Choosing The Right Film Concept (And Why Most Filmmakers Get It Wrong)

So many indie filmmakers begin their journey with a passion project—or a story they’ve always wanted to tell. But if you want your film to reach an audience and have commercial success, you need to start somewhere else.

In this episode of Indie Filmmaking: Truth & Reality, Jeff Deverett makes the case for starting with your audience, not your script. Before you write a single page, he challenges you to ask: Who will this movie be for? Can I reach them? And will they actually want to pay to watch it?

Jeff shares practical frameworks, like the “100-seat challenge,” and a real-world case study from his own film Full Out, to show how identifying a clear audience first can help you build a film concept that’s not only creatively satisfying—but also commercially viable.

This episode is about strategy, not sacrifice. It’s about building a career, not just chasing a dream.


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🧠 Topics Covered

00:00 The most overlooked secret to film success
 01:07 Why you must identify your audience before writing a script
 03:00 Financial success is tied to knowing who will pay to watch your movie
 04:00 Don’t just make a movie—create a product people want
 05:00 A coffee shop analogy: why product isn't everything
 08:00 Jeff’s “100-seat challenge” to help define your audience
 10:00 The danger of targeting the “everybody audience”
 12:00 The difference between distribution and marketing
 14:00 Why “figuring out the audience later” never works
 15:00 How to partner with the right marketing minds
 17:00 The myth of the autobiographical indie hit
 20:00 Case Study: Full Out and targeting the Olympic gymnastics crowd
 24:00 Building marketing into your concept from the start
 26:00 Success without compromise: making art and making money
 28:00 Final thought: Start with the audience. Build from there.
⭐️ Want help developing a concept that sells?

 📧 Reach out directly to Jeff: [e-mail]

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You want to be super successful in making a movie,
You've got to choose the right concept. You've got to
think about who your audience is going to be, how
you're going to be able to create awareness with them,
i e. Market to them, And you've got to do
this before you make your movie. Know who your audience
is before you make your movie, and that will give
you a much better chance at connecting with that audience

(00:22):
and being super successful. If you want to be a
successful indie filmmaker, you need to know a lot about
not just the production of movies, but the business. We
are going to tell you the truth and reality of
what really happens in the indie film business. Hi, We're

(00:43):
an episode two and we are going to talk about development,
developing a movie, all right, So there are a lot
of things that go into development. The first thing is
what project are you actually going to do? Like, what
movie are you going to make? So for most indie filmmakers,

(01:03):
they have this story generally that they that's the reason
they want to be an indie filmmaker because they have
a story that they've heard as a child, or developed themselves,
or thought of or in the case of documentaries, they
have a message they want to share. There's a certain
type of discipline or message that they want to share
with the world. So that's generally why people make movies

(01:26):
is to share a really good story or to share
a message with the world. That's what indie filmmakers do.
So the question is, as an indie filmmaker, which story
or message should you share? Now? Remember I said in
episode one that I'm going to talk a lot about
sort of success, all right, So I said, artistic success

(01:47):
is all about making the kind of movie you want
to make and hopefully getting accolades for it. But financial
success is making money with it. So making money with
a movie means that you have to have basically a
paying audience who is going to want to pay to
consume that movie, meaning watch the movie. Now, there's lots
of ways that people pay. Okay, sometimes it's theatrical, sometimes

(02:10):
it goes through a streaming service svod avod. I'll talk
about all that stuff in future episodes. But at the
bottom line, if you want to be financially successful, then
you're going to have to have audiences who want to
see the movie and are willing to pay for it
in some form of another. Even watching it for free,
but watching ads with the movie as a form of payment.

