From Script to $100k Equity Financing: Navigating The Greenlight List (Partner Episode)

[Music] Most filmmakers make a fatal mistake. They write a script, they raise money, they shoot the movie, and then they try to figure out who the audience is, or how to sell it. But in an industry where AI is already running frontline coverage for studios, how do you pressure test your script for commercial viability before you shoot a single frame? This is Gigi Hawkins, you are listening to a sponsored episode of the No Film School podcast. And we are talking with Jack Zhang, the founder of Green Light Coverage in Andreus, Oliveira, Vice President at Level 33 Entertainment, a distribution company, and more. Last year while I was at the Gotham Project Market, we had an opportunity to use Green Light Coverage, which is a platform that uses AI to analyze scripts. Seems scary, we're going to dig into it. But actually I found that it was helpful for me to understand how buyers are analyzing scripts and industry professionals as a whole, because again that is just the reality of where we're at. And it actually did help me pressure test my own drafts and understand how people are going to be assessing the script at that sort of like first touch point. So while Jack's team is bringing the data science to it and he'll dig into that in the conversation, Andreus is focused on the distribution muscle behind what is called the Green Light List, a merit-based pipeline offering grand prize winners $100,000 in equity financing and guaranteed distribution. So in our conversation, we talk about how AI is using data to sort of evaluate and understand commerciality and hooks without replacing human creativity and how they buffer against that risk. We also look at the metrics that distributors are looking for when it comes to green lighting or taking on indie films. We're going to talk about some of the things that you may want to know as a filmmaker if you are hoping to distribute your film and get it discovered on these platforms that are where a lot of indie films are living these days. But first, if you're in Los Angeles during the first week of August, I want everyone to check out the inaugural Fairfax Film Festival, which is a new grassroots festival created by filmmakers, for filmmakers at a time when so much production is moving out of LA. This festival is celebrating the movie going experience in the creative community that makes this city such a special place to make films. The festival kicks off with a special screening of Caroline Gollum's acclaimed feature, "Revelations of a Divine Love at Brain Dead Studios" on Tuesday, August 4th at 8 p.m. with additional screenings and events happening throughout the week. This festival is a true labor of love and all-wantier community and team working to uplift independent filmmakers and bring people together through cinema. So you can learn more, get tickets, and the full schedule at the Fairfax Film Festival website or at Fairfax Film Festival on Instagram. So now let's get into our conversation with Jack and Andreas. Welcome, Jack and Andreas to the No Film School podcast. Thank you for being here. Thanks for having us. Thank you for having us here. So, Jack, to kick us off, can you introduce yourself and walk us through your background and what led you to create green light coverage and basically how the platform works to evaluate scripts? Absolutely. So green light coverage is a software-based solution to how screen writers, producers, and studio executives to evaluate screenplays and get feedback and insights on how to improve their development slate. We work with feature films, TV series, short films, vertical dramas, anything you name it. And yeah, we have over 40,000 users now using the platform and we have this amazing thing called the Green Light List, which is I think the kind of focus of today that we partnered up with. Andreas here runs Level 33 Entertainment that we give the winner $100,000 in equity financing and distribution deal from Level 33. And Andreas, why don't you introduce yourself and Level 33 Entertainment and tell us about your role on the distribution side, the types of projects that Level 33 typically brings to market and how you got involved with the Green List. Absolutely. Yeah, so again, thanks for having us here. Level 33 Entertainment was formed over 15 years ago. It has really kind of an alternative to a lot of what we saw in the distribution space, which seemed to be a situation where the deck was stacked against the filmmakers and the producers, in particular, when it came to monetizing their content, right, their movies. Typically, we're focused on feature films, right? So that's been sort of the core. But any content these days, really, I think we think needs, you know, a guiding hand and an opportunity to access the market for the best, for the best, you know, chance at success. So that's really what we look to do in a sort of a producer-friendly model. And like I said, we started about 15 years ago and have seen so many changes in the distribution space over that time. Obviously, we're in a very exciting time, also potentially scary for some in the world of AI and technology just moving as quickly as it is. But we found, in particular, with Greenlight coverage, which has been a solid partner of ours for quite a while now, that there's, you know, a great new avenue for using some of this intelligence to help the process, help the day-to-day experience, you know, for a distributor, for a producer, for a