#Filmstack Inspiration Challenge (Day 57)

On perseverence, pivoting and putting your work out there

Prologue

For my regular readers who might not know: Substack is spawning a fast-growing and incredibly supportive film community (now dubbed FilmStack), particularly for indie filmmakers (now dubbed NonDē, for non-dependent).

FilmStackers were tasked by Ted Hope with a daily challenge to share their inspirations - this has been running for over a month, and today is my turn. The full archive is here, and the new target is 200 days, so DM Donny Broussard if you want to jump on!

For FilmStackers who are new to this newsletter: welcome! Brands To Fans is about building and monetising entertainment IP. It is hardly NonDē. In fact, I was Chief Commercial Officer for the Harry Potter franchise at Warner Bros., which is about as non-NonDē as you can get. But I also ran investment funds at Ingenious Media that invested in over 50 independent movies, so I’ve spent time in that world as well.

With that said, let’s get to it. My inspiration comes from a band that never made it - and the filmmakers who told their story.

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Part 1 - The Candyskins

In the 1990s, Oxford (UK) had a thriving indie music scene, most notably giving rise to Radiohead, Supergrass, and Ride.

Among the mix of tipped-for-success bands were The Candyskins, fronted by Nick Cope.

They signed with Geffen and had early modest success with their first album Space I’m In. Radiohead were breaking out, the ‘Oxford Scene’ was getting recognition, and The Candyskins were well positioned to capitalise. Plus, did I mention, they wrote amazing, tuneful, proto-Britpop songs. I was a heavy gig-goer and used to see these bands all the time.

This is where the problems start.

For a band trying to break through in America, packing their second album Fun? with ironic songs about soccer and gardening may not have been the smartest move. Sales stuttered, there was a royalties dispute with Geffen, Nirvana released Nevermind and suddenly no one was interested in indie-pop bands.

Geffen dropped the band.

Two years passed. The band struggled, had no money and took on odd jobs to survive. Many would have quit at this point. But The Candyskins regrouped and got back to writing songs.

“After that problem with Geffen, it was like starting all over again, really … No major record company wanted to touch us. It was a no-win situation. It wasn’t our fault. It had nothing to do with our songwriting or anything like that; it was just politics within the record company … They wasted two years of our lives and made it very hard for us financially. It left us out in the cold, but it made us stronger as a band, made us write better songs, and we spent two years writing the best album we possibly could.” - Nick Cope (Source: Pause&Play)

The Candyskins signed to UK label Ultimate, and the buzz started to build again when their single Monday Morning made the UK Top 40.

Their third album was about to come out when Geffen, in a brilliantly cynical move, decided to capitalise on the renewed interest by re-releasing Fun?, causing some confusion in the marketplace. Nick Cope and his brother, lead guitarist Mark Cope, voiced their displeasure by spray painting ‘No Fun’ on the Geffen London office - and were promptly arrested for their trouble.

The lyrics to their new single Car Crash showed the toll that circumstances and rejection had been taking:

Had a life; Couldn’t get a good one
You know what they cost
You learn a thing or two about getting lost
When nobody’s trying to find you

But momentum was building again and Car Crash was playlisted by Radio 1 in the UK.

Until … the week of release, Princess Diana is killed … in a car crash.

All airplay is cancelled and the single sinks without a trace.

Still the band persevere.

They get to work on their fourth album, Death of a Minor TV Celebrity.

Until … their label, Ultimate, goes bankrupt, leaving The Candyskins stranded.

The album gets a delayed, unsupported release, somehow, but makes no impact.

After years of persevering, the band call it quits. The final song on this, their final album, is called Going Nowhere and sums things up pretty well:

I’m going nowhere
Someone try and stop me
I can’t shape up any longer
The competition’s getting fiercer

I’m fading fast now
I’m slower than I thought I was
I see it in my sights
And the end is coming soon and I feel grand
And that’s okay
It didn’t really matter anyway

Part 2 - Anyone Can Play Guitar

Cut to: a decade later. It is 2008, and aspiring filmmaker Jon Spira is working in an Oxford video store when he decides that the story of Oxford’s music scene deserves a documentary. He has been filming gigs and making music videos, so he has good access to this scene.

