Hollywood Insider Help by Nancy Fulton

This presentation is a practical guide to making a first film that becomes a useful career credit rather than an expensive disaster. Many first films fail because new filmmakers choose projects that are too large, too expensive, legally messy, or impossible to finish. A “disaster” film is one that drains money and time, never gets completed, creates legal problems, looks amateurish, or makes the filmmaker never want to make another film. A “triumph” is finished quickly, looks more expensive than it was, showcases the filmmaker’s strengths, builds good relationships, and makes the filmmaker eager to make the next project. Learn how to ensure your first film is a career building significant success. 

Production Insurance, Completion Bonds, E & O Insurance are something every producer needs to know about, and they are life-and-death for anyone making a multi-million dollar project with investor and/or bank support.  Why? Because banks and savvy investors won't fund projects that can't get a completion bond, production insurance, and E&O insurance.  In this workshop expert Ed Rowin walks us through why this insurance is required, and the fundamentals of how to get it.  Tip, getting this insurance requires you to hire line producers / unit production managers that insurance companies will bond, crews they will insure, and scripts that qualify for E & O. We have hundreds of recorded workshops with supporting resources and live events every month. Note this workshop was recorded several years ago, but completion bonds, production insurance, and E & O insurance have been required since the earliest days of filmmaking, and the fundamentals don't change because when you make a multi-million dollar film investors, banks, want to secure their investment and these tools are how they do that.  This is a must-listen episode. Want to learn more about producing your own films? Visit www.NancyFultonMeetups.com. 

Ray Ellingsen, Founder of Moving Pictures Media Group, has been an active sponsor for Nancy Fulton Meetups over the years. His support has helped us provide more events for more filmmakers, and his appearances and the guests he's brought with him, have helped our members understand how to develop films with budgets over $1M. You'll enjoy this interview if you have film you're struggling to produce, or a script that you want producers to love. 

In this episode of Hollywood Insider Help, we dive into the multi-award-winning book "Games People Play" by Eric Berne, a pivotal guide to understanding human interactions. Particularly relevant to the entertainment industry, this workshop explores the fundamental concepts of transactional analysis, shedding light on the "drama" often encountered in Hollywood. We review common "games" people play and offer techniques to dispel them, enhancing your professional and personal interactions. Additionally, discover how these games inspire brilliant books, movies, and films. Make-believe drama becomes even more captivating when rooted in the fundamental behaviors of human nature. Tune in for insightful discussions that bridge psychology and storytelling in the world of entertainment.

Welcome to the Hollywood Insider Help podcast! In this episode, we delve into the detrimental thought patterns that can hinder your success as a media creator in the entertainment industry. We'll explore how these negative habits can affect your creativity, collaboration, and career progression. Discover practical strategies to identify and change these patterns, ensuring you can consistently create on demand, effectively engage with other creators, and successfully find, perform, and promote your work. Tune in to learn how to break free from these limiting thoughts and propel your career forward.

When people come to Hollywood with dreams of making it big, they often encounter perplexing behaviors and responses. Many of these can be traced back to Hollywood's turbulent history and the monumental mistakes made by Studios, Directors, and Producers. These blunders have not only ended careers and destroyed studios but have also resulted in financial losses amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars and, tragically, even cost lives. In this eye-opening episode, we delve into some of the most significant disasters in Hollywood's history. By the end of this podcast, you'll gain a much clearer understanding of how to navigate the Hollywood landscape. You'll learn what seasoned Hollywood Insiders know about the pitfalls that can ruin careers and lives.

Why Listen?

• Gain Insider Knowledge: Understand the mistakes that have led to Hollywood's most infamous disasters.
• Avoid Common Pitfalls: Learn valuable lessons that can help you steer clear of the errors that have destroyed careers and studios.
• Gain Essential Insights for Newcomers: This episode is particularly beneficial for new producers, screenwriters, directors, and investors looking to succeed in Hollywood.