(02:33):
So I'm going to suggest to you that on the
development stage, if you want to be financially successful, you
need to think a lot about which story or message
you're going to choose, and it has to be one
that is going to resonate with an audience. So at
this point in the process and the development process, you

(02:56):
really want to spend a lot of time and effort
thinking about who your audience is going to be for
the movie. Now, a lot of filmmakers say to me, no, no,
you don't understand, Jeff. That is part of distribution, Like
distribution is understanding who your audience is and then you know,

(03:16):
making it accessible to that audience and creating awareness with
that audience. And I say, yes, that's exactly correct. That
is exactly what distribution is. So what I'm saying to
you is think about distribution before you make your movie,
think about it as you're developing your movie, think about
distribution in the idea phase of your movie. So I

(03:39):
say to filmmakers, assuming you're going to be artistically successful,
meaning you're going to make a great movie, but if
you want to be financially successful, when you are picking
the idea for the movie, whether it be a story
or a message. When you're choosing that idea, make sure
that you can identify who the audience is going to
be for that movie, meaning go through the motions of

(04:03):
basically distribution and marketing at that point in the process.
And I tell filmmakers they should do a full comprehensive
distribution and marketing plan at that phase when they're choosing
the idea. They say, no, no, no, no, that makes
no sense, and I say, it makes total sense. It's

(04:23):
what every single business does, all right. Now, Remember in
episode one, I talked a little bit about opening up
a coffee shop and independent coffee shop. If you're going
to be an entrepreneur and you want to be successful
with a coffee shop, there's certain things that you're going
to need to think about. It's not just about how
good your coffee tastes, all right, You're going to have

(04:45):
to think about the neighborhood that you're going to open
your coffee shop in, Like, are there basically enough people
within the immediate vicinity, Because that's sort of where coffee
shops attract their customers, the immediate vicinity. People don't drive
twenty miles to get a coffee, They drive a mile
if you're lucky. All right, So you're gonna have to
assess the location of the shop. Okay, that's got nothing

(05:08):
to do with making coffee. It's got everything to do
with is there a sustainable customer base? Right? Then you're
gonna have to kind of do maybe an analysis on
what is the age group or the demographic or the
sort of nationalities of the customer base within that one
or two mile radius. Who might be your customers? Are

(05:29):
they generally coffee drinkers? Is that kind of the product
that they're looking for in that neighborhood, Because maybe you're
gonna have great coffee, but you're going to be in
the wrong neighborhood and you could be a mile or
two outside of the radius of where people really live
who want to drink your coffee. Number Three, you're gonna
have to kind of look at the competition. If you're
going to open up on a street where there's five

(05:51):
other coffee shops, including Starbucks and you know, Duncan and
three other independent coffee shops, that might be too much
to compete with. Now, that also might be a great
sign that there's a lot of coffee drinkers in the
neighborhood because why would all those other chains go in there.
So competition is a good thing, but you've got to
decide do you feel like you're going to be able

(06:12):
to compete. So there's a lot of components that you're
going to have to think about in the coffee business
that have nothing to do with making coffee. Right, we
just assume that you're going to make good coffee, because
if you don't make good coffee, you're going to be
out of business tomorrow. But it's not good enough just
to make good coffee. You got to be able to

(06:33):
identify and know who your audience is. Oh, the other
thing I forgot about is you're branding, Like what are
your cups going to look like? What's your logo going
to look like? And how about your price point? Are
you going to go at a premium price point? You're
going to go to sort of mid range competitive price point?
Are you going to be a low price provider? You know,
and go at the discount price? These are all marketing strategies.

(06:57):
They're not coffee strategies. They're marketing. This is who's my
customer base? How am i going to attract them? Are
they willing to pay the amount or consume what I
am offering. It is the exact same in the indie
film business, all right, you need to figure out who
is going to be interested in your movie before you

(07:19):
make your movie. All Right, You've got to assume that
you're going to make a good movie. Always assume you're
going to make a good movie. Right, So when you
make that assumption, you say, Okay, you can envision this
fantastic movie. So you have this idea. So I'm going
to if you don't mind, I'm going to use narrative
films as opposed to docs. But documentaries would be the
exact same analysis. But I'm going to talk about narrative
films because that's what I make. All right. So now

(07:41):
you've got this story, and you're going to make this
narrative film, and you can just envision what this thing
is going to be, and you can envision that there's
going to be super it's going to be super entertaining
for audiences, and there's going to be a lot of
people who want to see it. So I'm asking you
at this point, who are those people? Define them? Like,
what I say is it's like a bullseye, okay, on

(08:04):
a dartboard. It's not good enough to say I'm going
to go for everybody. Everybody's going to like this movie.
That's called the everybody audience. It's too difficult to get
the everybody audience in a low budget indie film that
has very limited marketing resources. Your big budget Hollywood film,
it's different. You could spend millions and millions on national

