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Anthony Verna and Daron Jenkins talk about film, entrepreneurship and creating a business, and intellectual property issues.
Daron Jenkins
Topics included:
- Dreaming without money
- Business plans
- Originality
- Expressions of ideas/Copyright law
- Protection of expressions of ideas
- Importance of contracts in guiding relationships in business
- Work-for-hire agreements
- The importance of doing due diligence
- Music copyright litigation issues
- Film copyright litigation issues
Here is a lightly-edited transcript of the podcast episode:
Anthony Verna: Thank you for listening to the Law and
Business podcast. I’m Anthony Verna. I’ve recorded this episode with Daron Jenkins
at the Citizen M hotel right in the lobby where Daron was working that day. We
talked about film and entrepreneurial issues in film. I understand that there’ll
be plenty of ambient noise in the background. I certainly hope you’ll enjoy
listening to this episode. It’s full of wonderful substance and wonderful tips
for the entrepreneur. Thank you.
Welcome to the Law and Business podcast. I am with Daron Jenkins. How are you
doing, Daron[KR1] ?
Daron Jenkins:
What’s going on today?
Anthony Verna:
It’s a work day except we’re podcasting instead. Anyway, Daron, I’ll let you
plug away and you can tell everybody who you are, what you do. Besides the fact
that I know you do everything.
Daron Jenkins:
So, I’m an entrepreneur in New York City, who is the founder of CMPR, which is
kind of a networking collective for entrepreneurs and I’m also the co-founder
of the New York Film Loft which is a coworking and an incubator for film,
television, and digital projects.
Anthony Verna:
So, in the film and television business, you’re dealing with a lot of people
who have a dream, have an idea, probably don’t have money.
Daron Jenkins:
None of them have any money, are you kidding me? Just this morning, you know, I
got at least three or four emails from different people asking me either about money
or distribution. It was something related to the process of trying to get their
film or television project done. I mean, no one has money, but everyone has
money. It’s kind of a very strange situation, right.
Anthony Verna:
From my particular standpoint, when somebody comes to me with a dream and we’re
talking film and television, I would say my first step is asking if you’re
protected and we do that from an intellectual property standpoint. What’s your
first question for somebody who has the dream but maybe not the money?
Daron Jenkins:
I come from kind of the creative slash business end of the mind, right? So, my
first question is to kind of, so I stand in between them and the money and the
distribution, right? So, the money people are asked, ask me certain things that
I need to kind of then… Then, the distribution people have what they need.
Right. So, my question is kind of like, “Is it viable?” It’s almost, I’m almost
like the Mark Cuban of film. I sit there and I have to kind of poke holes in
this thing that they want to produce to kind of see if t’s as viable. Cause
unfortunately these days digital world is such that is very easy to make
content now. Right? So everyone’s doing it. Talented or not, they’re doing it.
Anthony Verna:
Yes. Well, like we’re doing right now. Right. So, when somebody comes to you,
do you help them set up a business plan?
Daron Jenkins:
I’ll tell you what my first thing is from you to tell them that they need to be
the king. My first, my first advice to them is that you need to be business people before creators.
Anthony Verna:
I’m glad I’m not the only one telling creative people that.
Daron Jenkins:
Well that, no. I was at SXSW this past month and you sort of listening to
Christine DeShawn of Killer Films, we was in her keynote. She says a lot of
similar things where filmmakers need to be more than just creative people and you’ve
got to come at this from a business side of things. You’ve got to get your
money right, legal things right. Everything needs to be tight. I mean, you
can’t just go in and say, Hey, I got this great idea because you know, right
now there’s so many people trying to get business deals that the more that you
have done before you come to people like me, the better off. And more
importantly, it protects you because there’s nothing stopped. I mean, you know,
back in Hollywood days plenty ideas were stolen out of hey, yeah, sure, I’ll
take this.
Anthony Verna:
Well, I would say there are two main issues there. One, is there something
protectable and under copyright laws, we know ideas themselves are not
protectable and you need to take that idea, fix it on a medium, and then
there’s somewhere in between the original idea and what’s been fixed upon a
medium that’s protectable. The other issue that I certainly have seen is that
maybe there aren’t a lot of original ideas out there and I don’t want to
necessarily criticize those creative people, but under copyright law you need
to make sure that what’s there is original or at least the expression is original.
Daron Jenkins:
Well, I mean that brings you…so you’re completely correct. I think Hollywood
has gotten to a point where they’re regurgitating a lot of content, whereas
it’s been stuff that’s been done here in the states or whether it’s been done
abroad, which is really interesting. A lot of people are taking content from Europe
or Asia and they’re just retooling it, or they’re buying the rights to
different books or they’re not even buying the rights. They’re just reading
stories. Okay. It’s easy enough for you to say you came with this idea and
maybe in the back of your mind you really did. Is this something you saw as a
child? It just stuck there 30 years later you think it’s an original idea and
you don’t do your research, or you go to copywriting and they’re like, well,
it’s not original dude. And that’s Hollywood. By that I mean it’s, there’s
probably I guess a fair amount of content that is just, that doesn’t get
produced simply because of that situation.
