Micro Budget Feature Film Ideas THAT SELL

As a film director and film distributor, you have to know what kind of films will sell if you want to make a living and/or profit. This is exceptionally important for producers and directors as you will be investing so much of your time and money into a single project, you need to know what will be worth doing.

In this blog post, I hope to share my configuration of an Ikegai but for designing film ideas. I talk about how our creative brain functions (as per my undergrad and post-grad research).

If you don’t fancy reading, here is the video form:

The Basic Formula

The filmmaking Ikigai.

The basic concept of this process is to design a film that fits into each of these categories:

• What you want in your film

• Your resources

• Who will buy/what will sell?

• What story does the world need?

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Divergent Thinking

The way we should go about preparing our ideas for successful completion and distribution is first using a process called divergent thinking. Divergent thinking is where we let our mind wander, let it come up with as many ideas as possible without critique. You will freely spew out ideas without restriction. This is one of two of the most important creative processes in thinking.

What do you want in your film?

Think about any genre, all these ideas are not linked. Just write down as many things that you want to make in a film, from the subtle and content to the explosive and ridiculous. It is unlikely that you will be including all these ideas in one film, but it’s important to see what drives you as a filmmaker.

Your resources

What is your budget? What do you have available (costumes, props, equipment)? Who do you have who can help you? Do you own any locations? Do you know anyone with a location? Can you offer a service trade with anyone? List everything and anything that exists that could possibly be in your grasp.

Who will buy? What will sell?

Yes, you need to think about this now. Before you put a pen to paper or a finger to a keyboard. What return are you looking to make? Will it be worth the investment of paying for the upfront cost of production? Filmmaking is a very financially risk-heavy profession, so you should plan your selling path more than anything if you are looking to support yourself and those around you. Will you just be selling your film or opening up to more merchandise? What kind of audiences out there are buying at the moment? What kind of products are popular at the moment? Is there a way you can design your film around a product that you could also sell?

A top tip is to look at what the most successful “film” companies are doing. For example, Disney, Universal, and Warner Brothers… the majority of their profit comes from the products associated with their films, not the films themselves… their films are the advert for the products. Why not do the same?

List every audience that’s buying, list every product that you could potentially make that’s selling.

What does the world need?

What is wrong with the world? This thinking can be a little depressing thinking about, however, it is important for you to consider the topical areas that society is thinking of, or even not thinking of that you can bring light to.

A positive way to think about this process is that you will be highlighting these areas for conversation. By outlining these topics and eventually when you get around to choosing one, it will help motivate you to complete it and also work in generating conversations about your film naturally in communities that the subject may affect.

Convergent Thinking

Convergent thinking is the second thought process that can enable you to come up with a creative thought that is designed for a solution. In divergent thinking, we outlined every possible option without making any connections. In the convergent thinking process, we are now selecting and bringing our pool of options together to fit a purpose.

The convergent thinking process is more difficult for me to communicate how you should complete it, as it will be dependant on the lists you have generated. However, this process is no more complicated/easy than the divergent process, they are simply different brain processes.

Taking a look at your lists, you are looking to connect different qualities that link.
- Are there any qualities in ‘what do you want in your film’ that link with what the people in ‘who will buy’ will want?
- What aspects of ‘what does the world need’ link with ‘who will buy’?
- Which of the resources you have allow you to make certain products?
- Which resources you have will allow you to make the film you want?
- What qualities of what you want in a film can be used to communicate certain world needs?

I like to do this by either highlighting these in another colour, or re-drawing my Ikigai with these qualities that link in the middle. This will likely take some back-and-forth, but it should help you get started.

The convergent thinking process will help you build the scaffolding to design a story around. One of the best ways to come up with an idea is to provide yourself with a limitation. These limitations that you give yourself will be key to success in designing a story that will be practical for you to make, you already have the resources to make it, the film is about an important message that should be communicated and there is already an audience in mind to sell and share the film with.

Catalyst Hints and Tips

If you’re struggling to come up with an idea or what to link together, I would recommend a title and logline generation activity that I like to do.

I like to stay up super late so I can barely keep my eyes open then list as many film titles that I think will sell. Ones that are eye-catching, feel intriguing, and make you question at a glance.

Next, I set my alarm for very early in the morning so that I wake up in a lucid state and attempt to write potential loglines (one to 2 sentence summaries) for each of the titles. Loglines are incredibly important for sale potential. Both loglines and titles are some of the most important communicators for a film. Think about what causes someone to watch a film, usually a mix of title, logline, tag line, and poster/thumbnail art. In these early stages when you are communicating your ideas with investors of money/time you need to have something that can be communicated in an instant. If it doesn’t sound interesting, who will bother to delve further into the project?

Use these titles to help you with the convergent thinking process. Use them as a guide for the kind of ways you can steer your resources and lists into a single project.

Summary

That’s all for now folks, I hope this was super useful looking to distribute your film and or design a film that will sell to a market that will also get completed due to your foresight.

If you get a chance, please check out my socials: IG: @sebcoxfilms FB: @sebcoxfilms YT: /sebcoxfilms

As always, be kind and stay creative ✌️