SXSWORLD

3 4 S X S W O R L D / M A R C H F I L M - I A 2 0 1 4 y the time Jason Blum reached the 15th year of his career in 2010, he had followed a well-mapped trajectory toward a level of success almost any producer would kill to reach. Since his 1995 debut as an associate producer on Noah Baumbach's Kicking and Screaming, he had 10 movies to his credit, including a five-time Oscar nominee (e Reader) and was starting production on a big- budget family film starring Dwayne "e Rock" Johnson. But when his $15,000 investment in a years-delayed festival circuit creepshow called Paranormal Activity outpaced Fox's e Tooth Fairy at the box office, he realized that he would rather preside over his own banquet than shuffle his way into a seat at a studio's kiddie table. "I got to kind of witness up close what studio distribution is like on both of those movies," Blum explained just days after two of his projects, 13 Sins and Oculus, were added to SXSW Film's Midnighters lineup. "I'd made a ton of indepen- dent movies, and e Tooth Fairy was the first studio movie I did. Paranormal Activity kind of combined both of them … and it happened at a time in my life where I had done enough of both to recognize that would be something that I personally would be passionate about doing." Blum has since established a business model that everyone, including the studios, wants to copy: leave tentpole films to the A-listers, and quietly build an empire by marketing micro-budget movies for mainstream moviegoers. e Paranormal movies alone have thus far earned more than $382 million domestically, while burgeoning low-cost franchises like Insidious and e Purge reap big rewards from modest investments. But even though Blum admits that he could not have achieved his success without those earlier paydays, he insists that it was not reserves of money that enabled him to pull it off. "It didn't take capital; it took willpower," Blum said. "Usually when you have a big success, Hollywood tells you you're supposed to now go make more expensive movies, so it was the willpower that I exerted not to do that." "If I was 25 and Paranormal Activity happened to me, I would have chased bigger movies," he confessed. "But I had spent enough time in the business to know that even though I had a big successful movie on my hands, I wanted to use that to make more smaller movies as opposed to more bigger movies." In developing the infrastructure of Blumhouse Productions, Blum implemented two house rules to help keep potential projects in shape from the get-go. "e first requirement is budgetary, which is under $5 million," he said. "And the second requirement is that when we start out, I want the director and me to agree that we're making a movie that would be suitable for a wide release. If he's making a Sundance movie and I'm making a movie for the Cineplex, we've got problems. So we both have to kind of be on the same page." e irony of Blum's approach is that once those stipulations are met, the process is effectively the same as any other independent production – albeit one with overseers with a proven understanding of what works with audiences. "I don't feel comfortable asking someone to work for a reduced fee and then telling them what to do," he admitted. "So 99 percent of the time, the directors have final cut. ey have final say in casting. ey kind of have total creative control. And I have found that once you relinquish that control to a director, they're very solicitous of our opinion." "So we're very creatively involved in the movies, but we're creatively involved from the point of we're trying to make the palate of the direc- tors bigger as opposed to shoving things down their throats," he said. Having gone through the studio grinder only to become a successful purveyor of handmade entertainment, Blum appropriately cautions aspiring filmmakers from expecting success, much less the kind of freedom he offers, too quickly in their careers. "You're not going to get to where you want to get to right at the beginning," he said plainly. "I do almost exactly what I want to do now every day professionally, but I spent 15 years doing five percent, and 95 percent of the time I wasn't doing what I wanted to do." at said, Blum is appropriately reflective when it comes to giving advice about how best to follow in his footsteps. "I would say mostly get out of your own way and don't get hung up on deals and money," he said simply. "I feel so much time in Hollywood is spent, even at the beginning early stages, kind of hashing out what is fair, and I think if you can take a step away from that and toward the creative side of filming a script, then all that other stuff will come later in your career." "I see that a lot of people not willing to write on spec or take risks on themselves," he continued. "Bet on yourself — that would be the best advice I could give." n Jason Blum will be SXSW Film's keynote speaker today (Sunday, March 9) at 11am in the Vimeo Theater at the Austin Convention Center. "Bet On Yourself " Advises Pioneering Micro-Budget Producer by Todd Gilchrist Jason Blum B

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