Anthony Verna:
Sure. You know, and it’s funny that you talked about doing a search because in
my law practice, when a company comes to me with the new trademark, so
something relating back to the goods and services, the first thing we do is a
trademark search. On the copyright side of life in the artistic business, we
don’t really think of copyright searches yet. A colleague of mine sent me an
email asking me about tools to do a copyright search and you’re going to do a
copyright search in order to make sure that that even if your idea might not be
the most original idea in the world, at the very least is your expression original
or at least original to the best that you can look up? And the important part
there is one, is there something that the artist or the creator of this work
can protect and two, is the creator of this work going to be sued for
infringement?
Daron Jenkins:
You know what? This is something that you answer this because I can’t. In this
day and age, everyone is suing everybody. Whether it’s Hollywood or the music
world and yeah, I mean it’s just so crazy and how you come up with this idea
for something and forward with it, make money with it, go big with it. And the
second you start making money off of it,
someone out of the blue shows up either because you didn’t do enough due
diligence or maybe just honestly it’s so close to someone else’s work that people
will come out of the woodwork and like, hey, this looks exactly like a screenplay
that I sent to so and so and blahblahblahblah. Like it happened to a friend of
mine about a few years ago. I was trying to help a friend of mine produce a film.
She bought the rights to the books so she had the rights. That was all good for
her. All that. And of course, she started into producing and she brought another woman onto onto the project
who was the producer. That person then started pulling in content for the film,
unbeknownst to my friend, that was not hers. Okay. And so, it caused the ripple
effect. The ripple effect was one, the person who owned the rights to the book was
unhappy. Now the person who sold her the rights to the book for
a dollar. She found out that this was all going on. She decided, well, when the
rights are up this year, I’m not going to sell them back to you.
Now she’s also in legal hell because now she’s trying to also extricate this
woman off the project. So, it’s like oh shit. I didn’t want to say it, but when she first
came to me with the project years ago, that was one of the first days I said to
her, I said, be careful, be careful who you bring on the project. Be careful
how you handle the contracts and between all these entities that you’re
bringing to the project. And also maintain creative control of what you’re doing
because this is could happen.
Anthony Verna:
And part of that is making sure that the contracts with the team, for lack of a
better word, with the team members are vetted, reviewed, and state what you
want to state. Well, if one person is to have creative control the contracts
with anybody else on the team have to state who the owner of the copyright is,
it’s partially we would call it work for hire agreements and also what the
pecking order is. I mean that’s very important. I would say.
Daron Jenkins:
In the a film world, entrepreneurial world, it’s really very same. It’s really
very little difference. And I was just having this conversation about the
certain person that I know and their startup company and how they kind of like,
so they pulled some friends into as their partners, but there’s no partnership
agreements in place. There I there’s no incorporation at all. If there is those
people outside of them don’t have any stake in it whatsoever. So, I said to
him, I’m like, so, and then he was surprised because he’s like, well, they’re
not engaged. Exactly. So, what’s in it for them? Seriously? Like if I was them,
I’d not be doing anything because one, I don’t have a position. Two, I’m not legally
part of the company. Three, there’s been no predefined parameters of what the
agreement’s going to be between you and when you start making money. And this
company is already making money, which means, …
Anthony Verna:
I once had a client who wanted to put together an animated show, and I found
somebody who was interested at the very least in helping to find an investor if
the investment wasn’t right for him. And eventually he pulls me aside long
after the company was no longer a client. And he said to me, “Anthony, you
know, if you were to take the owners, the organizational chart, the owner of
the company wanted to be in every single box of the organizational chart.” And
it doesn’t quite work that way. You don’t get a project off the ground unless
you have the defined roles of different people in that project.
Daron Jenkins:
I would just guess you’d be really busy doing everything, too. So, there’s that.
I mean that’s, a lot of people don’t understand. I think when you start a
business, regardless whether you’re a creative person or you’re starting with
medical startup, educational startup, whatever, people don’t understand the
legal stuff, right. Though the contracts, the copyrights, the trademarks, all
these things are put in place as a benefit to you. It’s not that…Yeah, it’s a
pain in the ass. You gotta fill out all these things. You may have to,
depending on how complex things are, hire a lawyer to kind of you navigate that
water. I get all that. And it’s not
maybe as you anticipate being sexy to spend on the business, right. It is far
less work to do that than to have to deal with the aftermath of not having any
of that stuff done. Come tax time, it’s a huge benefit because God knows, I
mean, if you’d end up owing down the road, don’t you want to separate your
money from your company’s money?
Because if you go in the fall, you end up having to, they come after you.
They’re not coming up with this entity. They’re coming out to your pockets.
Anthony Verna:
IRS has the ability to go straight to
the business owners.
Daron Jenkins:
Yes. Yes. So, you know and I tell people…
Anthony Verna:
And I’m not a tax lawyer, but I know that.
Daron Jenkins:
So, you know, but people, it’s not sexy.