(08:26):
advertising all this kind of stuff, but on a low
budget indie film, you're not going to have the resources
to do that. So you need to really focus on
who that core niche target audience is. Think of it
as the dartboard, and you're going after the bullseye. That's
who you're going after, just that super super niche audience
that you really believe is going to love your movie

(08:49):
and is going to be super supportive of it. So
how do you know who that audience is? So here's
a little game you can play with yourself. This is
the contest that I tell my students. I say, you
want to define your audience. The contest is this, I'm
going to rent a movie theater after you finish your movie.
All right, you're going to make your movie. I am
going to rent a theater. It's going to have one

(09:09):
hundred seats in it. You get to invite one hundred guests.
You get to profile them and it doesn't matter where
they're from, any nationality, any gender, any age, anything about them.
You get to choose them. They can't be family and friends, Okay,
it can't be the friendly audience as we call that,
all right, they have to be neutral, third party audience.

(09:29):
But you get to profile them. You put one hundred
people in those seats, and at the end of the movie,
we ask them to do a questionnaire basically one question,
did you love this movie? If every single person in
that theater, one hundred of them, give you a five
out of five. And remember these are not family and friends,
are not the friendly audience, They're real people. I give

(09:53):
you a million dollars, I hand you a bag with
a million dollars in cash if you can get a
five out of five from every single person. So the
question is who you're putting in those seats you want
to win that million dollars. Who you're going to put
in those seats. You're going to put people in those
seats who you really believe are going to love your movie.
That is the bullseye. That's the core target audience. That's

(10:16):
who you're going after, the people who are really really
going to love it all right now, Once you have
those people, they become your ambassadors. Hopefully each one of
them tells ten other people, Oh, I saw this great movie.
Ten other people you should see it, and then those
people hopefully like it, and they tell ten other people
and word of mouth becomes sort of your advertising tool.

(10:37):
So that's how that works. But you got to hit
the bullseye first. Before you can go for the different
levels on the dartboard. You got to start with the bullseye,
which is the core niche target audience. Now here's what
filmmakers say to me. I'll figure that out after I
make the movie. I'll figure out who the real audience
is who wants to watch it. And I say, no, no, no, no,

(11:00):
oh no no, you can't do it after you make
the movie, because there might actually not be a core
target audience for your movie. Your movie actually might not
be that audience friendly. You might actually make a movie
that actually has no audience. Why don't you just figure
it out before you make your movie, because I can

(11:20):
guarantee something. If you cannot figure out who your core
target audience is before you make your movie, I can
assure you you're not going to figure it out afterwards. Okay,
a core target audience doesn't automatically magically appear or you
magically realize it, right, You need to identify it beforehand.

(11:43):
Not only do you need to do that, figure out
who those people are who are going to love your movie,
You got to figure out marketing strategies in order to
create awareness with them. You've got to figure out how
much you're going to spend and how are you're going
to do it in order to tell that core target
audience that you've informed them that you've made a great
movie and then entice them to actually want to watch

(12:06):
that movie and pay to watch it. So that's called marketing.
This is why I say to filmmakers, do a distribution
and marketing plan at the idea phase. You actually don't
even need a script, believe it or not. All you
need is an idea and you need to say, Wow,
this is who I believe is going to want to
watch this movie after I script it, after I make it.

(12:27):
This is how I'm going to get to this audience,
create awareness with them, and do marketing. So, by the way,
distribution is making your movie accessible to an audience. It's
like putting it onto a streaming platform or something like that,
so you can say to your audience, this is where
you can go to see my movie. Marketing is creating
awareness with an audience, so letting them know that your
movie exists and enticing them and exciting them to want

(12:50):
to watch the movie. Distribution you don't really need to
figure out. Hopefully your movie is going to be good
enough and a distributor is going to get you onto
streaming platforms. Marketing is the key you need to know.
This is the people I'm going after with this idea,
and this is where they exist. This is how I
can hit them, say on social media or maybe direct
marketing or something like that, and this is how I'm

(13:12):
going to entice them, create awareness with them, entice them
to want to watch my movie. If you want to
make money with your movie, you're going to need to
figure that out. And as I started off, I said,
choose an idea that has a core target audience connected
to it. If you choose an idea that doesn't, the
audience isn't going to appear magically. All right, there's a

(13:35):
good chance that your movie, albeit even if you made
a great movie, is not going to be successful financially
because there wasn't really an obvious audience for it. So
can you make movies that don't have a core target audience? Yeah,
you can, but you're probably not going to make money
with them. And so here's what I say to filmmakers.