This is grass-roots, indie filmmaking. Initial funding for Anyone Can Play Guitar comes from a Production Award from Film Oxford as well as self-funding by Spira, but finishing the sound mix and picture grade to a professional standard still needs additional finance. For this, Spira launches an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign (just think, getting films made through crowdfunding almost 20 years ago! Amazingly, the page is still up, here).

This is where the project first crossed my radar - my first experience of crowdfunding and the idea that someone with an idea, a camera and a niche community of engaged fans could make something like this happen, entirely outside the main constructs of the industry. I signed up and was excited to receive my DVD when the film was eventually completed.

It was rough and ready, but it was made, and out in the world, and told a compelling story. To my delight, despite the headline involvement of more famous bands like Radiohead, it was the story of The Candskins that was really the emotional through-line of the documentary.

Part 3 - Nick Cope’s Popcast

Nick Cope, meanwhile, pulls the ultimate pivot.

He starts writing children’s songs and playing local shows in Oxford for kids. It turns out his natural talent for melody is well-suited to simple, funny kids’ tunes that both children and their parents respond to.

I have a treasured photo of my son at this time, aged about 4, throwing his head back in laughter as he watches Nick Cope perform on the kids’ stage at a music festival. He thinks that this is his earliest memory - enjoying the music and laughing at Cope’s songs.

With the same perseverance demonstrated by The Candyskins, Cope continues to perform at a grassroots level, building word of mouth, ultimately self-releasing a total of six albums of kids’ songs.

Until, in 2020, he lands his own show on the BBC’s kids channel, CBeebies, called Nick Cope’s Popcast.

His world-weariness is still there in his lyrics, but with a more philosophical, hopeful bent. You know, for the under-5s.

“It rains the same old rain
The same old rain that rained on the dinosaurs
And the same old rain will go down the drain
Then go up again and come down like rain
Because it’s the same rain that rains again and again
The same rain that rains on you” - Nick Cope, It Rains The Same old Rain

Nick Cope’s Popcast ran for 3 seasons and 50 episodes, which are all still available on iPlayer for those in the UK.

Part 4 - Reel Britannia

About this time, 2020, I am the MD of a niche streaming service in the UK called BritBox. Our content is mostly archive shows from our shareholders, the BBC and ITV, but we have a budget for Originals as well (albeit significantly more modest than the big streamers).

We are busy curating a season of classic British films for the service, when the content team brings me a proposal for a 3-part accompanying documentary, Reel Britannia, on the history of British film.

The director and writer: none other than Jon Spira. He has progressed from Indiegogo campaigns to streaming commissions.

Look, I’m not saying I greenlit the show because the filmmaker once made a doc about one of my favourite bands. I’m just saying: you never know who might see your work and what it might lead to. But you have to put it out there in the first place for it to be seen. Above all, it is another story of perseverance, telling stories about things you have a passion for, and finding a way to get them made, come what may.

The documentary was terrific, and a perfect fit for our BritBox audience:

Part 5 - The Inspiration

So, the inspiration that I take from these events, and that I offer to the FilmStack community, is:

• Events will conspire against you. Persevere anyway. Get better at what you do.

• Until you can’t persevere any more. Then pivot. The audience that appreciates you might not be who you first assume. Find them.

• Get your work out there by any means necessary. Crowd-funding, grants, whatever. Don’t wait for permission. Find that community of engaged fans who want to hear the story you have to tell.

• From modest beginnings, careers can be made. You never know who will see your work and respond to it. Keep putting it out there.

Go make your film.

Or, in FilmStack parlance: Let’s Fucking Go! (©️ Ellis J. Sutton )

Or, as Nick Cope would sing, put your best foot forward and you’ll be there soon:

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Thanks for reading. If you’re new here, this newsletter is about how to engage fans and extend and monetise your IP across multiple touchpoints. Some prior posts you might want to check out:

• The horror franchise playbook: how to keep monsters paying out

• Blockbuster movie economics 101 (and what’s changing)

• Building a Forever Franchise: Mission Impossible?