That’s what it is. Right. Entrepreneurship has always been sold as a sexy way
of making money. It only gets sexy if
you do it right, if you do it the proper way, if you do all your due diligence
and get the copyrights that you need, get the trademarks you need and you make
sure you’re intellectual property’s secure, probably that’s when you get sexy because
then you’re bulletproof. Or at least as close as you can get there.
Anthony Verna:
There is no such thing as a hundred percent as we know. Let’s take this back
into the creative realm for a second. Just to kind of make a bit of a point
because we had in the music realm copyright issues and we will all the time,
there’s no doubt about that. But we have Sam Smith paying basically Tom Petty
and his co-songwriter6% of of royalties. We have the “Blurred Lines’ lawsuit.
Do you have any thoughts on either of those situations as to how similar they
sounded to your ears?
Daron Jenkins:
You know what, I come from the old school of music. I grew up in the Motown
time. The seventies you know, Marvin Gaye and stuff.
Anthony Verna:
So give me the four chords, throw a minor seven in there and a lot of this
isn’t all that different anyway.
Daron Jenkins:
When I hear songs today, you can’t help but hear some of the influences from
those times. To go back to what I was
saying before, where maybe you had this idea, you’re in the music, right?
You’re in the studio. You’re laying down tracks. Everything this flowing, right. In this is a original,
but in the back of your mind, it’s not, maybe you did hear it, maybe you didn’t.
I don’t know. Because unless we were in the studio, we don’t know what your
intentions were. That is not really, you’re not getting sued for your
intention.
Anthony Verna: And that’s something, and
that’s something that a lot of people miss, that the history of that actually
comes from George Harrison and … Oh, great. You’re familiar with “My Sweet Lord”
and the lawsuit involved there. Ultimately going up to the Supreme Court and
the lawyers at every stage through Harrison’s attorneys stated there was no
intent to copy another song. He grew up hearing the allegedly infringed song. He
knew that it existed, but when he wrote it, it was unintentional. And, and
ultimately there is no intent for copyright infringement. You have to sit there
and do it. It’s a fact-based issue every single time. Right. And, that’s the
case every single time there’s this…
Daron Jenkins:
They have like, so you know, the only time I can see where you can sit there
and say there’s that intent to it is in cases where maybe as early as the 80s
djs would use snippets from different songs. Those are intentions, right?
Because they are literally taking pieces of a song and copying it.
Anthony Verna:
The Beastie Boys Licensed to Ill would never have been made today.
Daron Jenkins:
So that’s the only way I can actually say, okay, there was an intent here to
use someone else’s music without permission. That happened. God no 70s and 80s.
Anthony Verna:
It happened in film, in film as well. Lucas Arts back in the day sued the
creators of Battlestar Galactica. And I forget the name of the
production company at the time, but the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which
is in California, when went plot by plot point by plot point in its decision.
It didn’t really make any new law, but it went plot point by plot point talking
about how similar the original Battlestar Galactica tv show was to Star
Wars. And, at that point we’re only talking about the first movie and basically
stated that there was at least some kind of copying. On the same token, when
you sit there and look at that today, you state, “Well, gee, isn’t this a lot
of science fiction having some of these similar tropes and were a lot of
westerns having these similar tropes and at some point where’s the line?” And
ultimately, sometimes you have to kind of shrug your shoulders and say, do your
best to create something original.
Daron Jenkins:
Well, Indiana Jones, Indiana Jones was a tribute to all of the cliffhangers
back in the 50s. If you can’t find similarities in any of those films, some of
those you’re not looking hard. Right. I’m saying this all day. Right. I wonder
if, I think some of it, and this is stupid, where I guess is that it’s equal
fixed a lot of it, right. I know for me, let’s just say tomorrow I create the
world’s like, I create a science fiction movie that is considered one of the
best of all time. Right? It’s so, you know, $2 billion at the box office. I’m
just amazed. Right? Right. 10 years from now, some young filmmaker, who is like
eight-nine now is 18. He writes a film as a tribute to the film that I did now
and takes literal pieces out of the film. Maybe. Maybe it’s not a science
fiction film. Maybe it’s drama. Right. Do I shoot him? I could probably, I
probably could say, “Hey, you’re stealing from my film.” As an ego, I could do
that. I could completely say, “I don’t like this, and I want a piece of what
you’ve just created.” Or I could just say, you know what, it’s a tribute.
I get it.
Anthony Verna:
You know, there’s a part here where it takes careful consideration with counsel
in order to discuss what’s infringement. Yep. What’s a tribute or a past each[KR2] ,
what is blatantly ripping off and there are fine lines between all of that.
Daron Jenkins:
Is that, I mean like is it, is part of that conversation, what is it? Go back
and goes back to the tape again? Right. It goes back to tint in the sense that
if you’re having this conversation with your attorneys, right. And okay. You
know, so he releases a script and you see him on all the talk shows and talking
to the press, this is mine. It’s all mine. There’s nothing really, you know,
Oh, I’m brilliant, I’m brilliant. And then you find that, but you, I mean, you
can literally pull pieces out, right? If I’m your lead legal representation, if
I’m your business people, I go, yeah, you have to do something about that. And
the reason why is because you don’t, as much as no one wants to be sued. I
don’t want to be sued. No one does, I don’t want to be in court, but there has
to be a line that has to be drawn when it comes to claiming the creative intent
of a project. You know what I mean? And that unfortunately when it comes to
that level, it comes down to, I think the legal process has been played out
somewhere down the line.
