Vanzil and Victor Burke understand the importance of family dynamics. The brothers combined their love for family and film with the creation of Burke Entertainment, currently one of the top production companies in the entertainment industry.
Founded in 2007, Burke Entertainment has represented a multitude of entertainers across TV and film and have produced several critically acclaimed films.
Some of their productions include “The Waterboyz,” “Year 2,” “Heux Phase,” and more.
The Burke brothers provided insight on the secret to their success.
“The first thing that we always do is read the script,” Victor said. “If the he script is very interesting, I start formulating in my mind the streams of income. You could do a limited theatrical run, you could do a licensing deal to foreign markets to help drive money. You’ve got EVOD, which is premium video on demand. You’ve got Red Box. You got SVOD with the streaming on demand. There’s a lot of ways you can make money in this game. So the biggest thing for us to decide, for me to decide is all these streams of income that we can make, and the investment that we’re going to make. And how easy would it be for us to make the investment.”
The industry continues to change. In the past, most films and TV programs were only offered via the theater, DVD and VHS, or TV. Now with the digital age, viewers are consuming media on multiple platforms.
Vanzil shared insight on those changes.
“The landscape of entertainment has changed,” he said. “So it’s not so much linear going out to television now. When we’re doing projects, we already know we use these theatrical releases as a really big marketing tool. So it’s really bringing awareness. And you do short runs instead of being in the theater for a month or a month and a half. And it’s just to kind of get the name out there. Then you drive it to the streaming, which is going to be right on the device. And that’s kind of the strategy on how to get those numbers up. So our first out the gate deal, where it was in the past, it was going to television or linear deals and then backstop streaming. Now, we’re doing the other way. Now we’re going out the gate with streaming and then backstop linear television.”
The Burke brothers also broke down how productions can be difficult at times.
“The first thing that I could tell you is that production are not easy, you’re gonna have problems,” Victor said. “You’re gonna have things that happen on a daily basis. And one of the things that I can tell you is that if you get into production life, you gotta have thick skin to be able to remain calm, solve the problem, learn lessons and move on to the next. We had to correct and keep mobilizing and making our skill even stronger and consistent with what we’re doing, and that’s what we are going at now.”
Vanzil added by sharing how success can be bring bigger issues, but it takes the wherewithal to solve those problems and building relationships to continue.
“More money, more problems, that’s a real thing,” he said. “The bigger the budget, and the bigger the project, the bigger the problems, because it just brings on more because you’re dealing with the bigger things. For newcomers, this industry is small, and it’s even smaller for people of color. Be careful with how you treat people. Nurture the relationships, because everything is based on relationships. We pride ourselves on having a good name in the industry. Have we been able to be perfect for everybody? No, because we’re not God, but nobody can say that we have been bad people. And that’s something that our parents taught us is to always treat people, right.”
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