screenwriter, right? So that is, I think what's really exciting about what the coverage platform can do, and I'm sure we can chat more about the specifics there, but essentially saving hours and hours of time to evaluate screenplays and really be able to kind of drill it down into what the most marketable, most effective elements of storytelling are, you know, as it relates to a particular screenplay. So that's become a very vital tool for us. Again, our primary focus is on completed movies, right? So that's really kind of our bread and butter, but we do get some project that in an earlier stage. So that's where something like Greenlight coverage can be really helpful in assessing the content in front of us. And a lot of filmmakers, they write a script, raise money, shoot the movie, and then try to figure out who the audience is or how to sell it. Why is that approach so dangerous in this market? And why should creators be thinking about, you know, things like distribution and key art before they start shooting? I think it's so important that filmmakers look at what the end product will be and how they're going to connect that film, that story with a target audience. So I think that that is quite often, as you said, something that's left for the last minute. And we really encourage filmmakers to think about those aspects at the time of really writing the story. The screenplay definitely coming into that what would be a production draft, you know, or sort of the final draft, shooting draft of a script to make sure you're thinking about all those things ahead of time. So I do encourage filmmakers to take a pause and say, all right, what would our poster for the movie be? What would our key art be? That would be something that, as we know nowadays with video on demand, that's really the long tail for so many films and series, you know, that's something that's really important to look at. How is it going to be presented? And that thumbnail that we all see across the various platforms, in terms of digital platforms, it's really, it's something that's ubiquitous in the VOD space. That's really the thing that's going to catch the attention of a potential audience member. Initially the key art and then the trailer for the film or series, right? You're trying to make it exciting for that potential audience and hook them in to want to watch it. So I think that, you know, distilling those elements as early a stage as possible, I think is really important. So do you have cast that you want to highlight? What is the genre? How do you communicate that genre in the best way when you're marketing to the public that may have no idea about your story, your movie, etc. So I think those those aspects of distribution and marketing are important to look at as early in the process as possible. Yeah. So one thing that I want to just sort of highlight is I think that especially as a filmmaker and a creative, I sometimes encounter people who are pushing up against this idea of thinking through how the marketing or the poster or the trailer, and they're like, well, I'm just making a film, which is great if you want to make art for the sake of art, and you have the means for supporting and releasing, or maybe not releasing. If you're just there for the process, we have incredible filmmakers on this podcast. Come on and talk about how it is about the process, and that is the thing that is most important to them, and not the profitability, and they keep the budgets low to do that. Listen to our PTOs podcast, for example. But what's interesting is thinking about this sort of like inception moment for an idea, and even when you're at the log line phase, figuring out how you can choose a story, which one you're going to choose, and invest the time in, that is actually something that will have legs in the marketplace, or can connect with audiences, especially if you don't have like the resources of a traditional studio film. And that's actually something that can empower you, and your work to succeed. I've talked on the podcast about how we designed our poster with Adam Dallas Barnes, who is a no film school listener, who works at Sony, who before we were on set, we sat down and designed the poster. So then we could be on set and capture it, and that was like mission critical, and still the poster that our distributor uses today. So I want to help our audience members who are newer to this space, or maybe thinking about endeavoring on their first feature. How can they be making the smartest decision with the work that they're creating, and how can they ultimately be reaching their audience? Because once you get to picture lock, just as much work goes into figuring out how to release your film, which actually brings me to this idea of like data and audience profiling. Jack, you do have this background in data science and audience profiling. Can you speak to kind of what that is, and how you've integrated it into Greenlight's coverage algorithm for analyzing scripts? Absolutely. So maybe we can go back to the very beginning of Greenlight. So Greenlight started about 12, 13 years ago now, we're counting it right. He started as a research project during university time of my, and back of the days, we would call these algorithms statistical learning algorithms instead of machine learning or deep learning what AI or what people call it. But essentially, he's doing the same thing, trying to make sense, pulling size out of a bunch of data except back then he was much simpler model, simpler methods. And I was a