Talkback: Selling films to the world from scratch

In 1980 Lindsay Shelton took New Zealand movies to the Cannes Film Festival for the first time. In his book, he recounts pioneering the marketing of Kiwi films.

To keep costs down, our office apartment was three blocks back from the beachfront Croisette where, we belatedly discovered, most of the buyers and sellers were to be found.

There were other problems with our frugal venue. The entrance was on one street while the balcony faced a different one. We missed out on buyers who couldn't cope with looking up at us without being able to find our front door.

But nothing really worried us as we handed out our brochures and screening schedules, put them in piles in the main hotels, delivered them (in personally addressed envelopes with hand-written letters) to hotel rooms, and copied other penurious film-sellers by placing them under wipers on parked cars, where we hoped they would create no-cost visibility on the streets.

Most of all we talked. Every time we met new people we told them that New Zealand films had arrived. There were endless numbers of people to hear our message. It seemed to be the first time any of them had heard of New Zealand.

It would take four years to get a New Zealand film selected for the competition, but in the market we got instant results. Audiences came to our screenings in search of something new. Among them were distributors who enjoyed Goodbye Pork Pie and wanted to buy it. They wanted to sign contracts.

I didn't have any knowledge of this subject, but I had met a Paris-based sales agent, Jeannine Seawell, who had made her name introducing Australian films to Europe. I asked for a favour: Would she show me one of her contracts and explain it to me?

Jeannine, who would remain a generous friend of New Zealand cinema all her life, gave me a copy of a standard international film sales contract. There were many items to be negotiated, including percentage shares of revenue (which varied between theatrical, video and television income), what deductions would be allowed to cover expenses and costs, and what obligations had to be accepted by distributors, who always promised to use their best efforts to promote and release a film.

Best of all was the need to negotiate an advance, and how it would be paid. I used Jeannine's contract to write the first sale for Goodbye Pork Pie, to a buyer from the Middle East who didn't speak English. We negotiated through his son, who translated. The experience caused Nigel and me some nervousness, especially when the contract was signed and the buyer handed over a cheque for the deposit, which we had to carry home. Did he know what he had signed? Would his cheque bounce?

We ended Cannes with six signed contracts: They were for 20 countries which would release Goodbye Pork Pie. The film had created a "buzz" in the marketplace, something everyone wanted for their films but few achieved. And the cheque from the Middle East didn't bounce.

Within a year Goodbye Pork Pie had been sold to more than 30 countries. The film was within sight of becoming profitable.

* Extract from The Selling of New Zealand Movies by Lindsay Shelton, released yesterday.