Anthony Verna:
To go back to the Blurred Lines case. One of the issues that I think
hurt the case is that what was filed, I’m going to get a little legal
procedural wonky here and there’s a part of me that doesn’t like doing that
when I do a podcast, but in this particular case, the plaintiff, what were the
plaintiffs were Pharrell and Robin Thicke as the writers, they filed the suit
asking the court for what we would call a declaratory judgement, basically asking
the court to write a piece of paper that says no copyright infringement exists.
And you do that when you think you’re actually going to be a defendant and you
tried to circumvent the process. I’ve only had one of those particular
situations and I’ve thought about filing another one because it’s rare to ask a
court for declaration. Right? And I don’t like it because it’s barely worth the
paper it’s written on it. And two, I think it backfires. I was in a lawsuit
where our client was, the recipient was the defendant officially and the
plaintiff filed the declaratory judgment. Eventually it was settled, but I
think it was settled because eventually the plaintiff said, “Gee, our claims
don’t necessarily come out and I don’t think we’ll be keeping the copyrights.”
I think the copyrights would have been transferred anyway. So, when the
settlement was made, their copyrights were transferred to my client. But the
declaratory judgment, that particular legal maneuver tends to fail, I think
because it has an easy way of backfiring.
Daron Jenkins:
It’s almost like…
Anthony Verna:
You’re asking the court to say we did nothing.
Daron Jenkins:
Like it, it’s like a Jedi mind trick. “This
is not the droid you’re looking for.” Seriously. It’s a sneaky way of declaring your guilt. But tell them we’re
guilty saying by saying we’re not . I’m not a lawyer, but if someone said that
to me in court, even, I would be like, really? Seriously. Um, no, I totally get
what you’re saying.
Anthony Verna:
Yeah. So, so you know, those particular issues really require a long time with
counsel in order to determine what the right move is. I’m curious how you
advise people to come to you with the dream on how to set a budget because we’re
talking legal issues at the moment, but there are practical issues such as
writing, filming, distribution. I mean, besides all of the legal issues, you
know, whether the project sag after and those contracts are a nightmare, and
not just because they’re typed up in eight-point font, but you know.
But how do you advise anybody with a dream to make that dream reality,
especially when you have to create the budget?
Daron Jenkins:
Well the budget’s kind of like this thing for film. I mean, cause it a little
different depending on the project, if it’s a film or television project or
digital stuff. But if it’s a film, kind of a project, one thing about
filmmakers is that filmmakers are unrealistic sometimes in their financial
projections for many startups. Yeah. Like I said, which very similar world. The
difference being is, is that with film makers, you know, when you’re trying to
get investment from different project, different entities, especially when you
start getting into like guys, like vcs or something like that or private hedge
funds, and to do those type things, they require a lot more information about
the finances of what you’re trying to do, you know, so understanding your
finances and what your budget is and where things are going and allocate it to
is really important. You can’t just go, hey, I need $100,000. And they’re like,
for what? Like, just for some film and stuff. You gotta be able to break it
down where everything is going and you know, and that, there’s some filmmakers
who have been very good at doing the consents. I mean, he’d done it a long time
differently.
He’s familiar with how to break down the budget line by line and stuff when
you’re starting now, you don’t probably have that knowledge. So, you’re really
kind of fishing around trying to figure out if I don’t have knowledge, who can
give me the knowledge, right. Is it going to be my accountant? Is it going to
be my lawyer? You’d be surprised how many people will, you know, think it’s
their accountant as to, I told him this, I told him it’s really kind of a
combination. I mean I think it really depends. I think you should have a lawyer
around because especially in a good entertainment lawyer understands a lot of
stuff that they’ve seen, and then a CPA who’s familiar with the financial
breakdowns, obviously is handy. But having somebody in the team who has done it
before is good because you know, because you’ll get the experience in their
experience. And what was the one thing why people don’t talk about is… so a lot
of filmmakers are going into the crowdfunding platforms in order to find money
because everybody thinks that’s the magic bullet. It is a magic bullet that can
kill you as well because a lot of people don’t seem to get that as the end of
the day. And you’ve crowdfunded this hundred thousand dollars, guess what?
These guys, you can call them thugs, you can call them the men in black, but
they’re called the IRS and they’re coming for you. You have to be prepared.
Anthony Verna:
You need a suit. And this is something I tell all entrepreneurs and I just told
somebody this last week and I’m actually going to be speaking with this
entrepreneur, again with my partner, we’re going to have a phone conference
because it’s somebody who has never set up a company before. And I said, you
need a CPA and you need a tax lawyer. I said, I will gladly help you with your
intellectual property and I’ll gladly help you with your advertising concerns
cause you’re gonna go and have both in this particular, in this, in this
particular business. But, if you’ve never set up a business before, you need a
CPA and this person had never used a CPA before. I said, so I got a CPA for you
to talk to.
