Short Summary of the Q&A with Markus Markou of Papadopoulus and Sons

Since my previous work  was really long I decided to upload a simpler post.
These are the top five things that I learnt in our session with the director of Papadopoulos and Sons.

• Pre-production- He had a line producer, Sarah Butler who wrote out the budgets into each department by realising the script. He told us that this film was modern fairy-tale thus the story being relatable to most people in the world who have families. 

• Production- There are around 100 people in the crew of the sets. Jobs include director, assistant directors, cast, producers, runners, electricians and other professions. The technical crew have fixed pay rates whether they are working for a big studio production or an independant low budget production while the rates for actors and locations tend to be negotiated.

• Industry- Since Markus Markou self distributed the film, he financed it using his other company. He lent a company loan from his internet business to his Double M Film distribution company. He used the facility of festivals to find a suitable deal for his film.

• Marketing- He tried to target the possible audiences by finding places that their culture is associated with e.g. Greek Churches. This was free and was a personal approach. The personal approach can also be seen in the facebook and twitter campaign and it is tailored marketing.

• Exhibition- His film wasn't expected to gross high numbers at the box office so he was originally given a 100 seat screen at Shaftesbury avenue. As bookings increased this was upgraded to the 500 seat screen. It also released in Greece and did really well in Germany.

I gathered a lot of knowledge from the director's visit and found it really useful for the case study.