student and learned a few different tricks from these classes. Had to make a project using real world data. You know, I always love movies, so why not, you know, try to pull some data publicly available data on films and see what kind of insights you would generate. And at the end, you actually performed much better than what I expected. I was able to explain about 80% of the variation in opening box office for major studio films in the last day market. And you know, pinpoint variables like how much FNA spend or how much like theaters the movies going to, what kind of genre, what kind of talents and what we call like ploy elements in movie were also analyzed. And yeah, so we ingested thousands of films, about 200 to 300 million audience data points in our algorithm to kind of make sense of the data. And that's what kind of led me into the space working with distributors like Level 33 to help them market their movies more effectively and help investors and finance years and just to decide on which projects to define and which cast would bring, would make the most sense for for each project. And it's really doing that process. My personal pain point was always beating screenplays. I had 20 to be screenplays stacked up on my desk and being a slow reader as myself, you know, pulling my hair out, going through scripts, especially the bad ones where I like you have to go reread it a few times, just doesn't make sense. And they're just like, I don't know what I read. So yeah, I started to, you know, make this tooling internally for myself. And, you know, a few of my clients, also, what, or being very helpful testing out, I think Andreas was one of the early users of the tools as well and gave us a lot of insights, what feedback on how he, like what he liked to see in the output of the coverage. And he kind of morphed into what we are today. And yeah, as the users grow, we hear what they're saying, you know, everyone's saying that hey, it's so difficult to raise equity financing when you're on the film. It's so difficult to find the distribution. So we started GreenLyList trying to help them solve that problem. And if you have a screenplay, that's really good. You don't need a gatekeeper as your friend who, you know, you knew 20 years. You have a, if you have a really good screenplay, you can submit your, the GreenLyList competition at the end, you get equity financing and you got distribution. So I have a feeling that there are some listeners who are like, whoa, like the idea of not reading my script that I put so much time and effort into is like, ooh, out. Like that sucks. But I'd love to hear sort of like a reframing or recontextualizing of that given the reality of the demands of stuff that is coming in for you guys. And then also how you kind of, you know, famously moonlight, for example, it was a script that was like not really following traditional format. I have a friend who passed on it and it regrets it in every day of his life. So how do you think about one catching all the scripts, finding the ones that are, you know, those, you know, maybe diamonds in the rough and also working in a space where that allows you to do your job. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, I think in the realm of the GreenLyList, the ideal world will be like, hey, we want to be able to find the moonlight, you know, of all the on-nil screenwriters or known screenwriters couldn't get the movie made. But in reality, you know, if you look at what the process is like today, most of the projects don't get read anyway. If you reach out to a producer or agent, if it's a cold email, you know, 90% of the time, it gets ignored. If it's from one contact, maybe they read the first 10, 20 pages, maybe, right? If you have a big talent attached to it, then people start to, oh, yeah, we've got to take this one seriously. Yeah. But, you know, for the GreenLyList, you don't need any of that. And our system will treat everyone equally, assign a score to do the first pass, right? Obviously, if you're ranked, you know, 49, 50% tile, you've got to work on it a little bit. But if you're, you know, the top 5, 10% tile, at the end, you know, we will still read it, you know, the developing executive, the equity executive from level 33, Heron will also help us, you know, a few other people who are experienced industry professionals, but also be on the final judge committee to help us determine, you know, which one of these submissions are truly the best screenplay out of, you know, hundreds of missions that came through. In from a distribution lens, can we talk about sort of like how you're evaluating hundreds of projects and you're using tools like GreenLyList, but ultimately you're making a decision whether it's a completed movie or a script of this is a great story. I'm glad that somebody wrote it to this is actually a movie that we can market and distribute. So can you talk about sort of that evaluation moment? Oh, definitely. Yeah. I think, you know, it speaks to a little bit of what Jack was saying as well about you who had asked about reframing it right from the creative standpoint. Inevitably, there are these gatekeepers are built in, right? I mean, there's going to be hurdles no matter what. And one of those hurdles is giving the film, so I should say the script in this case, the script, the screenplay, an opportunity to stand out. And to be flagged is something worthy of further, you know, sort of exploration. So I think I just want to say that the GreenLy coverage is able to do that because