No, not the Chevy Chase movies. Our family is taking our first vacation in three years (!) to visit grandparents and have fun! (Vineyard peeps, look me up this next week!)
It’s been fun doing daily updates at this blog since last August, but I’ll be taking a two-week break now. And when we get home the week of the 27th, I may not post everyday...as fun as this is, the well is starting to run dry.
I only have so many stories—but here’s one! Maybe 20 years ago I was getting out of a screening and saw somebody I thought I recognized. He looked like a music executive or record producer of some kind. This is him:
I thought, damn, I think I know that guy. I told my date, but then thought nothing of it.
But we saw him again in the parking lot. And I was like, okay, I’m pretty sure I know him, or we have some connection somehow—to heck with it!
So I went up to him, “Excuse me, I’m so sorry, but I think I know you. Are you in film music, or the music business...? I run a magazine about movie scores.”
And he was a little taken aback but said, “I’m Leonardo DiCaprio’s father.”
I said, “Sorry!!! Good night!”
He was super nice and I was genuinely embarrassed to have bothered him. Probably I had recognized him from having recently watched the E! True Hollywood Story on Leo.
There you go! The George DiCaprio story.
As a reminder, I recently compiled the “Best of the Blog” recently which has the most popular stories, opinions and random thoughts that I’ve shared. So you can read all about my weird, thrilling and sometimes embarrassing encounters with the all-time film composing greats.
Also, it remains the case that I have an open WeFunder.com campaign to raise money for FSM Studios, my own film and television production company.
Many thanks to the people who have made “investment reservations” thus far totaling, of this writing, almost $7K. Great, almost a million to go! (I am kidding.)
Tedious disclaimer time:
We are “testing the waters” to gauge investor interest in an offering under Regulation Crowdfunding. No money or other consideration is being solicited. If sent, it will not be accepted. No offer to buy securities will be accepted. No part of the purchase price will be received until a Form C is filed and only through Wefunder’s platform. Any indication of interest involves no obligation or commitment of any kind.
Somebody did ask a serious question: I said I wanted to get to $25K, but the WeFunder page lists $250K as a goal. What gives?
That’s because WeFunder is “backwards” from Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and the rest. There, you set a goal and hopefully you go over it—so your incentive is to set a low, realistic goal.
But WeFunder is not donations. It’s investment in a company that, if it is successful, makes money for the investors. It is SEC-regulated and approved (but because of that, has a ton of rules and paperwork).
For some reason, you list your MAXIMUM raise, even if you don’t get there. So that $250K is what I somewhat arbitrarily put in as a maximum.
That would be enough money for me to get rolling and attach talent to some projects and reach out inside the film business to financing partners.
The $25K I mentioned, on the other, is the absolute MINIMUM I need to get the next step: to get the WeFunder platform to take me seriously and engage to formalize the company. You start with your own “friends and family” network and then once you hit $25K, WeFunder will help you and, I think at $50K, introduce you to their site’s network of professional investors.
So that’s what I’m trying to do. And $25K is actually a realistic goal.
Important note: Investing in anything involves risk—and I only want people who are comfortable and able to be informed of the risks and absorb a loss in the case of that eventuality.
However, I will say, in all honesty, I am feeling good about my abilities as a filmmaker and a producer.
And I want to leave you all with a link to something I just wrote—a short film script for a producer who reached out to me based on the strength of my previous short.
I don’t want to spread this too far out there, but anybody who reads to the end of this column and would like to read something short and, I hope, cool...here’s the link.
Let me know what you think. I’m easy to find: Lukas@filmscoremonthly.com.
Thanks everybody and enjoy your June, I know I will!