 Welcome to Suncoast Spotlight. I'm your host, Jeannie Corcoran, and you're watching a show partnered with the Suncoast Technical College Digital Filmmaking Department and the Education Channel. Today's guest is producer H. Michael Hoyser, who is also the President and CEO of Storm Entertainment. Michael has been the executive producer of 90 films, and his company has arranged financing and distribution of over 160 films. And now, let's learn more. Welcome, Michael. Thank you very much. It's good to be here. Thank you for being with me. I know that you are probably tired of me asking you questions. I've made him my interview subject in numerous venues, and you're going to be a featured speaker for us, a VIP speaker at our annual Six Animix event. Thanks for the honor. Oh, it's great. And I don't know where to start with you because you've done so much. Michael has not only done everything I mentioned in the intro, but he is also a world traveler. He speaks five languages. More or less, yeah. More or less. And he has been with notable companies. He has started notable companies. And most of all, one of the reasons that we have you here is because you're recognized for extraordinary financing and distribution of a massive amount of movies, major movies. Yes, I have. Absolutely. And so diverse. Everything from Heidi, never-ending story, Pritzi's honor. I mean, it just goes, the list goes on and on. Do your dancing. Yes. Don't forget that one. Yes. And I am amazed at the diversity of the genres. Have there been any genres that you think pay better? I mean, you're very focused on ROI for investors. I am. ROI is critical, obviously, because you want to go back to the same investor over and over again. Ideally, the same bank, the same institutional equity player, hedge fund, et cetera. But there is no genre in particular that works better than others. It depends on the climate of the time. So it changes from year to year. So a great Western that might work in 2007 might not work in 2017. That's absolutely right. And you have to count ahead because your movie will be distributed and ready a year, year and a half, two years, three years down the road. So you have to think ahead. And sometimes you're off and sometimes... But you always pre-sell the rights to the movie in different territories and the United States. So you pretty much hedge your bets ahead of time. Right. We have a lot of independent filmmakers in Sarasota County and the whole Tampa Bay region. And they make a lot of short films. They make a lot of sizzles and trailers and things of that nature. What advice would you give them when they're creating and investing their own money, usually, to make a demo or to make a short? What would you tell them to have vision about where it's going to go eventually and what's the purpose of doing it? Well, the purpose of doing it, if you do it at all, if you can afford it because it's very expensive, is to basically to say that I have talent, number one, because a lot of people, unfortunately, don't and should be doing something else. But that's okay. But it could be within the same industry, but something else. And it's really a question of proving that you can do it, number one, and number two, that the market can bear it, that there are buyers. It's not a labor of love, which you can do if you're, you know... Independently wealthy? Independently wealthy, basically. Or if you have people that want to write off or whatever the case may be. But generally, it's really to create a market space and that you're able to do that and that you're active in the project itself as opposed to just, you know, one day being there and the rest of the time being elsewhere. So you have to invest yourself as well as... Absolutely. That's really important. And we have, we've seen probably almost 3,000 projects of some sort or another in the 10 years that our film commission's been on the ground in Sarasota County. And I have to tell you, of those 3,000 that we've seen and we've helped and we've talked to, they've run the gamut from no money whatsoever to, for the indie films, maybe two million dollars and under. We don't get big indie films that have 15 million, 20 million dollar budgets. But even the small indie films that have been $50,000, and I'm serious about that. Sure. It's remarkable that you can do that. And the average ones tend to be in that $100,000 to $250,000 range. The similarities are striking, no matter how little that indie budget is or how big that indie budget is. They all seem to face the same kind of problems, which are, first of all, getting it funded, finding the money. And then secondly, finding the outlet, getting it distributed. Well, it's a very hard, they're very hard parameters really to distribute a movie that costs, unless it's Blair, which project, which version? One of a kind. One of a kind in a long ladder of films. But it's really, they are usually layers of love, to be honest, because it's really hard