & point of view of budgeting and fundraising began when, as a starving artist, she ended up running a film school and a cinema. It was a nonprofit organization but the cinema was a first-run cinema. While still doing that, she trained filmmakers and had to learn how to raise money because she had a $500,000 organization to run.
Although the most common way new filmmakers think about distribution is getting into film festivals, there are a couple of different ways filmmakers can ensure they get their film before the right views and make a profit. Joanne tells us how:
- The first step is to think of the final stage-distribution-first. Otherwise, Joanne equates this process to a painter who might paint a beautiful piece but wants to hang the painting in a bathroom
- The budget determines the channel you will use to distribute your film. The bigger the budget, the more famous people you will have in your movie, the more well-known distribution houses will want your film.
- Pitching is the most significant skill for any film producer to have. Where filmmakers learn to shorten their storytelling drastically and get to the business/ returns which are what investors want to see
- As filmmakers, we must keep improving the craft which will automatically result in an improved business sense.
Joanne Butcher has worked with international filmmakers for 20 + years. She has worked with 100’s of international producers, writers and directors particularly from the U.S., the UK, Brazil, Cuba and the Caribbean.
While directing a cinema and film school in Miami Beach, Florida, Joanne developed and created the Florida Feature Film Competition which led to the completion of several feature films. Entering the Competition put producers through a process that up-leveled their business and marketing packages while competing for a $200,000 prize.
For the past 5 years, Joanne has been a business owner and business coach to 100 filmmakers who now have 7 feature films in distribution with 5 more coming out in the next 6 months. Her current clients have 70+ films in various stages of development from script to distribution. Her specialty is helping filmmakers raise funds to get their projects made and distributed globally.
In conclusion, Joanne is ready to move her business to the next phase where she is meeting and working with filmmakers who are already solidly in the industry. In addition, she wants to meet more people who have access to money so that she can learn more from them, and expand her network.
Joanne’s Website: Filmmakersuccess.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8KJGNRo4P6u26KKpsIEBJw