If you don’t like them, we’ve got others. I said, I know a tax lawyer. You
should speak to the tax lawyer and it’s actually, a business that’s going to
have inventory. So, while again, I’m not a corporate lawyer and I’m not a tax
lawyer, I said, what you should do is talk to the tax lawyer about a c
corporation instead of an s corporation. When your business has to hold
inventory. I don’t know the manipulations, but I know that there are
manipulations and differences between the two. And you know, this person said,
I don’t know what a c corp is. And I said that’s fine. That’s why they’re here.
I just had this conversation with my partner actually. We were talking about
that and she’s like, so what’s the difference between an LLC, an s corp and a
corp. Between all of them is how is the, how protected you’re going to be as a
individual, right. I mean cause that’s ultimately your goal is to kind of create
a separations, a line of separation in
between you.
Anthony Verna:
But it’s also how the partners are taxed. How the partners are allowed to pull
money out as well.
Daron Jenkins:
I mean there’s so many. So that, and that goes back to knowing what kind of
business structure you’re going to have because what works for this company is
not going to work for you.
Also, let me use a whole bunch of other stuff. I mean we can get into where
you’re going to be forming this company from. You know, again, like you said, whether
or not you’re going to have inventory…
Anthony Verna:
I was at an event earlier this week and somebody there said always form a
Delaware LLC or always form a Delaware Corporation.
Daron Jenkins:
Someone said that to me as well.
Anthony Verna:
And I’m not a Delaware attorney. I know Delaware has corporate friendly laws,
but if you’ve got zero clients, and this is something I say, , if you’re going
to speak to a tax lawyer and you should always speak to a tax lawyer and have corporate
formation attorney. But the questions to ask are, if I have zero customers in
Delaware and therefore, I’m never going to visit Delaware and I’m going to have
a New York City office, is it really beneficial to form a Delaware Corporation
or a Delaware LLC?
And, and I’m not saying there aren’t any, but that’s something that’s something
to really take into consideration because if your business address is in the State
of New York, you can be hauled into court in the State of New York regardless
of where your corporation is formed. Exactly. And I’ll tell you what, I’ve got
a client with a really bizarre situation that obviously I can’t go into depth
about. But, predecessor company. So, there was a predecessor company that
predecessor went bankrupt. My client is the successor. The predecessor company
was a New York Corporation with a New Jersey address. And when a financing
agreement was filed, the financing company filed under the uniform commercial
code of New York in the State of New York for all of the, the product that the
predecessor company had, all of the equipment to make the product, all of the
intellectual property of the company. And they did it in New York.
And that was a proper filing because even though the company was sitting in New
Jersey, excuse me, it was a New York Corporation and therefore the filing in
New York was proper. Now, if it were a New Jersey Company and with the New
Jersey address, then that wouldn’t have been the case. But it was a New York
company with the New Jersey address. And so, the filing in New York was proper,
you know? And so that’s an issue that a nobody thinks, Gee, what if my company
goes bankrupt? And nobody thinks that, and nobody should. But you should
prepare and think about what are the consequences, positive consequences and
negative consequences. And when we’re talking in the creative industry,
bankruptcy and intellectual property in the creative industry and creative
industries are painful to think about because a lot of creditors don’t know
what to do with your intellectual property. You know, if your company goes
bankrupt.
Daron Jenkins:
Auction. That’s really it. Yeah, I mean it’s my understanding that there are a
number of coworking environments in the city who actually did the LLC in
Delaware. For whatever reasons, I don’t know that.
Anthony Verna:
Right. And again, I’m not being critical of companies that do that. Right.
Daron Jenkins:
I totally don’t know. When I was looking to incorporate, that was the, one of
the things I did my research right now, you know I’ve talked to a few people
and a few people said shh Delaware. Incorporate in Delaware. I’m like, for
what? It’s not like Delaware is Amsterdam. They’re not, they don’t have an
extradition treaty. This intrigues me that you’re not going to get me. So, I
was just like, while you’re doing this in an investigation of like whether we
should do that or not. That was my first point. I’m like, what’s the benefit? I
didn’t see anything that was so radically different. That’s what kept me from
saying that. Yeah.
Daron Jenkins::
The nice part about New York state is the five boroughs and the five boroughs
have a lot of commercial litigation. So, through the years, New York has
developed statutes that I won’t say are similar to Delaware’s. But New York has
a lot of business friendly, core corporate statutes. I will say this though,
New York state has a lot of terrible state judges and that’s something… I tried
to be in federal court when I can because in New York state, the federal, the
federal judges are a lot better and I hope nobody who’s listening ever finds
out. But those are, again, those are the
considerations that you need to, that you, that a lot of, especially creative
businesses I think don’t, don’t necessarily think about it.