to find distribution. And it's after the fact. Unless you're a moonlight, and moonlight was probably not sold beforehand. It was just some really independent people that could piece together a million and a half dollars, which is a lot regardless. And I'm sure the actors were not paid that much, and the director was not paid that much, and people were just not paid. It was more of a labor of love. In the hopes that it would. In the hopes that it would, and it did. And ironically, for those of you who have seen Moonlight, our Academy Award winner for best film, two Sarasotans contributed to the making of that. One was a Pineview graduate from Pineview High School. And then one of the producers was Elaine Schneiderman from Venice. And we're just so proud of him. That's so great. Good for you. Yeah, we'd love to see Oscar winners. It's a start. From our area. Absolutely. Now they just have to bring, you know, bring some projects back here. Bring them home. Good, good. Well, that's certainly my agenda. Yes, well, and we appreciate that. Well, I'm here. Absolutely. We'll talk in the second segment, we'll talk more about infrastructure and what's coming in Sarasota County and how you think that might affect television production as well as indie film production. But you do have an upcoming project you're working on right now with some amazing people. Before we go to break, tell me a little bit about that as a teaser, so everyone will stay with us. Well, it's a project that I'm going to produce together with Emma Thompson who needs so introduction. Fabulous woman. And George Pelicanos is a writer for Script TV. A lot of Spielberg work? Spielberg work as well. And he wrote The Wire and created The Wire, which is all over the place, or it was all over the place. And Tremé, which is now on Showtime, in addition to a lot of Spielberg work. Well, if they come to visit you in Sarasota, I want you to be sure that we get to meet them here. Absolutely, and they'll be sitting right here and they'll be another subject of your interviews. So that's what I'm doing. It's based on a true story, first-time director, so it's a little bit hard to raise the funding because people are really sophisticated, both domestically, which, and by the way, domestic, which means America and North America or Canada, only represents 20 or 25 percent of the total cost of a budget. So the rest of the money, 75 percent, let's say, comes from overseas, from China, from Japan, from, you know, from the UK, from Germany, from the top ten territories. Well, hold that thought and when we come back, we'll talk some more about distribution, as well as young struggling filmmakers of all ages, by young, I mean young in their careers, how they get to where they want to be. Stay with us, we'll be right back. You're watching Suncoe Spotlight and our guest today is H. Michael Hoyser. I'm just going to call him Michael. I don't think anybody from H. do this. Absolutely. No, not at all. Only the IRS does. And we're talking about many, many films and how they get financed and how they get distributed, which is the bottom line after all. If you can't get the money to make it, and then after you get the money, you can't get a distributor, why are you doing this? I'm very interested in, we touched briefly in passing on the Blair Witch, which was sort of a genre creator. It was new. It was very new. And that doesn't happen very often. And the great lie, I think, that is out there in the general public is, ooh, they made Blair Witch for $30,000 on their credit cards. But they didn't, Mirror Max or whoever bought it, they put a million dollars Yes, they did, but still. And a million dollars to better the movie. They hadn't make it better. Basically more commercial and editing and the music and sound, of course, production design, et cetera, which is all in the woods, of course. But there was a million dollars there and a million dollars in marketing and P&A, what they call P&A. That's right, exactly. I forget sometimes to associate the full name with exactly. Which is a whole different area of expertise, if you will. And that's what I'm trying to get into as well. We see a lot of indie films made for very little money. And a lot of times they'll use a Blair Witch or something like that as their justification for, I'm making this for $15,000 on this camera that I bought at Best Buy. I think everybody will. And then they're surprised when they can't even get Netflix because it doesn't have audio. It doesn't have proper dialogue you can't get. Not only that, but Netflix, for instance, is really making their own stuff right now. So they don't really need you or me anymore or locations or anything like that. They're making their own stuff and very well, too. Would you say, in fact, Cable and some of the OTTs, they are making some amazing quality series that rival the quality of... They certainly are. The question is how long can they do that because they're not generating a lot