“A proof of concept (POC) or a proof of principle is a realization of a certain method or idea to demonstrate its feasibility, or a demonstration in principle, whose purpose is to verify that some concept or theory has the potential of being used. A proof of concept is usually small and may or may not be complete.”- Wikipedia.
Producing Chat, it recently fell to me to make initial sales agent in our effort to find distribution. I had a good list but had never talked to a single one of these people, making it cold calling, something in which I do not excel. Imagine my surprise when, after my uber-weak pitch attempts, I got nearly all these jaded sales agents to say yeah, send the trailer, if we like it we’ll check out your movie. Hey, I understand there’s a world of difference deciding to rep an already finished movie vs. providing funding for a screenplay. Still, it was a mini-revelation. I had been brainwashed from years of rejection on cold call queries of my screenplays. This wasn’t a 100 page script I was asking them to spend two hours reading. It was a 90-second taste of Chat. The development person or the person below the D-Guy, or the person below him, did have 90 seconds.
Imagine two equally unknown writer-directors. Both have 100 page scripts. But one has a teaser video of what their movie could be. Who do you think has the advantage? If you can put one of these together, why wouldn’t you? Lots of people are doing exactly that. I found some great POC examples, maybe it will inspire you to go this route. Some of these are quite famous. The Customer Is Always Right served as a proof of concept for Sin City. An excellent gallery can be found here.
A lesser known proof-of-concept named Controller was just acquired by Fox based on the Saman Kesh short film. The Deadline.com article informs us POC’s are quite the rage right now.
Look here for a bunch more.
Look here for The Leviathan proof of concept.
Also here for a horror movie concept called Hellyfish!
CONTROLLER (控制者) from Saman Kesh on Vimeo.