it's taking almost the history of screenwriting in a sense, right? To sort of use in the background to evaluate these projects. So at a minimum, what you're getting is a sense that, hey, and I'm saying from a creative standpoint, right, from the writer's perspective, maybe I could do some things to make some of the structure a little bit more clear. Oh, wow. I never thought we lose this plot point and I didn't really tie it up. Oh, this character is barely in there and is a really interesting character. Maybe we should bring that character further out, you know, into the story and so on and so on, right? There's a lot of different ways that you can get feedback that's very valuable as a writer by using this tool. So that again can help the project stand out in the process of that initial evaluation, whether that's done by using something like GreenLy coverage or by the actual, you know, human reader that's on the other end of it, right? So for us, we are looking at, and this has happened dozens of times, we'll see a good score as the initial sort of like, oh, this is worthy of further consideration. Also it is the shortcut for us to say, hey, This is a wonderfully reviewed story and is very personal and very heartfelt, but it's going to be more challenging for us as a distributor again because what are we looking at fundamentally? We're looking at content monetization. That's the simple way to put forth what you do. Like, what do you do? Well, distributors help to monetize the content. They look at everything from the title of the film. Does it need to be changed? Is it successful at communicating the film, the story, the vision of the filmmakers? As we said before, the key art, the positioning, all of those things will come into play ultimately. But from that script stage, you can already tell, this is in a genre and in such a way that is presented to be contained, let's say. Because again, there's a huge difference in the range of types of stories. An enormous space epic, for example, that's going to need a ton of visual effects and things like that. Obviously, that's going to be a much higher budget. If you think of something like a project Hail Mary for a more recent example, obviously based on a book, you have some big names and a studio file. It's studio, which is different. That's a different world. The studio world and the independent world, they essentially do the same thing. But as we know, they're vastly different in terms of backing resources, etc. So, I use the example just because, okay, that's going to take clearly a huge budget to bring it to life. Whereas something that is more contained and in a genre that we find is quite accessible and popular. So the genre of today, and maybe this is just sort of perennial. Maybe this is always the genre. It seems to be horror and thrill, right? These kinds of films that certainly, as we're speaking right now, you've had this string of lower budget horror movies, mostly lower budget, somewhere higher. But with tremendous success of the box office, and they're perfect examples, right? Of okay, something that was done by the filmmakers to say, what can we achieve on a limited budget that is in a very popular genre? And that, I use the horror example quite a bit because it is the one community where if you look online, you have several horror destinations that are very well-known, bloody disgusting, dread central fangoria, rumor just to name a few. And it's one of the only genres where you have this built-in audience that's always looking for the next cool thing. So it's an easier example to sort of illustrate the point. I love that we're digging into horror because I'd love to hear a little bit from Jack about sort of like the genre dynamics within green light. And we are in such a specific moment with horror where I think everyone is hearing, oh, independent, low budget will do really well. But the thing that I want to make sure listeners are aware of is independent, low budget, with a audience strategy will do very well. So yes, we know that obsession is doing really well. And apparently the budget was 750. I think they did reshoot. So I think there's even more budget that is not being necessarily reported. But there was also an executive who knew how to get it into theaters, get it into TIFF where they had an existing relationship. It wasn't a cold submission. Then they had all the right horror people in the room. Then they had a bidding war. And then they had $40 million marketing this movie. So let's not turn a blind eye to all the additional work and resources that went into that indie horror film. And that's why we need to be thinking about our audience, our marketing strategy. You know, there's some amazing stills from that movie. And the way that it's been marketed has been very, very strategic. So if you're, you know, exploring this horror genre, how can it be something that stands out? So from a, you know, the green light algorithm, how is it looking at like genre specific tropes, for example, or commercial comps when it's scoring a project in that space? Absolutely. We have our algorithm adapts to, you know, each screen place genre on its own, right? Like it makes no sense to compare horror to like a drama, right? Right. Right. Yeah. You have weight weightings in there to like adjust which bucket kind of falls into and evaluate the scripts on that specific bucket and give a percentile score. In terms of like a genre tropes, one of the dimensions we evaluate is actually the originality, right? If it's like