(13:55):
For the first one or two movies or three movies
that you make, make sure that you make movies that
have obvious audiences, obvious core target audiences. Kind of get
in the game. It's kind of like on baseball, get
on base, all right. Once you're on base, once you've
hit a couple of runs, once you're proven, then go
make a movie that maybe doesn't have an obvious audience.

(14:16):
I mean, I would say never do that, but you know,
maybe you have a certain idea that is more difficult
in terms of identifying the audience. But you really want
to make it. It's a passion project. Sure, go do that,
but don't do it your first time around. You do
it your first time around and you fail, not because
it wasn't a great movie, because there was no audience
for it. Then chances are you're not going to get

(14:37):
a second chance, okay, because investors probably lost money, you
didn't make any money. You're maybe going to be in
financial straits and you're not going to be able to
have the ability to make another movie. So the first
few times around, do something that is commercially viable. Commercially
viable means you have identified who your audience is and

(14:58):
you're going to make the movie that's going to be
entertaining to them, and you're going to be able to
create awareness with them. That's how you choose the project. Okay,
that's in the development stage. It's so important to do
that properly at the beginning if you want to make money. Now,
a lot of filmmakers don't want to do a distributional
marketing plan because that's boring. That's a distribution of marketing

(15:20):
is what other people do. Filmmakers say to me, I'm
an artist. I don't sell movies. I don't market them.
Other people do that, And I say, okay, fine, no problem,
but appreciate that that has to get done, and go
and associate yourself with a marketing person or go hire
somebody to do it for you. Just because you don't

(15:41):
do it doesn't mean it doesn't have to get done.
It's part of business, all right. Back to the coffee shop.
If you want to be the barista and make the coffee,
no problem. But understand that there needs to be a
sign on your coffee shop, all right. There needs to
be a menu, There needs to be some advertising. You're
going to have to hire a marketing company or a
sign company or whatever to put that sign up for you,

(16:04):
because without a sign, your coffee is you're going to
be sitting there and nobody's going to be drinking your coffee.
You're going to be a great barriista, but nobody's going
to drink your coffee because nobody knew about it, all right,
So hire somebody. So often I say to my students, Look,
you're in the film department. You don't want to do marketing.
Walk over to the business school. Go find two or
three marketing majors who love doing marketing i e. Creating

(16:26):
awareness with audiences and identifying who audiences are, and partner
with them. Say I got this great idea for a film.
Let's make this film. We could all make a ton
of money, but we need to have great marketing. You
do the marketing because I don't like to do marketing.
I'll do the filmmaking because that's what I specialize in.
And become a team. All right. Don't say, hey, I'll
figure out marketing afterwards, because you never will figure it

(16:50):
out before. Go associate yourself and affiliate yourself with good
marketing people or just hire them. If you're not in
school and you can't walk over to the marketing department
in the school, you go find yourself a good marketing
company that can help you. And it's going to cost
you some money, but that's what it is to be
in business. You got to spend money to make money,

(17:11):
all right. Or maybe you have a friend or relative
or something like that who knows marketing. Have this discussion,
have it upfront before you make your movie. So important. Now,
let me give you an example of that, all right.
I told you I was going to talk about sort
of anecdotal stories. So every single one of my movies
has this, all right. I would not make a movie

(17:32):
that didn't have a marketing and distribution plan in place
before I made the movie. And it's not because I'm
so focused on financial success, which I am, by the way,
and I make no excuses about it. Obviously, I want
to make great movies because that's part of being financially successful,
but I want to know who I'm making the movie for.
And by the way, so many filmmakers make stories that

(17:54):
intrigue them and that they're interested in, and they never
even think about an audience. Like most of you are
going to make a movie about yourself. You don't think
your movie's about yourself, but ultimately it is your first movie,
and your greatest idea is going to be your story.
You're gonna say, oh, it's not really about me. It's
sort of based on my life, but it's not about me.