of income right now? But in the future, perhaps they will. Maybe the income will come from either the box rights. I see them sold as box. No, it'll be a combination of rights that they have to license, starting with theater, which is really important when you go to AMC's or Regals or whatever or independent theaters. We do, too. Everybody does, too. And that generates a certain amount of income. And then there's a whole plethora, if you will, of how to exploit that particular movie and Windows and all that kind of stuff. And that's really how you make your money. And then there's International, which is basically it's very sophisticated, the same structure, if you will, as the United States. Netflix, for instance, has a life elsewhere, not only the US. And now we're seeing the same model. What's succeeded with Netflix has now been picked up by Hulu and it's being picked up by Amazon and it's being picked up by Google. Google and Amazon in particular. And then every territory has their own, the equivalent of Netflix. So it's like Uber going into Paris, that they're really not allowed to go into there. So Netflix has the same issues and they're not doing as well as they would like to do. And they will, they will, because they're really smart people. I was very surprised. Netflix, I believe they partnered with Sony to make the TV series, Bloodline, Sissy Spacek. That's a wonderful series. Oh, and we had a great opportunity here in Sarasota County. They came, they scouted with us. They saw things they liked. But in the end, it was written for Key West. And even though Sarasota is fantastically beautiful and we have many assets, we just couldn't fake Key West entirely. There's a lot of old Florida here, though, which is really just beautiful stuff. And that's really attracted me to the area in particular. And they ended up, when they made Bloodlines, it ends up being a humongous hit, an artistically acclaimed favorite. And then, of course, the state of Florida pulls the plug on its incentive program where we have no more tax credits. And that was the way of all flesh. Now, we've lost, we've lost Bloodline. We've lost Bollars. Oh, is that right? And Bollars, in particular, which is filmed in Miami. Yeah. So you've lost them. I think they shot two seasons each, maybe three in Bloodline. And then, boom, they're gone because it's an incentives game. How does the incentives game affect what you do for financing? It affects quite a bit, actually, because for every dollar, you get X amount of rebase, if you will, like 20% or 25% or 30% and it creates a lot of jobs. And so if your budget is 20 million, basically you're going to get a budget of 30 million or on the screen, if you will. And that's pretty valuable. For a financier, number one, and for the country or the state, it's really, it's imperative. So I really don't understand why Florida is pulling or why they have, to be honest, because there's a lot of jobs that are being created, number one, and a lot of income is being spent here in hotels or bars or wherever the case may be. So I think with a different, perhaps a different administration, that'll change. We'll see. We'll see. Exactly. It's so interesting because there's, you know, there's a lot of dialogue about the states that surround Georgia, and Georgia's really the power hub right now for incentives. They're doing gangbusters. I mean, it's a multi-gallery. Well, they certainly are. Like, a lot of people are going to Louisiana and, you know, Michigan, for instance. Anyway, so hopefully Florida will be part of that list again. And it's very interesting to hear from the public at large who ask about incentives when we talk about it, because of course, there's always the conspiracy theories and, you know, where there's, where there's smoke, there's usually a little fire. Sure. But they talk about the people who donate to legislators who vote against incentives in the state. And when you trace that back to where the money comes from, always follow the money, they say, that some of the money coming into political campaigns and political donations is coming from outside states that want us to fail in certain industries. So they, they, so they can compete. So they, they take away our competitiveness, and they take it away through supporting elected officials that will. That's very interesting. I haven't, I haven't thought about that. Yeah. I hope it's not. But it's very political and it makes a lot of sense to. I hope it's not. Yeah, I do, too. But on the other hand, you know, it is politics and politics is never entirely logical. No, it's not. And when you, you know, cut a business off at the knees that is contributing tens of thousands of jobs. It takes time to recuperate. Absolutely. Kind of like stopping a train that's going uphill. Sure. Decide to restart it. It's going to take a long time just to get the momentum. Yeah. It's a good analogy. Absolutely good. Well, I think we're taking another break. This is