a story that's been told a thousand times, you'll get very low scoring that carry which will impact your overall score. So even though AI learns from the data, but you know, you can't just have something, you can't just make, I don't know, blur which project again and expect a scene result, right? That's something that definitely I have to want to avoid. It still needs to be a original story has originality to it, but also, you know, good plot construction, good character development, good theme, the messaging, everything come with it. And yeah, like, what Andrea has and you mentioned, it's not just a low budget, but it needs to have an audience in mind has to have a specific audience itch that you're trying to scratch or is just going to be one of the thousands of films produced out there sitting on the shelf, a portion of. Yeah. Looking ahead and we cannot predict market trends or the future and I think it's important to be taking this all into account from a holistic perspective, but for filmmakers who are looking at the changing VOD and streaming landscapes for the next three to five years, what genres or concepts are you guys excited to see or eager to distribute? I do want to say just in building on what we've been chatting about specifically to the horror genre, it's an easy example to give and that's why I was highlighting it before, but by no means is it the only genre to be considered. In fact, it's so execution dependent, it has actually rather difficult. As Jack said, frankly, there's exact same project with two different sets of filmmakers could be vastly different, right? So there's so many variables. It is an easy example of the built-in audience. That's why we quite often reference it, but if you have a really strong contained drama as Jocque Sang or a romance that's really well executed and also contained and also so that there is that aspect that we have to be practical about the type of film that we believe could be made in particular with the contest. This is sort of separate. There's the Greenlight coverage, which is coverage for any and all types of screenplays. And then there's the specific contest, which is sort of building toward, you know, as Jack said, the top performers based on the initial movie that you know will find an audience. Exactly. And that could be in any genre. So I wanted to just say that when it comes to distribution and the trends that we're seeing, again, yes, we are seeing this real interest in some of the horror and thriller space, of course, for those reasons we mentioned. But there are certainly others that one should consider. Recently, we've been seeing a lot of really solid traction with romance. Like we have a Western romance, for example, performing very well. It's pretty specific. It targets a very specific audience. I just had a chat earlier today about the marketability of films that target a highly active consumer, which in this particular case that we were describing, which does come to those romances. What a lot of people would sort of call the lifetime or hallmark type films, right? Those can be very solid performers because people are looking for a certain kind of story. And as it delivers that, you know, you're in a sweet spot in particular for advertising, which tends to be female, older skewing as a very strong sort of sweet spot for advertisers. So in the avod space, yes, like the move toward, you know, more and more of what we see as avod ad supported VOD, right? As kind of a long tail, right? So for level 33, we still do many of the traditional windows. Of course, the windows of shrunk in terms of time, but we will still look at theatrical when that makes sense. Then of course, transactional VOD or TVOD subscription VOD S VOD sometimes refer to as pay one or streaming and then avod ad supported VOD ad supported VOD and so forth. Right? So that could be in many manifestations of what are people think of as to be or YouTube or these various platforms, right? Where there are ads. Most of the platforms these days have an ad option to them. So you have to really be thinking of that is something that is here to stay. With that in mind, some things do come up, which would be, you know, getting into the action of the story in a relatively quick amount of time. Like you only have so long to capture that audience. So this has come up where, where, you know, again, all of these sort of marketing tools are in play, but then the film itself should hook the audience in whatever genre in the first five minutes, for example. Okay. Yeah. Perhaps easier said than done, but something to think about, right? Because when you hook the audience in that early time frame, you now have a better odds that they'll stay for the rest of the story and the longer they watch, the more ad revenue this generated. So it's a very sort of practical look. Yeah. That's sort of where the market is and things that maybe, you know, many screen writers, producers, directors, why they aren't thinking of per se. But these are some little tidbits that I think are valuable as we look at kind of that changing landscape. - Yeah, I love that. Like when we can zoom out and really think of the big picture of the audience and what our goal is. If our goal is to tell like a sort of romance, feel good story with heart where anyone in the family can sit down and watch it and it will probably find its audience most on these platforms and sort of the, into the sort of teavod space. Okay, then how do we work with the story to make sure we are engaging that