awjoe wrote:What's the cost of real talent?
Session musicians start at around £100 an hour. Actors a bit less. Plus costs of course, so if you find just the right face for a role and you get an online audition and it all looks peachy, you still have to fly that actor to the studios and put them up. The same applies to musicians.
If you are a headline stadium act then you must find at least $8k a week per musician for touring, plus a good hotel room and full board. But then you are getting between $5m and $10m for a gig.
blinddrew wrote:Well, a big name actor or actress will cost you several million dollars for their time. That's your dollar cost. You hope that their name on the poster will pay for itself in terms of getting people to turn up and you hope that their talent will ensure a good set of reviews to enable you to make your next movie.
If you want the proverbial 'all star cast' then you multiply that budget many times.
Something like that! It all starts with the script. If you have a killer script (or a killer franchise) in your back pocket and that script has a main protagonist that is a strong yet quirky role such as 'The Equalizer' or 'Die Hard' or Riggs in 'Lethal Weapon' you may get your 500lb gorilla to attach themselves to a project for what is known as 'points on gross' (% of box-office). Very often, it is the 500lb gorilla that is fronting the money and has put the project together.
But you only ever know that a film can actually go ahead when the camera starts rolling and the money is secured with your accountants (or Barclays Film Finance on a sale-and-lease-back deal) - and even then, things can happen!
Getting that star performer is what moves the project forward and shakes the money out of the trees. The first question any backers/investors/studios/distributors ask is "Who's in this turkey?"
If the answer is Mrs Millie Tooley of 17, Oil Drum Lane, Sidcup, you get shown the door. If the answer is Brad Pitt, you get to hear "Please, come in! Sit down! Let's talk!"
Music, film and the arts in general - names open doors. Sam Mendes makes a film and $100m is no problem whatsoever - the angels line-up, waving their chequebooks and the product placement agencies get the Audis and BMWs and Sonys and Apples of this world to front the costs in advance.
You or I make a film - it had better be cheap!
I once mixed a live tour of a big-name UK band that had several number ones to their credit. The venues were packed but the playing was truly third-rate. It transpired that not one real member of the band was in the band. The band leader loaned the name of the band to his cousin for a percentage of the take.
But the name was good enough to get the punters in!