Jason Orans on the set of GOODBYE SOLO near Blowing Rock, North Carolina Jason Orans’ films have a common theme that blinks at you from the screen: Human complexity. Maybe that is why it’s difficult to pull away from the characters that so resemble you or the guy sitting next to you. Whether the subject matter is love, friendship, or family, the honesty and sincerity of these relationships are there for you to explore. “Every single movie I’ve done is a character-driven story that is frequently set in multicultural communities and urban situations,” Orans admits during our conversation. A lover of incredibly well written scripts and an advocate of dialog over description, he tells us in detail what makes a screenplay “the one.” F.A. You’re one of the co-founders of Gigantic Pictures. Can you tell me about how you founded the company? J.O. Gigantic Pictures was founded by Brian Devine in the late 90’s. When Brian started his company, he brought me on to start “The Pictures” division. Gigantic has several different divisions, including a very-well respected music-recording studio, a record label—Gigantic studios—which is a post-production sound facility, and Gigantic Pictures, which is the film production side. In addition, Brian has started Gigantic Releasing, which is a boutique distribution company that has a new film out in theaters now called Must Read After My Death. All these divisions work really well together. For example at the music recording video, we often work with established bands whose songs can be heard in a lot of our films. In addition to that, several of our movies had scenes that naturally needed to be shot in a music-recording studio. So that worked out really well. A very important component of what Gigantic does is that they have Gigantic Digital (www.giganticdigital.com) where you watch movies the same day they open at theaters. F.A. When you read scripts or hear a movie pitch, what do you pay attention to? What makes you say, “I would like to go ahead produce this film”? J.O. When people, who are not represented by agents, write a query letter to a producer, they should understand a couple things right away. The note should never be longer than 4 lines long. You should be able to get the producer’s attention really quickly either with humor or with something impressive about you. If someone writes me a note and says, “I was a cop for 20 years. I know a ton of stories, and I love movies, so I thought I’d write a screenplay,” I would be pretty hooked. The next sentence should be very much like a basic description of what the screenplay would be without getting into the story in any way. And you can finish the note by saying, “If you’d like to know more and would like me to send you the script, please let me know.” There’s your three lines right there. The thing to do is to send the best thing you’re working on that also goes along the lines of what the producer has done before. I think it’s important to say something like, “I see that you’ve worked with this director and you’re interested in this kind of film, and I think my experience would interest you.” Often times, people will write something like, “I think you’d be interested in my script,” and then their logline is some 150 million dollar action film. Every single movie I’ve done is a low-budget, character-driven story that is frequently set in multicultural communities and urban situations. So I think the query letter is the most important thing in letting the producer know about how they are interesting as a writer and why the producer should be interested in their story. F.A. What about the script itself? J.O. It must be written incredibly well. It has to be something that can be reasonably done on a low budget. And these days, it has to be something that would attract some famous actors. That’s the only way the film can get financed. What young writers should know is that every single screenplay out there, with the exception of the ones written by Academy Award winning writers or Hollywood people who are huge, are going to be read by a “reader,” somebody who reads a lot of screenplays. The first thing that the reader is going to do is to make a quick assessment about the script, to decide whether he is going to be very serious about this script or whether it’s something he’s just going to skip. First, everybody’s going to look at the last page of the screenplay to see how long it is. If it’s more than 115 pages, then that’s your first strike right there. Then, they’re going to open up the first page and see whether the majority of the page consists of description or dialog. If there’s a lot of description, then that’s the second strike. Then, they’re going to skim through the script to see if there’s more dialog or more description. And if there’s a ton of description instead of dialog, that gets you the third strike. Any real professional screenwriter writes mainly dialog with as little description as possible to allow the story to be told. The rule is that you should never interrupt the dialog for any reason unless it’s something so important that the scene will not make any sense without it. If you hardly write any description and let dialog lead the way, then the reader will actually read that description, and you will at least have the opportunity to tell the story you want to tell. F.A. What sort of budget do you usually work with and where do you seek your financing from? J.O. The budgets I prefer to work with are usually under 3 million dollars. For financing, I’ve gone to a variety of places. My last film was completely private equity. Before that it was a combination of private equity and grants, and also a license fee from ITVS, which is a content provider for PBS. F.A. What are some advantages and disadvantages of producing independent films with low or mid-level budgets? J.O. These days are quite difficult times, because many of the low-budget films, even the best ones that premiere at a top film festival like Sundance, either don’t sell or get sold for very little money. The only way to prevent this from happening is to have quite big movie stars in the film. Even then, movies with more difficult subject matter won’t make their money back. It’s just a very very difficult time for independent film. But, it seems like things are changing in very radical ways. And It seems like people are talking about a new business model, where video on demand is a much more important component than theatrical release, which is pretty exciting. It means that people all over the country get to see the film, but I don’t know anyone who has made a significant amount of money this way. Hopefully, this will become popular enough to be able to finance films, because contrary to what people think it’s not really getting significantly less expensive to make a movie. In fact, in some ways, it’s more expensive than ever. I mean they have great cameras like “Red” that can cut down on some costs, but there is less crew to be able to work on a film, because the unions are making lower and lower thresholds. So even a 1 million dollar film would have to be done through a union, which would add money to the budget. It’s really tough because on one hand, it’s not cheaper to make a movie, on the other hand, people are paying significantly less for films and they’re buying significantly less films. F.A. What do you think of the new methods of distribution? You already mentioned video on demand. What about the internet? J.O. I think there has to be a hardware change with that. I’ve had Netflix on my computer for over a year, and I haven’t watched it once. I’m aware of Hulu… But I don’t want to watch Battlestar Galactica on my computer screen. I’m fairly computer savvy, and if I’m not watching streaming internet video, then I have to assume there is a large portion of the public that’s sort of like me. Also, as far as independent film goes, there is an absence with regards to the curatorial aspect of these films. I guess if one of the great film festivals like Sundance or SXSW were to be able to work with filmmakers to get their films online and make it easy for the viewer to go online, look through the festival catalog, and pay 3 bucks to watch a movie, it would seem like you might be able make some real money that way. But, they’re not doing that. Things are very traditional. The VOD deal will be through IFC or Magnolia. The internet aspect of things haven’t launched yet, and I am waiting to see like everybody else. Let’s hope that it comes and that there is some way for people who love independent films to also know what films to see. About the producer: Jason Orans is a film producer based in New York. He is nominated for the 2009 Spirit/Piaget Producers Award. His most recent production is DARE starring Emmy Rossum and Alan Cumming, which he produced in partnership with Mary Jane Skalski (THE VISITOR). DARE received its world premiere in the Dramatic Competition of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. Orans' other recent production is GOODBYE SOLO from writer-director Ramin Bahrani (MAN PUSH CART). GOODBYE SOLO had its world premiere at the 2008 Venice Film Festival where it won the FIPRSCI International Critics Prize. It will be released theatrically in March 2009 by Roadside Attractions. For more information on the producer, visit his Film Annex page at www.filmannex.com/JasonOrans Interview by Eren Gulfidan. Contact: www.filmannex.com/erengulfidan