audience in that context so we can find success and make the next one? If we are an all-tour sort of pushing the envelope filmmaker and the space that we are trying to enter is like this sort of boundary pushing festival space. Like that is a different thing that you're creating and understanding the more you can understand where your work fits into and ultimately what I call the horizon goal of what you're always working towards as a filmmaker and as somebody who's creating and somebody who's a working filmmaker, the more you can keep doing it because you fully understand what it is how to talk to your investors, how to talk to your team, how to get everyone on the same page and understanding that final place where it will live and the audience and all of that is part of that process. - Absolutely, I think that's very well said. Yes, I think it sort of all works together, right? And so it is a lot to juggle as you're saying that I'm realizing for a lot of people that probably go like, wait, I gotta do this and this, this, this, well, these are a lot of things to consider. If you are looking to find this path to some commercial success, so it touches on even down the road when you're casting the film, can you get some elements that are meaningful? What does that look like? Well, today, of course, speaking of creators, a lot of these sort of creators who are doing things on, let's say, YouTube or various social channels, they may have a tremendous following and maybe they're interested in going into kind of long-form storytelling as a performer, as a producer, who knows, right? There could be some of that. In fact, on a film that we're looking to launch this fall, the filmmaker said we're gonna actually attach a known quantity as an EP, as an executive producer of the film, just to help in the promotion of it all. So this is somebody who's not even in the film, but is a public figure with a tremendous following that has been engaged by the producer. So it's exactly what we're talking about. This was done even separate of our conversations, but we were very supportive of this idea, right? Because the more elements you bring to the table that make your film stand out, the better. So these are just factors that come into play. It's like, well, I know it's chicken and egg with a lot of it, right? It's like, how do I get my movie made and then get somebody of note to be in it? They often can go together, but of course, starting with that strong screenplay, and then of course your track record that you build over time is only gonna help, right? Because for certain, we've seen it many times, or certain performers, certain actors will say, I like with that, oh, I saw that film, or I like that film, or even just providing on a sample of your work, they're like, okay, this is somebody who gets it. They're gonna take good care of me. I'm gonna look good. And I like this story. I like the script, so it goes right back to having a strong script. - So with the September 10th submission deadline for the Greenlight List, fast approaching, what is the number one piece of advice that you would both give a writer who is polishing their screenplay this month? - Well, I'd say the biggest advice, or the greatest advice is don't miss a deadline. It does something but-- - Demented one. Yeah. - And honestly, those deadlines for these labs and competitions, they are a gift because they force me to finish and it's amazing. - Yes, no, I think it's really good advice. It is good to have that sort of milestone there of like, okay, I have to get this in by this date. And we say, we would encourage that, and I think again, just think of these factors we've talked about and say, oh, I think, maybe this particular script is a good candidate for it. And then of course you have the opportunity to sort of get that feedback, which again is almost immediate by using Greenlight Covered. So I believe, and again, I've realized shameless plug again for Greenlight Covered, but just because we've used the tool ourselves, it can help inform that process as you're going through the evaluation, the notes, potential improvement. I'm just saying entirely for a screenwriting, Tara and who's on our team is a graduate of the AFI Screenwriting School. She was like, again, I can sing her praises, but like Kirk Douglas Fellow or something along those lines. And yeah, really an impressive background and is an active and very avid screenwriter. She loves telling stories, loves all that. Also helps us on our acquisition side of things. So it's a very useful tool. And many times we've started the process with the coverage and then it will spark conversation and then help the process of further developing for script to a point where you feel like, okay, I think we're close. I think we're in a good position and the filmmakers can feel better about going to the next step, right? Which would be the penny on the situation, fundraising, casting, whatever it is to sort of see the dream come to life. - I love that we're all working towards having all these tiny little dreams to come, big dreams that come to life. That's what we're doing here, making movies, chasing the dream. Well, thank you guys so much for joining. You can submit to the Green Light List up until September 10th. So do it if you're interested in having your film released in the world and getting some equity financing, which is amazing. Appreciate you both coming on and watch this space. - Not fully. Thank you so much. - Thank you so much, Jason. Thank you. (upbeat music)