Daron Jenkins:
It’s a little different sometimes for filmmakers, right? Because filming crews
are always doing stuff, not necessarily locale. So, you know, they do stuff in
all countries and other places and stuff. So, and then during a lot of
different things, there’s a lot of them that have, that are not incorporated in
them. Now. I don’t know how it’s gonna work out for them in the end. Maybe it’s
great we can save some money up front. I don’t know. They’re waiting for to
make their first million dollar check. Hey, mistake, but whatever. But there
again, if a lot of filmmakers, there probably are a lot of creators or should
we say only artists, writers, what have you. My thing is if you’re going to be
an individual who’s going to be making more than $5,000 in a year doing
whatever it is that how you think you’re going to be doing as a business, you
should be incorporated.
It just pays, I think, you know, from all for all types of reasons, it just
pays to do things the right way. It’s, you know, great thing. So we met because
we’ve come a couple of my events and stuff and you’re spoken at my events,
which is awesome. Of course. And you’ve provided some awesome attendees
awesome. And you know, so people like yourself and other lawyers, we, the great
thing about our events is that we get a little bit of everything right. We do
get, we get trademark attorneys, we get tax attorney, we get all kinds of
attorneys to come because I don’t think they come because they’re looking for clients.
They come because they enjoy meeting new people and stuff. But the great thing
is that if you’re a creative person or an entrepreneur or something, if you
come to our events, uh, you know, you can’t say you can’t find a lawyer.
Anthony Verna:
The support system is there regardless of who the service provider is. The
support system is there …
Daron Jenkins:
And some of these are pro bono places, I mean for the reduced fee.
Anthony Verna:
Sure. In, in New York City, there’s the volunteer lawyers for the arts. And a
lot of those attorneys will work pro bono on a lot of these smaller situations.
Daron Jenkins::
I think you know, regardless of how you do it, you should do it, get a good one
that you’re comfortable with, somebody that you trust can give you, cause
obviously they’re giving you information that’s going to impact your career and
your business. I, that’s one thing I observed regardless of whether it’s legal
fees, legal advice, creative advice. I always tell people, don’t settle for the
first person if it’s not somebody you feel comfortable with. I think we were
just having that conversation where you just have good feeling in your gut. You
got work with, uh, you know, for, for a creative person. You know, in this we
don’t have a lot of knowledge about these things that we’re trying to do. Sometimes
we just need somebody who’s more smart. I said, I smarter than you and don’t
pretend you’re smart because you’re not, I’m not smart, trust me, I tried to
find as many smart, smarter people than me because you know, seriously, I’m
trying not, that’s like, I want to be dumb. I don’t have a problem with being
dumb. Seriously. So, if you’re hearing this podcast thing, you’re an
entrepreneur or creative play stupid. Seriously play stupid. Going to go
because the, speak to somebody and don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be
afraid to ask even the dumbest question because this, look, those questions will
save you a lot of money, a lot of pain.
Anthony Verna:
I want to move on to getting eyeballs, getting ears. Cause that part’s the
tough part because in today’s world, a lot of musicians can get their band
together. Maybe it costs $5,000 to put a five song EP together. And you know,
for a lot of creatives that that’s a hard number to, to spend. They have to
spend that in order to sell something in order, whether you’re selling a CD or
selling it on iTunes, what you know are on some other website or trying to get,
you’ve got to think about this in a business sense and put all of all of these
numbers together and create a business. So how do you tell people to get
eyeballs to their film or content? Because sometimes
you’re just gonna put it on Youtube. And how do you tell musicians to get those
ears as well? I know that’s, that’s a loaded question that we could probably
sit here for months distilling.
Daron Jenkins:
But one of the things, one of the many things that I do is… I actually also do
some artist representation. There’s a band called Eleventh Ward that I’m
managing right now who’s released their first EP last summer. And so creative
side, especially musicians, guys, we love you, but you are the worst and you
guys, they know. The reason why is because some musicians, artists, filmmakers.
Musicians are different.
Musicians don’t want to deal with the mish mosh that comes from promotion. They
don’t, they don’t. They would rather not and they don’t know how. They’re not
going to sit there and figure out social media plan. They’re not going to try
to come up with a marketing plan, a brand identity campaign. They’re not going
to think about how best to distribute something. I’ll give you a case of
example. There was a guy, there’s a guy … There’s a guy who is a talented
producer. He produces a lot of sports content, produces pretty good, a lot of
different things. One of the things he produces is actually a TV show on YouTube
for fashion. Great content, fantastic, was at fashion week, did some fantastic
stuff, great interviews and slice and dice and edited, beautiful. He produced
like I think about seven or eight, no, four or five episodes. He put the first
one up on YouTube, let us know. People are like wow. Promoting, promoting, you
know, about three weeks go by and I hadn’t seen the second episode and I was
like, hmm, that’s interesting. So, we email them and says, hey man, um, when’s
the second episode coming in? He goes, oh, it already came out. What, what do
you mean? He goes, I put it out. But the second, the third one and the fourth
one already out. I said, you put them out together. He goes, yeah. I go, why?
It’s like, no, you don’t see many things wrong with that. But it is because
think of it. So, Netflix can do that. Netflix can go, I can put into put twelve
episodes together. Boom, drop them. Right. Cause that’s …
Anthony Verna:
And you may want to do that if you have a podcast. So that iTunes has multiple
downloads, so when somebody comes in.
