Scott Ferguson almost missed his calling as an award-winning producer. He began his adolescent career as an engineering student at Cornell. Self admittedly, he said “that lasted about a week.” He ventured into the theatre department and although it wasn’t a career path that he ever intended to embark on, somehow he fell in love with a 16-millimeter filmmaking class and soon after, pursued a graduate degree at Columbia University.

Today, Ferguson is an award-winning producer, receiving an Emmy recently for the exceptional HBO television movie The Normal Heart and other credits including co-producing Brokeback Mountain, producing HBO’s Temple Grandin and You Don’t Know Jack.

Producing in Hollywood can amount to many definitions, but as Ferguson says, “My role is to take the money that my producing partners raise or convince the studio to invest and help them and the director make the best movie we can for the money we get.” And he certainly accomplishes his goals as a multi-Emmy Award winner.

Ferguson is currently involved in an HBO miniseries with John Turturro who replaced Robert De Niro, who replaced the deceased James Gandolfini. Luckily for Ferguson, he has had an incredibly strong relationship with HBO for the past few years and it has proved to be a phenomenal home for this outstanding and almost magical producer. After all, it was HBO who connected Ferguson with the remarkably talented Ryan Murphy who directed The Normal Heart, which starred Ferguson’s friend Mark Ruffalo and Julia Roberts.

Although, Ferguson’s entry into film production may have been accidental, it is incredibly wonderful that he did, producing powerful pieces that reach deeply into the lives of viewers and extracts the activism needed to promote education, equality, justice and healing.

Author: Brendan Davis, Instructor, Producing Department, New York Film Academy; Co-Founder, Kilin International

There is an old joke that goes something like this: “How do you make a million dollars in the film business? Okay: first, start with 10 million dollars….”

While the humor is hopefully obvious, the fundamental truth of the joke is that especially in the entertainment business, it takes money to make money. In recent years, one of the most promising directions for cash-squeezed Western producers to try and find that money has been from the exponentially-expanding market of China. Likewise, many top Chinese entertainment companies, producers, and executives have been working to extend their international influence by increasing their investments in Hollywood.

However, anyone in the West who looks at China as simply a source of equity without considering the bigger picture is doomed to failure, just as a Chinese producer—no matter how successful he or she is back home—who doesn’t understand the realities of working in Hollywood will find the process very frustrating if not impossible. Fortunately, though, there are various ways that international producers can productively work with China, including joint ventures, assisted productions, and international co-productions, which is what I will talk about here.

In film, a co-production is any project that has two or more partners agreeing to cooperate with each other to share the burdens of producing a movie. An international co-production is simply one in which the partners are based in different countries. And there is one other definition that is important to understand, which is the difference between an “official” versus an “unofficial” co-production; more about that in a minute.

First, a little background. Despite the eagerness of both sides to work together, due to the enormous cultural and market differences between China and the US the difficulty of the primary challenge of all business—to find common ground in order to make a deal that works for all parties—is increased exponentially. Overcoming this is much easier said than done, but it CAN be done. Since forming a China-focused production and consulting company with my Beijing-based partner in 2013, we have developed an active slate of projects that all have some relationship to the Chinese market.

Within the last year, we produced thirteen special episodes of a popular Chinese TV show here in Los Angeles. In the last ten months I’ve made three trips to China, and spent a total of two and a half months living and working there. This week I attended the US-China Film and TV International Expo at the L.A. Convention Center, where the key themes were “patience” and “perseverance”—and correctly so. I was also honored to speak on a panel called “The Evolution of Filmmaking in China,” so this is a topic near and dear to my heart. Despite this small track record, though, I know that my own knowledge of China just barely scratches the surface. I can verify, however, that acquiring familiarity with and knowledge of the country, the people, and the market—or working closely with someone who already has it—as well as having trusted partners on the ground, who speak the language and understand the social and business cultures, is an essential starting point for anyone hoping to successfully do business there as a Westerner.

Since this article can only serve as an introduction to the very complex US-China co-production topic, I will focus on what I think are some of the most fundamental things to consider as you begin or continue your own research.

