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Entertainment Business - The Name Says it All
The entertainment business is not the easiest way to make a living but if you want to understand the route to success you only need to study the name of the industry for a minute.
The entertainment business is the “Business of Entertaining”. So you need to create something entertaining through some combination of a compelling story and awesome spectacle that people are going to want to see and will tell their friends to go see. At the same time you need to understand and follow all the time-tested rules of good business practices which include marketing and professional relationships.
Every time I hear a beginning filmmaker telling me about their cool movie idea, that is almost completely lacking in any entertainment aspects with a broad appeal, I want to grab them by the neck and try to shake some sense into them.
Most of the ideas are a bland rehash of the latest summer comic book flick. Perhaps it would be interesting to five of their nerdy friends but a significant segment of the general population would find nothing original or interesting.
It’s also clear that these would-be moguls haven’t the first concept of how the business world operates. They have no understanding of basic business law, of how to find and nurture useful relationships in the industry or how to go about marketing a film.
If you want to succeed in “show biz” start by learning how the business world operates and, at the same time, learn what makes great storytelling. With those skills under your belt you just might be unstoppable.