Daron Jenkins:
You’re doing this, when you are an entity that’s an unknown quantity of sorts,
right? And you’re trying to kind of build bucks sometimes. So, there are
different types of marketing models. They use people, you know, and I think
Netflix does a fantastic job of what they do. As far as me, I’m a big man in
all one season. Only bad thing about it is I’ll watch it all and then I get I’m
fiending for more, but…
Anthony Verna:
And you’re doing that at 3:30 in the morning.
Daron Jenkins:
Exactly. I should be asleep. But I told him, you have Netflix, man, you don’t
have enough traction behind it so that if everybody watches it all at once, they’re
not going to sit there and hunger for more. So, you’ve got to take a different
role. And so, he didn’t understand that. When you’re trying, getting eyes on is
changed right. Back in the day for festivals, four wall deals, is whatever you
could get in theaters, you know. Right. Hard as hell to get into theaters. Today, I can shoot something in about 10
minutes and have it up on YouTube in 20 minutes and tada, I’m a filmmaker. Yeah,
but who’s watching it? Who’s watching?
Anthony Verna:
So, then what’s the ratio, like only 1% of, of YouTube videos are actually
producing money for the creator? I mean maybe I’m a little off on that number. Maybe,
maybe something like 5%.
Daron Jenkins:
Pretty much. Even if it was 10% right? That number is still, I mean, okay, yes.
YouTube has a massive amount of content on there. So, 10% of that is really a
high number if you really think about it, but it’s not, it’s not a realistic,
like you can’t keep up that kind of, not everybody can do basically. Right. And
when they do do it it’s not, it’s you go something that’s big or overnight and
like something that you just can’t replicate, or it’s been a very calculated campaign.
There’s no middle ground, there’s nobody that say, as said as well, I just put
a video of my dog there and I’m gonna tell ten of my friends is, unless it’s
something, like I said something just like completely ridiculous. Right. And, I
mean, I don’t know what the statistics on within a 5%, you’re saying short of
what of that is actually what I call brand produced content. You know what I
mean?
Anthony Verna:
I’d say a whole lot of that is brand produced content. I mean even if the video
is of is of a musician or a band in the studio recording the song, right? Isn’t
that your brand content? Absolutely. Yes.
Daron Jenkins:
That’s why I say it’s not the, so it’s not something easily replicatable unless
you’ve got a $2 million marketing budget behind you helping you to promote it. YouTube
have their new studio here in New York City. And it’s for YouTubers who are,
you know, hot to trot, very hard to get into here. You got to have x number of
views to come be part of that platform, which is great. Right. Realistically,
and for most people to get that kind of buzz on YouTube, I mean it’s kind of
like, you know, it’s like south by southwest. I was considering doing an event
in SXSW. Right. Cause that’s what I do. I do events, right. But it wouldn’t
make no sense from here. And the reason why is because there’s so much stuff
going at South By that I would have been a speck of dust on a black wall.
Anthony Verna:
I went to south by, not this year, but last year and I actually was in Austin
for, for a case. So did double duty and I found it to be so noisy, right. That,
yes, even going out and shaking hands, trying to put an event, if you’re small possibly,
probably because you are that speck of dust.
Daron Jenkins:
I mean, that’s exactly what you face being a person on YouTube, probably times
10 or a hundred, because you know what, I don’t know what the numbers of events
hold them that maybe it’s a few hundred and YouTube, we’re talking two or 3
billion anymore. I’m not sure exactly. Probably much more than that. So, you’re
a speck of dust on a black wall and that wall is floating out in the universe,
okay. Only way for you to get any real attention as if you start the black
hole. Right. You know what I mean? So, sure. To go back to your original
question, how do you get views and how do you get eyes on, Three different ways?
Three of the best ways that I find. One has to do with money. The first way is
crowdfunding. A lot of people underestimate the fact that crowdfunding is not
how funding is about money. It’s not about money, it’s about markets. It really
is. I mean, if you’ve been on Kickstarter and do well, you will have done very
well because now people are going to that site, and it’s just, it’s really a
marketing tool. The second way is to look into, meeting someone who…
Anthony Verna:
I hope people aren’t building their
business plans get lucky.
Daron Jenkins:
$5,000 turn marketing 10,000 for getting lucky tomorrow. You’ve got the second
part of that is to try to get some kind of digital distribution, right? There
are a ton of platforms online you can pay to get distributed and then you’ve
got companies like Orchard that does a lot of digital distribution. They do,
you know, go to the film festivals, get your stuff, get into licensing major
festivals. Orchard is normally they’re looking, they were at south by, they,
there will be, there’ll be a Tribeca, they go to Sundance. So, they go
different places and they try to gather stuff and to do the same thing. And Orchard was just
bought by Sony. So, I’m not sure what, how that’s going to change things for them?
Maybe better or worse. The third way is split into a couple of things and this
is where it gets really cool and interesting for filming digital. Digital. When
I say digital, I mean webisodes, I mean branded content. I mean on your own
digital have more, digital platforms is going to be very interesting in the
next five minutes. Television companies, film companies right now all trying to
make a play for digital marketing, digital branded content. Lionsgate just announced
their new digital platform.
