First Person
Hollywood guru Dov Simens, 63, claims to be able to teach people in two days how to make a feature film. Graduates of his movie- making crash course, which comes to Hong Kong this weekend, include director Quentin Tarantino, Spike Lee and Will Smith
I didn't realise Quentin Tarantino had been in my class until two years later when I was moderator on a panel at the Toronto Film Festival. To the left of me was a first-time film-maker, and I had no idea who he was. It was Quentin Tarantino and his movie Reservoir Dogs was premiering at the festival. He turned to me and went 'Yo, Dov, Dov. I don't know if you know me. I was in your class and what you told me to do, I really went out and did it.' As far as I was concerned, he'd just been one of 300 people in my class.
My last big success was the guys who did the Saw franchise. They were all in my class a few years ago when I was in Melbourne. People who have taken my class have gone on to make movies that have grossed over US$6 billion.
What I teach is that it's a business. I teach people how to make a US$1 million feature film for US$200,000 cash. I teach them how to get a 90-minute screenplay, how to keep it simple, how to schedule it and budget it, how to get two names in the film that are marketable, and how to come up with a marketable concept.
I can't teach talent. Everyone in the class is a mature adult. What I teach is the nuts and bolts of how to make your own, low-budget feature film. I demystify this mysterious business so that people don't feel intimidated by it and don't need four years of film school and six years of working in TVB before convincing somebody that they can do it.
The situation in Hong Kong is wonderful for entrepreneurs. I know that Hong Kong feature film production has gone down from about 200 films a year to 50 feature films a year today. I think that is a wonderful entrepreneurial void for someone, especially since filmmaking is so cheap today because of digital cameras.
I'm not in Hong Kong to teach people how to compete with Hollywood. First off, you've got a sleeping giant across the border called mainland China which is getting bigger and bigger. They've got theatres and iPods and iTunes there, so they can't control censorship as much any more. They are going to open up the theatres and they're going to open up more and more to Hong Kong.
The reason for the decline in the Hong Kong film industry is DVD piracy. It's absolutely the single biggest factor. DVD sell-through revenue and DVD rental revenue are approximately 60 per cent of the profits for a feature film. Piracy kills the profit potential. It's up to the government to sort it out.
What I encourage people to do is just to tell a nice story. Here's an example. There's a Hong Kong family and the father has had this little cart on the other side of Nathan Road for 40 years selling stuff and making a living. With all the new construction, his sons want him to go into the hotel complex across the street.
The father says, 'Why? Life has been good.' Finally the boys persuade the father to sell his cart and do the big restaurant with the boys. The restaurant goes broke and the two boys are sibling rivals. Then, in the end, the boys find out the father's cart was good, it works and makes money, let's go back and it ends with the cart again.
Or there's the romantic comedy. There's a Hong Kong girl, 24. She wants everything and is successful, but no man and so she joins a dating club and you know who the blind date is? Her father, who divorced her mother and is in the same situation. That's in the first two minutes. They spend the rest of the movie trying to get the other fixed up with the right person.
From my little class of 150 people this weekend, there will be six to eight feature films made, more than all the graduates from all the four-year film school courses in the region put together. They won't be Infernal Affairs. They will be independent films that start careers as writers and directors - and they will be made in the next year.