(18:15):
It actually is. All right, let's be honest with each other,
all right. Most filmmakers think they have very interesting lives
and that they're gonna tell their story and everybody's going
to be interested in it. I hate to tell you,
most people's lives aren't really that interesting, all right. Sometimes
there's something interesting about your life, but for the most part,
you got to dress it up and yeah, can you

(18:35):
tell your own story shirt, but you got to tell
it in a super compelling way. That's probably not your
life anymore, all right. Now, maybe your life is super
interesting and compelling, but make sure you know who is
compelling and interesting too, all right. So a lot of
filmmakers say, don't worry, my life's interesting or my story
is interesting enough and people are gonna like it, And

(18:56):
I say which people? They say, I don't know, We'll
figure it out. To say, no, no, no, you're not gonna
figure up. All right, So you want to identify that audience,
So let me give you an example. I was going
to say, so, I'll just use one of my films,
all right, I could use any single one of them,
because every single one of them I go through this
exercise of saying who's going to be my audience before
I make the film. I've made two gymnastics films, so

(19:16):
I like doing sports dramas. I'm usually based on inspired
by true stories. So my first gymnastics film it was
called Full Out, and it was the true story of
a UCLA gymnast University of California, Los Angeles who wanted
to be an Olympian but gotten a super bad car
accident and almost died and then kind of became a

(19:39):
hip hop dancer to rehabilitate to get back into gymnastics
and then led UCLA to their sixth national championship. Really nice,
inspiring story about gymnastics and dance, but mostly gymnastics. So
what did I like about that story? I love inspirational
sports dramas, I love true stories. I thought it was
a great story, very inspiring, all right, But what did

(20:00):
I know about gymnastics And why choose a female gymnastics movie.
I'll tell you exactly why. All right? When do female gymnastics?
When are they most popular with wider audience? Okay, they're
always popular with female gymnasts and young girls and dancers
who do gymnastics, But they're most popular with audiences during

(20:24):
an Olympic year. Why Because especially in the United States
and the last few Olympics, the US has dominated in
women's gymnastics. All right, So for the last three or
four Olympics, the US has had top teams and usually
won gold medals. So that was the case in twenty sixteen.

(20:44):
The US had a very strong gymnastics team, and I said, hey,
that women's gymnastics are going to be a big deal
in the Olympics. And I think the timing is right
to tell the story because that's kind of three months
leading up to the Olympics, and couple of months afterwards,
people are talking a lot about women's gymnastics. There's a
lot of interviews, talk show hosts, all this kind of stuff.

(21:06):
And I said, this is when we're going to get
the most amount of free publicity for the sport. So
it's a good time to make a movie like that,
and let's time it for that, because otherwise during non
Olympic years we won't get as much sort of free
press and interest. But that's the generic audience. That's the
everybody audience. But who's the real core target audience for

(21:28):
that kind of movie. The core, super core bullseye target
audience is twelve to fourteen year old girls who are
registered in a gymnastics club, do gymnastics three to four
times a week and love it and aspire to be Olympians.
That's the core target audience. Now, how many girls are

(21:50):
like that in the United States? I'm just talking about
the United States, forget the rest of the world. All Right,
You do the math on it, and you do some research,
and you realize that there's probably three to four million
young girls who are registered in gymnastics club do gymnastics
few times a week. And love it, and they're that

(22:10):
age twelve to fourteen. Now, can they be ten, sure,
can they be eighteen? Sure? But this sweet spot is
twelve to fourteen because they are so inspired by these
kind of movies. That's when I said, let's rent the
theater and put one hundred people in. You know who
I'm putting into the theater for that movie. I am
putting in fifty of those girls, fifty twelve to fourteen

(22:35):
year old girls who do gymnastics three times a week
and love it and aspire. Who are the other fifty?
They're mothers? Why, because their mothers are also into it.
They're the ones who take the girls every three or
four times a week two gymnastics. They're the ones who
have the ability to actually pay to watch the movie.