Christine who I mentioned earlier, merged
with … I can’t remember the company, but they are now, they made sort of a digital
media company. They’re instead of Killer Films, they are now Killer Content,
right. Which is producing something like the new and online video show for
comedians.
Anthony Verna:
Sure. And just a kind of look back at this in the last, let’s call it eight
years. I mean, this isn’t necessarily new either. I mean you have the founder
of Vimeo who created Next New Networks. And, I actually forget what happened
with Next New Networks, but, I mean that was an early adopter business plan,
which is what everybody here is doing now that it’s accepted.
Daron Jenkins:
Well, I think what’s happened is, is that I think you’re seeing this on a, on
the television, TV side, TV, sides starting to become more aggressive about it.
They’re looking for new revenue stream. So they’re starting to see this things
are starting to inch together. Where advertising it starting to use together
with film and…
Anthony Verna:
Which is how it used to be. I mean, when television was first launched, I mean
every, that’s why they’re called soap operas and, but even the variety shows
weren’t hosted by somebody. It was presented by the sponsor. Exactly. So, none
of this is necessarily new, different package. Yes, and in today’s world, if
there’s some advertising and creative content that blends together, I mean, we
can talk about advertising which we won’t right now, we could do so until we’re blue in the face. But
when those merge and you have a smaller audience, what’s nice is that the
advertiser gets a targeted niche audience. There’s an attention span that’s
gathered that’s not done in either, you know, instances. I mean, to go really
macro with this, Superbowl purchase is good because it’s an efficient buy for
eyeballs, but a lot of these smaller stations, for lack of a better phrase, all
of these channels that, that a content creator can put out on the web has the
attention span of the people who are watching it.
Daron Jenkins:
You’re really getting the full targeted audience that and what it also does, is
it takes that annoying factor out. For years, people set online, and they had
all these annoying popups. And all these different versions and commercials.
Goodness commercials. If you look through my TV show right. Now, it’s not. Do
you know why? Because it is your tv show. It’s part of your TV show and it’s
presented in such a way that you probably don’t even know it’s there and you
know, but it’s there and you know, is it, you know, I give BMW a lot of credit,
right. I remember years ago when they started doing those long form commercials
where it was like he’s um, they would have like female film directors direct
these long form commercials. It’s like all these stars that would be in those
sent the stage.
Anthony Verna:
American Express did the same thing.
Yes. As well.
Daron Jenkins:
Them, Apple, Sony, BMW, Panasonic might’ve been doing it as well. They started
set the stage for us. Now people started saying this commercial’s not so bad
now. Interesting. You know, now you fast forward and now you’ve got, this was
kind of where I came in 11 years ago to the industry where I started to see
say, Hey, I have lots of filmmaker friends, lots of videographers, lots of creators.
I also worked in digital publishing environment, Wall Street, Disney, Reuters,
you know, all these guys who here talking behind the scenes going, you know,
user generated content, user generated content, we really want the engineering
of the content. And he’s got, had no idea what was going on. They were like,
yeah, we’re still going to be filming. Right. Christine said it, she said at
South by, I’ve been saying it for a long time as well, is that filmmakers,
filmmakers who understand how to take advantage of opportunities that are being
presented right now by not just school, not just taking, they’re trying to be
stubborn and saying, I’m just going to film right with taking this, the films,
the representations, whatever they’re creating and leveraging it toward the
publishing side of things into branded content stuff is going to be going.
There’s a guy who he is with, I called YouTube broker.
What he does is he goes where he finds talent on YouTube, on creative content
stuff. Sure. He says, this is interesting. It’s getting lots of views, blah,
blah, blah. Let me get you some money. Let me make some money for it. So, he
then takes that content, brings it to the brands and says, this is up your
alley, you should bring it. Right. Boom. They make the deal with this guy, they
brand that channel, they get money, they get content. It’s a happy marriage.
That is going to be the paradigm for the next five, six years. If you asked me
where people are going to get eyes, that’s where they’re gonna get eyes. Online
is going to be where filmmakers, content creators can get eyes on seeing this
content that they not necessarily meaning for theatrical release, but use that
as a branding mechanism for themselves. So that way when they go into
investment, they can say, hey, look at all the views that I’m getting on my
content online or with my field, all of these people, once I’ve promoted them,
you’re going to be in the theaters watching it. Give me too many dollars. That’s
what film makers are going to need to do.
Anthony Verna:
So since we need to wrap up at this point, because everybody’s attention span,
I think, at the end of it. I would say one, if you’re going to dream, you’re
allowed to dream and dream big. Make sure your practical issues are settled
because that’s your foundation. Make sure your legal issues are taken care of,
whether it’s intellectual property, corporate formation, tax issues, contracts.
Make sure…
Daron Jenkins:
Get out and network. If you don’t know
people that could help you with that information because networking will help
you find them. It will help you find all the legal people, branding people, the
marketing people, all the things that you need. Networking is the key.
Anthony Verna:
I agree wholeheartedly. Daron, thank you so much.
Daron Jenkins:
Thank you. This was fun.
Anthony Verna:
We’ll do it again.
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