going way too quickly. Stay with us. Yeah, it really is. Has electricity ever sparked your interest? If so, at STC, we have the perfect program for you. Let's take a look. We are training the electricians for this area for the future. What you can learn here is safety primarily when dealing with electricity, but also advanced wiring methods, also motor control circuits. This program is very interesting. It's, it'll help you in life because everyone wants electricity. So either if you're doing residential commercial, all these courses in one class was very demanding. It's very helpful in life in the long run. Be prepared to do some more advanced math than in some of the other trades, but nothing too daunting. I think that we have a lot of fun. We work with our hands a lot, so be prepared to do some physical work. But usually it's pretty enjoyable. A lot of stuff is outdoors and we spend a lot of time in the lab. The classes, it seems intimidating, but don't be intimidated. Just stay focused. And this is, this is something you really want to do in life. I'd just, if you work hard, you'll get through it. Nothing to be really afraid of because that's what I was intimidated when I first came in. So it's, but it's all good now. It's a great trade to learn not only for, for an actual job, but for owning a house or anything, even if you choose a path that's residential or commercial. There's maintenance you can go to, the paths that are very broad for this trade exactly. And I think it's a good trade to get into. Reporting from STC, I'm Courtney Callan and this is Suncoast News. Welcome back. You're watching Suncoast Spotlight and I'm your host Jeannie Corcoran. And thank you very much Suncoast Technical College and the Education Channel and the Digital Filmmaking Department here at the college. And we're talking to H. Michael Hoyser and he has insight, experience, and a squeaky table. And tell me a little bit, Michael, about how you see the future of financing and distributing. If it's changing, we've been talking about like Netflix models, and then there are new screens, small screens. People are watching things on their phone. They're watching things on their watch, watching things on gas pumps that now have screens. Yeah, I've noticed that as well. It's always a question of the cost of a movie is relatively consistent. So it's a question of finding how you recoup that specific amount of money, whether it's a million dollars or 100,000 or 10 million or 100 million. But it's always the same players, if you will. And it's just a question of how do you recoup 10 million plus an ROI, which is never guaranteed. But so how do you do that? And if there's more ways or more platforms that you have access to, all the better. As long as the other ones don't go away. And we talked yesterday in an offline conversation about where people get money. And you had some interesting insight about not getting it from friends and family and loved ones. Don't go to grandma. Don't go to cousin Bertha. Absolutely. Not unless you can afford it. And frankly, it'll affect your relationship with people. And so you use banks, you use hedge funds, you use institutional equity, but you always want to go back to those same players, if you will. You want to make the money, as opposed to hit and run, because after a while, you're going to not be able to do that. The well will run dry with those. And those who love you won't love you anymore. That's right. They always love you when you're making money. That's right. I remember back some years ago, Robert Townsend was making films on his credit cards. And indie filmmakers were all about, let's just grab a credit card, a couple credit cards that have 10,000, 20,000-hour credit lines, and let's just go do it. Yeah. And then what? Then what, exactly. And it's a question of really selling the movie beforehand, so the ability to sell it and to market it beforehand, or while you're doing it. And that's oftentimes what happens overseas, if you will, because overseas, again, represents 75% of your income, whereas the US represents the difference, the balance. And it's a question of selling your movie and convincing people that this movie is going to make money for them and for you, obviously, but you're secondary for them. And do you look for a formula when someone brings you a movie and they want you to get behind it and help with finance and distribution? Does it have to have X, Y, and Z? Like it has to have a recognizable celebrity. It has to have a recognizable director. Or what, are there some key components that you look for before you get involved? No, you really don't. But it's really important that they do have those elements, if you will. But you can't insist upon them or that. And you take every project as a stance, and it really starts with the director and the story, to be honest. Oh good. So you do look at the art and you look at the core of the content. Very much so. Because to make it