MISSION STATEMENT

Breakfast Pictures Entertainment, Inc. (BFP) was incorporated in New York City in the summer of 2002, and is committed to producing quality films to be enjoyed by all. Chiefly - though not exclusively - focusing on the African-immigrant experiences in America, BFP was established to develop projects that address the needs of this community in a serious and respectful manner.

___________________________________________________________________________

THE BUSINESS MODEL

The entire philosophy of the company rests on a singular idea: is it possible to be a film production company and survive making and self-distributing films that go straight to DVD?

Why straight -to-DVD? It's simpler than say, raising 10 million dollars to shoot a story on celluloid. One could spend years raising millions, or go out on the streets of New York, armed with a good digital camera and get to work. The small crew of folks that run the company do not need to live on Park Avenue, or even in brownstones in Harlem. We want to pay our rent and eat three square meals a day. In other words, do what we love while taking care of our basic needs at the same time. Therefore, we figured, we could do it on digital, going straight to DVD, and literally handing the finished product to the end-user on the street.

Also, we figured to make many films a year. If we were raising 10 million dollars to make one film, no doubt we would spend another year making that film. Since we were shooting on digital, we thought we needn't spend one year making one film. Why not spend one year and make six! Keep shoving DVDs in the hands of the end-user until they looked forward to us and our films. In a nut shell, that's the model: make between four to six films a year, and self-distribute.

____________________________________________________________________________

OUR PRODUCTION STYLE

Guerrilla filmmaking might be the best motto to describe the company's approach to filmmaking. We lack funds, even on a minimal level. Our budget would be categorized as below "low" budget, almost "zero". As a result, there's no room to get fancy. We shoot on location, thrusting ourselves right there on the streets of New York. Our equipment packet is minor, to say the least, the crew needed to run everything fewer still. The talent and what we ask of them is realisticis enough they blend very well with everyone else on the street.

We shoot in churches, in restaurants, in the parks, in schools, in small businesses - going in and out of places ever before anyone knows we're there. Where we are most at home are in apartments, borrowing homes of friends and their friends and their friends. Our general rule of thumbs is to enter a space and leave everything as is. The talent, being, well, talented, adapt to these spaces as if they've lived there for years. This bit is said just in case you reading should wish to volunteer your space for any of our future productions :)

In terms of a schedule, our production days average between four to six days. AFRICAN DILEMMA, being the first film, took the longest - lasting 14 days, but that film yielded a four-hour fiasco that had to be cut considerably down. We learned from that. Today, no production lasts more than six days. AFRICAN YOUTH we shot in four days, starting on a Friday and finishing on a Monday. MANCHESTER BOUND about six days in all - two weekends. Why the rush?

Time equates to money. The longer the production, the more money we spend. Also, we pay the actors peanuts to begin with. We cannot break the camel's back by having them remain with us day in and day out. Wham bam, thank you m'am! And the film is off to post.