To start, let’s get back to that distinction of “official” versus “unofficial” co-production, and talk about why that is so important. An “official” co-production is one that is being co-produced by production companies located in countries that have negotiated and signed an official co-production treaty between them. “Unofficial” co-productions are projects created between companies in countries that do NOT already have a relevant treaty in place.

International co-production treaties define mutually agreed-upon conditions and procedures for creating productions that share resources between the countries involved, providing an outline of the rights and responsibilities of each party in the process. This helps to standardize how productions can be jointly developed, financed, produced, and then distributed in each territory, while complying with the laws of both countries. On a practical level, co-production treaties help the cooperating companies/countries to work together more efficiently, with less risk of misunderstanding, which saves time and money. This encourages more co-productions to be created, which is ultimately the reason treaties of any kind exist: to facilitate agreement, which increases trade.

Unlike an official co-production produced under the terms of a recognized treaty, an unofficial co-production agreement has to be created from scratch. This can complicate the process and increase costs and risk. Issues like identifying import/export restrictions related to moving money, production equipment, and/or key personnel (writers, directors, stars, producers) across borders of two non-treaty countries have to be figured out on a case by case basis by the production teams and their lawyers. Finding that common ground I mentioned between the laws and trade regulations of two countries who have not officially agreed to cooperate on such matters can cost significant amounts of time and money, which can break a deal.

It may surprise you to learn that the US has no official co-production treaties in place, with China or any other country. The reasons why would require another article, but by definition, any US co-production is technically “unofficial.” This is not meant to imply that unofficial co-productions are bad; it just means that co-productions that are created without an internationally recognized treaty in place to guide and protect the parties involved makes them riskier than official co-productions if disputes arise.

China, on the other hand, has negotiated and signed filmmaking co-production treaties with many countries. This reflects an increasing interest in extending Chinese cultural awareness internationally, via so-called “soft power” initiatives, which is a stated top priority for China’s leadership. China’s President Xi has spoken extensively about the importance of people in China developing a “Chinese Dream,” which has been summarized as promoting respect for Chinese cultural history and traditions while looking towards their own place in an evolving future. Accordingly, Chinese co-productions are encouraged by the government not only to increase trade, but also to facilitate a greater understanding of and appreciation for Chinese culture around the world.

Of course, in spite of the increasingly connected world we live in, there are still very real cultural differences that affect what we watch and how we want to watch it. For a growing number of people in the US, the abundance of affordable big-screen TVs and high-speed Internet connections have made watching content at home a more attractive alternative than going out to a theater to watch a movie. In China, though, although there is also a huge market for watching content at home, and the technical means to do, the opposite is true….

Thanks to a rapidly expanding middle class, the theatrical movie-going experience in China is increasing at a phenomenal rate. New theater screens are being built in China at a rate of around ten per day, Chinese box office revenues are currently #2 only to the US, and are projected to become #1 by the year 2020. In terms of money, the revenue from theatrical distribution now accounts for about 90% of the total profit of movies in China; the remainder comes mostly from television sales. Unfortunately, due to piracy and other factors, home video and online markets contribute very little to the financial success of a film project, so in the Chinese market, theatrical success is the make-or-break goal.

An additional challenge is that before a film can screen in theaters, a film must obtain two clearances. The first is a permit from the censorship authorities. This is an approval from China’s ratings board which certifies that a film’s content isn’t offensive according to local standards. The second is an actual distribution license. The rationale behind the distribution license is to help protect the business prospects of local Chinese films by maintaining a certain level of Chinese cultural focus in their market, and this is where the true value of creating an official Chinese co-production becomes clear….

Unlike local Chinese productions, whose release potential is technically unrestricted, theatrical distribution licenses for foreign films in China are currently limited to a total of just 34 per year. This means that a small indie film vying for a foreign distribution license in China is competing against Hollywood studio films with huge marketing budgets and influence.

On the other hand, projects that can obtain official co-production status by being shot under a treaty, such as the one between China and India which was just announced, are particularly attractive to Chinese companies and investors, for this reason: once a project has been certificated as an official co-production, then it is considered to be a “local” film in BOTH markets. And since “local” films are NOT subject to the licensing restrictions placed on “imported” films, they can therefore be assured that as long as they can clear any censorship hurdles, they are allowed to be theatrically distributed in China, which is understandably a key requirement for film investors in that market.

