Grant Bradley of Limelight International attended TIFF, in Toronto 8-12 September 2011

I found TIFF to be less valuable this year than previous years.  I did not attend in 2010 and the layout had changed from the former centre at Sutton Place, to the new Lighthouse centre and the Hilton Hotel.  As I had a lot of my time prep-scheduled there was little time to “explore” and I did not see a lot of company offices.  I understand they were there … but even now I don’t know where they were.  The large display areas had some value for identifying government agencies and bodies, but overall there seemed to be a lack of distributor/sales agent offices.  In 2012, I am more likely to plan only 3 days at TIFF, with a couple of days in New York, Vancouver, and Los Angeles.

Market Trends

The market generally seems to be picking up and you encounter less doom and gloom from the sales agents.  The gap between low budget and medium budget movies seems to be widening with prices for low budget films getting lower all the time.  Whereas a $3m mainstream thriller might have obtained minimum sales estimates of $1.5m 5 years ago, is now getting estimates of less than $1m.  This is pushing more people to look at larger budget films starting at $8 - $10m with significant names attached.  That presents a different set of challenges because a larger budget film with a $2m lead and $500k second lead means that below the line production is probably only $3 – $3.5m by the time you factor in financing costs, and the temptation is to raise the budget to $12m, but that then becomes harder to finance.   Nothing new in some ways … that has always been the challenge for producers … making the pieces fit.  “Names” continue to drive the business more than ever.  There is very little interest in drama.  Television continues to underpin financing.

Benefits

The trip overall was beneficial … a relationship with Odyssey in Canada was forged which may bring multiple projects to Australia.  Deception was moved forward and will likely proceed.  I made progress on Bad Karma refinancing, and established several new contacts.