Join us as we uncover the hidden truths behind Hollywood's biggest failures and equip yourself with the knowledge to thrive in the industry. Don't miss this essential episode for anyone serious about making it in Hollywood.

In today's workshop, we're going to be talking about cultivating a robust attitude so you can thrive in the media business.  And specifically, I'm going to review some practical advice on surviving and thriving in what is an incredibly competitive industry.

I think most people that work in the entertainment industry, at one point or another, find themselves thinking, Oh, my God. Why is this so difficult? Why is this so hard? Shouldn't it all be easier? What am I doing wrong? I must be doing something wrong because I've never been so unhappy. I thought this was going to make me happy. I thought when I had the freedom and the time to work as a writer or a screenwriter, as a producer, as a performer,  I thought that I would just fall in love. I've wanted to do this my whole life and it's just turning into a miserable experience. 

People are surprised by how difficult it is to work in the entertainment industry is because nobody  pulls you aside early on and explains some of the more difficult aspects of working in the industry or working as a media creative. 

As creatives, we invest time, effort, ideas, intellectual property, and our reputation in the projects we do. A project that goes well becomes a stepping stone to other great projects. Failed projects, or projects we fail on, are thus damaging from many perspectives.

Our work is more or less collaborative, based on our desire or willingness to collaborate. Working with the "right" collaborators lets us do our best work. The wrong collaborators disable, distract, and disaffect us. They take us out of the zone in which we are most effective.

In order to find the right collaborators, we need to understand what kind of creatives we are, what we do best, what we need to do our best work, and where our weaknesses are. We also need to understand how to work with (and sometimes side-step) those collaborators with whom we are not perfectly matched.
Learn what kind of creator your and why that matters so much to your work as a producer, screenwriter, documentary filmmaker, or author making media for money. 

Writers, actors, filmmakers, artists, designers, and other creatives are taught young that choosing to be a creative professional is risky business. It doesn't have to be. 

In this workshop you'll learn: 

• Why earning a living as a creative looks like luck or magic from the outside. 
• Why it is not the tight-rope walk you've been told it is since you were born. 
• How to understand exactly what you need to do to build a creative business so you can swiftly do it. 
• How to find fans and turn them into paying customers.
• Why taking big risks, and making big investments usually doesn't pay off, but running lots of inexpensive experiments almost always does. 
• How having money to invest into your creative business can be a blessing or a curse. 
• How to figure out what you might have been doing wrong. 
• How to determine what "works" and what doesn't when it comes to the products and services you sell. 
• Practical examples of how most creatives go off the rails in trying to create a sustainable way to get paid for their work. 

This is a very practical, brass-tacks, rational workshop that helps you understand, intuitively, what you need to so so you can do it. Furthermore, you'll understand why what you've been doing previously hasn't been working wonderfully well even though you've got a lot of skill, talent, and commitment. 

If you have any questions about this workshop, please email me at [email protected]. You can find in-depth live and online how-to workshops at www.nancyfultonmeetups.com and NFM24.com. 

Only people have money to buy things. Whether it’s an independent producer with funds to purchase your screenplay, an investor with money to put into your film, a studio exec shopping for a book or podcast to license, or a director looking to hire an actor . . . only humans ever pull the trigger on purchasing things.

That means you need a business network within the entertainment industry that will actively help you find the people who actually want to buy what you sell. In this event you learn the art and science of building and entertainment industry network swiftly, comfortably, and cost effectively.

Topics addressed:

• Where and how to find networking events that lend themselves to making real connections.
• How to very comfortably meet people at events 
• What to do with their business cards
• How to introduce yourself to a group, and one-on-one, so people remember you well
• How to reach out to people after an event comfortably
• How to give people leads on potential opportunities
• How to accept leads from others graciously and without obligation

This is the perfect podcast to listen to if you really struggle with networking, building professional relationships, and using those relationships as a springboard to great opportunities. You can find written lecture notes and a video with slides covering this material at https://gumroad.com/l/wJbwL