Dien Rice
March 20, 2018, 01:31 PM
How one business opportunity (even a failed one), can lead to another...
Back in 2015, I teamed up with a friend of mine, to try to do a fun business...
We wanted to run a commercial movie night.
I'd never done anything like this before, but my friend, John, had... We were both fans of Chinese movies... (I'd been watching "kung fu" movies since I was young, due to some cousins who had a VCR - really new at the time - and I'd sometimes go watch kung fu movies at their house.) John doesn't have a drop of Chinese or Asian blood in him, but he was a "super-fan", and had even written the occasional article related to Chinese film for one of the local metropolitan newspapers (The Age)...
John had also run a regular major movie night, so he knew the background and had the contacts. He knew what we needed to do to get the rights to run the movie, and all the background details...
I found a venue. I was working in a co-working space at the time, which had the ability to "convert" itself into a place you could show films, after hours! They had done the occasional commercial film night before...
We struck a deal with the co-working space , where we'd split the takings. This was great for us, since they were taking part in the risk (rather than us having to pay a fixed fee)...
However, we still had to do a deal for the rights to screen the film! Luckily, one of John's friends (I'll call him "C") was the guy who negotiated Asian film rights for a local film distribution company... And John was of the view that the film we wanted to show ("Ip Man" - a great martial arts movie, about the teacher of Bruce Lee), was distributed by them...
In order to discuss this, John organised us to have dinner with his friend. I'd like to say this was a Hollywood wining and dining, in some plush location - but in reality we met up at a mid-scale downtown Chinese restaurant...
(To be continued...)
- Dien
Back in 2015, I teamed up with a friend of mine, to try to do a fun business...
We wanted to run a commercial movie night.
I'd never done anything like this before, but my friend, John, had... We were both fans of Chinese movies... (I'd been watching "kung fu" movies since I was young, due to some cousins who had a VCR - really new at the time - and I'd sometimes go watch kung fu movies at their house.) John doesn't have a drop of Chinese or Asian blood in him, but he was a "super-fan", and had even written the occasional article related to Chinese film for one of the local metropolitan newspapers (The Age)...
John had also run a regular major movie night, so he knew the background and had the contacts. He knew what we needed to do to get the rights to run the movie, and all the background details...
I found a venue. I was working in a co-working space at the time, which had the ability to "convert" itself into a place you could show films, after hours! They had done the occasional commercial film night before...
We struck a deal with the co-working space , where we'd split the takings. This was great for us, since they were taking part in the risk (rather than us having to pay a fixed fee)...
However, we still had to do a deal for the rights to screen the film! Luckily, one of John's friends (I'll call him "C") was the guy who negotiated Asian film rights for a local film distribution company... And John was of the view that the film we wanted to show ("Ip Man" - a great martial arts movie, about the teacher of Bruce Lee), was distributed by them...
In order to discuss this, John organised us to have dinner with his friend. I'd like to say this was a Hollywood wining and dining, in some plush location - but in reality we met up at a mid-scale downtown Chinese restaurant...
(To be continued...)
- Dien
