The buzz starts long before you get to the Lowes Hotel on Ocean Avenue, where the AFM held their event from 4th to 11th November. It starts on the sidewalks as the delegates march with their attaches, bulging with flyers and budgets and business cards and DVDs and iPod screens and MP3 speakers and flash drives with enough bytes to have their 120 minute film stored and ready to go.
And the closer you get to Lowes, the louder the buzz gets, with grown up cheerleaders lining the entry, offering flyers and guest passes, filmmakers hunting for an audience for their screening that night and on the edge are the opportunists trying to entice the thousands who attend the internationally acclaimed American Film Market to attend their own event later that week.
And could the inside of Lowes live up to such anticipation? Absolutely. The delegates were wall to wall in the lobby, on the terrace, by the pool, on all eight floors and to get in an elevator you really had to be something of an intrepid traveler. As the sign next to the sliding doors said, ‘If you’re in a hurry, take the stairs’.
Every aspect of the filmmaking industry was covered. There were Buyers, Distributors, Producers, Producers’ Reps, Sales Agents, Post-production Houses, Writers, Cinematographers, Composers, Animators, Graphic Designers and even Wells Fargo Bank had a presence. Everyone there wanted something and all they had to do was keep talking until they found it. And that’s how the whole thing worked.
John Foster, president of the Odyssey Picture Corporation, is a high profile distributor who has been in the entertainment business for over 20 years. He believes the AFM is invaluable not just as a connection point but also to garner new knowledge about the ever changing revenue streams that is leaving some less savvy producers baffled. His take on this year’s event was that it was attended as well as ever but that the producers were being unrealistic with their prices. But he did add that the AFM is only the starting point and negotiations invariably last well into the ensuing months. After only a couple of days he was already confident that his trip from Texas would be worthwhile. So was everyone as satisfied as Mr Foster?
Deals made their way into the press within hours of the AFM opening and each day was heralded with news of new contracts being inked, while behind the scenes the click of new connections filled the grand lobby, with indie filmmakers finding new platforms, writers handing over their pages and music composers waxing lyrical, all watched with baited breath by the peripheral audience with their Final Cut Pro and Red Cameras fully charged and ready to go. Yes, everyone was as satisfied as Mr Foster and everyone, just everyone, is coming back next year.