interesting. Right. And again, I'm not in the budget business, even though I've been at it for a long time. But every project is very special, and you think that every project is going to make money. And you hope you find a midnight. Yeah, and then every once in a while, there's a movie that breaks out for you, absolutely. We have a friend of the film office, and she's come down to speak at the event that you'll be speaking at. Six in a Mix, and her name is Celine Rattray. And she is partners with Trudy Styler in a women's film company up in New York City. Wonderful. And they do projects of the heart. They find things that just appeal to them as human beings. And that's kind of their motivation. They're always looking for that, like you're saying, that special script, that special story that strikes a chord. Whether it's comedic or dramatic. You're absolutely right, but everybody's competing for the same piece of the pie, so it's very difficult sometimes. But Trudy will have a reputation, so people will send a project to her first, let's say. Yeah, because they've won Academy Awards now with Steel Alice, and the kids are all right. And this kind of project goes to them. Basically, if they like it, and then after that, it goes to a number of other players. So you strive to get that first strike position. Exactly. You want that first draft pick. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You're very fortunate. But that also affects the income as well. Do you see yourself leaning more towards the possibility of TV movies made for television films, or limited-run series where it's like six episodes? Well, it's not really my forte, to be honest. And I think that you need a full career to really benefit from that. Whereas what I do is feature films, and then they translate into every other medium out there. But they start with feature films, and they start with the theaters, ideally. If you can achieve that, then you're well on your way. And you said there's one genre, generally, that you're not really interested in. And that's horror. And there's a lot of people that are better than I am, and they love it, and they can do better than I can. And frankly, if I'm in a dark theater, and I'm looking at horror, my eyes are closed 90% of the time. That's me, too. And there are people that really thrive on that. But I don't. I'm not one of them. I saw John Wick 2 recently on Valentine's Day, ladies. On Valentine's Day, my husband took me to see John Wick 2. Well, apparently it's really good, too. It was awesome. It was very, very violent. But after a while, there was so much violence. And it was, shoot this one, shoot that one, shoot under here, over here, under the arm, over here, flip them over your back, shoot them in the head. It felt like a video game. Interesting. By the end of the movie, I was thinking, gosh, this is going to make a heck of a video game. It doesn't want to. Yeah, well, it probably has already. Yeah. Yeah. But again, that kind of movie I can do, it's the horror, the slasher, monster. The blood coming out of you. Yeah, coming out of behind the door, that kind of things. You know, I just, I prefer not to do that. Well, good. I'm glad. There's enough of that out there that we need people who are doing other things. And there are some people that are really, really good at it. And that's all they do, and good for them. Well, and I'm not sure, but I think we're going to be wrapping it up here very soon. And I want to thank you so much for being with us. You are, as always, terrific. You're so knowledgeable. I could ask you questions all day long until you wanted to, you know, run screaming from the room. Well, it's a real honor for me, to be honest, you know, and to move really to Sarasota from Los Angeles and spend a lot of time here really means something to me in particular. And the last thing I want to close with is Ringling College and Semcorre Productions out of New York. They're building a 40,000 square foot soundstage studio facility. And that kind of infrastructure, they're particularly looking to attract television, but also indie film and so forth. As a financier, distributor, producer, how attractive do you see that kind of infrastructure being added to the area? I think it's got to be complemented with what the state can offer. So we need to get the state back on track? I think so. I mean... Do you hear that, Tallahassee? We need to get the state back on track. Absolutely. I would think so, that that makes a lot more sense than just having somebody come and, you know, why here as opposed to, especially if it's a set design or a studio, you know, why here as opposed to North Carolina or, you know, Louisiana or... Or universal in Orlando. Or, you know, Romania for that matter, you know. Okay, that's food for thought. And that's going to wrap us up. We're all done and thank you for watching Suncoast Spotlight. Tune in next time. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much. My pleasure.