I want to end with one last note of caution, and encouragement. Finding commonalty between US and Chinese business practices and cultural differences is more of an art than a science; if you attempt this you will find that translating the languages is the easy part. And for producers whose business model requires a clear-cut, straightforward roadmap for success, developing Chinese co-productions is not going to be a very comfortable process for you. But if you have a strong interest in learning about and building connections as well as business between cultures, and you want to be part of this particular version of the future, then it can be incredibly rewarding, and—like filmmaking in general—well worth the effort. Good luck.

Want to learn more about new opportunities available to enterprising producers? Click here to learn more about New York Film Academy’s Producing Conservatory Program. 

Twenty years ago today Friends debuted with a pilot that might as well have been called “The One Where that Show Became the Biggest Thing on the Planet.” It’s crazy to think that it’s been two decades since Rachel first moved in with Monica, and a lot has happened since. The TV landscape that Friends was born into was a very different place from the one we live in now.

Sitcoms were still almost exclusive to the broadcast networks—the Big Three and FOX, which was just graduating from experimental outlier to mainstream juggernaut. Sitcoms themselves were barely recognizable from the form they take today. For half-hour comedies (and really, all media), 1994 was the calm before the storm, a gray area where old met new and when everything was about to change. And it was Friends that sat right in that gray space, on a leather couch with an oversized cup of Central Perk coffee.

Sitting on that precipice of twenty-first century entertainment, Friends represented both the old and the new. It was old in that on its surface it seemed like every other sitcom that graced the airwaves for thirty years previous—multi-camera and backed by a small-screen Greek chorus: the studio audience. Though it wasn’t just another brick in the wall—it was the top of the heap, occupying the same throne once ruled by Cheers and I Love Lucy. It was one of the last Nielsen megahits, before Internet and smartphones and digital cable divided ratings into smaller and smaller pieces of the pie, a water cooler show when everybody at the water cooler still actually watched the same show.

But Friends was also something new, something different a generation that had grown up on sitcoms hadn’t seen before. Friends introduced the modern hangout comedy. Now, hangout comedy is a loose term, a subgenre of sitcoms. Since the dawn of television, almost any sitcom to date can be classified in one of three categories: family comedy, workplace comedy, or friends comedy. Go ahead, try to think of a show that doesn’t fall into at least one of those three genres. Can’t do it, right? Obviously Friends belongs in the latter category, but it also introduced something more specific, something generational.

Unlike Cheers (which was more friends than workplace) or The Golden Girls, Friends allowed viewers to watch a bunch of goodlooking twentysomethings literally hang out (and one got the feeling that the screenwriters were doing the same). Just chill. Shoot the shit while sitting in a café, bouncing snappy sarcastic one-liners off and occasionally having sex with one another. Even more revolutionary, while previous sitcoms had you sit and watch these characters, Friends made it feel like you were there in the coffee shop hanging out with them, something a show could only get away with once enough of the key demographic had actually grown up with TV. It was the next logical step for the entire medium, and it was Ross, Rachel, Chandler, Monica, Phoebe and Joey that took that step.

Obviously it worked, because the show became such a phenomenon. Like any hit show, every network tried to replicate its success by directly copying the idea with new pilots. Friends suddenly occupied the same TV listings as shows like The Single Guy and Caroline in the City, both of which might as well have been titled Other Friends. Most of these shows fizzled as these attempts to recapture lightning in a bottle tend to, but the hangout comedy did become its own tried and true subgenre, finding another hit a few years later in Will & Grace and existing today in the recently departed but critically adored Happy Endings and the very much alive New Girl, among others. But while shockwaves of Friends’ explosive debut still ripple throughout the TV-sphere, twenty years is a long time. Sitcoms today are different in many ways, catering to people who grew up watching TV and made for people who grew up watching TV. Today, half-hour comedies are edgier, more meta, sometimes not even a half-hour. And most of them, unlike Friends or its contemporaries, are single-camera.

Come back tomorrow to read the second part in this series charting the evolution of the sitcom.