(22:57):
They're the ones who enjoyed, who talk about it. So
that's the core target audience, those girls and their mothers.
That's who we're going after. Now, do we want everybody else?
Do we want families? Of course we do. Do we
want thirty five year old women, of course we do.
Do we want guys? Do we want everybody? We want everybody?
But we got to start somewhere. So when I am

(23:20):
making a film like that, I am thinking at the
concept stage, just even choosing the movie, I'm saying, Wow,
we can go after that audience. Now, how do you
find that audience? That audience exists. There's a governing association
in the United States called USA Gymnastics. The registers all
of the gymnastics clubs. Each gymnastics clubs have coaches and

(23:42):
have three to five hundred participants in students. And that's
how you can get to them directly through their clubs
and their coaches. And if you tell the coaches, hey,
I made this great new movie. Can you share it
with your students and they watch the movie and like it,
then they will endorse it and they will help you
get your audience. That's kind of the marketing plan. Now,

(24:05):
in addition to that, there's gonna be lots of social
media influencers who are very big in that world, lots
of people in the dance world. There's lots and lots
of ways to connect to that audience. But you see
what we've done is we've identified the audience first long
before we make the movie. All right, then we script
it even around that audience to make sure that it's

(24:26):
super age appropriate. There's got to be a little bit
of romance, but not too much, all right, You've got
to make it super friendly. Remember, you want the mothers
to feel very very comfortable letting their daughters watch the movie.
You want the girls who are watching it to be
super excited and super inspired. So you're going to script
the movie in such a way to really play to

(24:47):
that audience and to make them love it and just
enjoy every moment and want to talk about it and
share it with others. That's the secret. Now, look, you
haven't even made the movie yet. All you're doing is
your which movie to make. This is in the development stage.
But if you can't be that granular, like literally say

(25:07):
this is exactly who we're going after, this is exactly
how we're going to get them. Here's a marketing plan
that we think is super realistic, that we're going to
actually be able to afford to execute, and that we
think is going to work with this audience. If you
can't do that, maybe you don't have the right project.
Maybe you've got to choose a different project you can

(25:28):
do that with that is going to be super commercially viable. Now,
in the case of Full Out, that worked I mean,
it was a very identifiable audience. It was very easy
to attract them and market to them because we knew
exactly where to go for them, and we were very
right with the timing. Why because Netflix, after we launched

(25:49):
the movie, then did exactly that marketing campaign, picked the
movie up. Because the US dominated to gymnastics, then Netflix says, wow,
this is a great gymnastics movie. It's right on target,
the time is exactly right, and let's pick it up
for worldwide distribution. And they picked it up and licensed
it for worldwide distribution, went to twenty in twenty six

(26:11):
languages worldwide. That is not a coincidence, folks. That is
a plan. It was a plan to go out at
that time, just before the Olympics, to go out with
that kind of movie, to have that kind of marketing campaign,
to create that kind of awareness with audiences. We chose that. Now,
did I compromise my artistic integrity? No, We made a

(26:32):
great movie. The movie is really fun, it's really inspiring.
It really delivers to audiences. It's a great movie. But
making that movie at that time for that audience is
a much better bet then perhaps some other movie that
we could have otherwise chosen that also could have been inspirational,
but maybe not as successful because of the timing and

(26:55):
the marketing involved. So that's what I'm saying, if you
really want to choose a project, and you want to
make money, and you want to be in the game,
start your career off with a couple of those, give
yourself a better chance at kind of winning getting on base,
all right, as opposed to going with say that dream

(27:15):
project that you have of the drama about your life
or something like that that might not be as obvious
to audiences to want to watch. You are not compromising
your artistic integrity. What you are doing is you're giving
yourself a better chance at launching your career and being
way more commercially viable. Now, even with say super low

(27:38):
budget films like say low budget indie horror films like
slasher films, there are ways to make them more commercially
viable by thinking about who your audience is than not
all right, just adding certain characters at the beginning, people
who might be more enticing for certain people to watch
than other people. And I can give you lots and

(28:00):
lots of different examples about that kind of thing as well.
But what I'm saying is, do your distribution and marketing
plan before you perhaps even write your script. All right,
do it at the concept stage. Choose your project based
on the fact that you know you're going to have
an identifiable audience that you can create awareness with and

(28:21):
do a viable, executable marketing plan in order to get them.
You choose a project like that, and after you've made
your great movie, your life is going to be so
much easier because you already know what you're going to
do to get that audience. Think about that super super
important See you next time.