Film Finance – Find Financing For Film Script?

Discover The Secrets to Creative Film Finance

Film Finance is the life behind any movie! Imagine this:

You have a great script, you have an awesome cast, the cameraman and the sound man are itching to get going and the lights, cameras and stands are on the way!

You are on location, the generator has just pulled up and everything is about to fall into place, except for one key ingredient!

YOU HAVE NO FILM FINANCE!

How many times have you as a director or your fellow directors been in this situation? You have some of the money, but you do not have all of the money and you do not know how you are going to complete the movie!

I was even in the same situation myself when we were filming Bad Romance. We had the money to do the 5 days on location, but we did not have the cash to do some of the production and it held the release up, which means slow return of investment.

Not a good situation for the investors and certainly not a good situation for you as the director or the producers.

I feel your pain and I wanted to do something about it, so at the end of last year I ran a survey to see what the biggest obstacles were for directors like us; and lo and behold, Film Finance came out number 1.

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So I decided to do something about it and over the coming weeks this website will change to help directors find independent film financing.

The topic of film finance is huge and covers many different areas of business from film financing companies, to supporters of film financing awards, to product placement, to film finance forums and we will be taking a look at all these areas as well as having one on one interviews with the people behind some of these companies and institutions.

I was recently watching the movie “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold” by Morgan Spurlock and was inspired by the way he raised his film finances and while they may not be suitable for every movie, the movie certainly gave me a lot of ideas.

Once you have seen the movie it may also inspire you to think differently about ways to put together feature film financing in a very different way.

Here is the movie trailer:

Film Finance With Morgan Spurlock

Get your copy of “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

Malcolm Spurlock certainly has a very unique way and the movie absolutely did inspire me to look at product placement as a possible solution to finding the much needed finance, however I also think that it needs to be a lot more subtle in most situations.

I believe that planning is the key to great movies. I personally discovered so much during my first major step into the film business and even though I am a virgin compared to others, I still feel that I have something to offer and help this amazing community of film makers.

One thing that did jump out of me was thinking from an investors point of view instead of the writer or director. Why should someone invest in your movie, just because you think it is a masterpiece. What is in it for the investor?

There always needs to be a return of investment, but the return may not always be money. Different investors are motivated by different things.

When I invested in my 1st movie (The Boat Between Two Rivers) I just wanted to see my name on the screen and that alone was worth the 2,000 dollars I invested and I had an enormous grin on my face when I saw my company logo at the beginning of the movie. My ego was certainly happy!

In the 2nd movie (Bad Romance) my ego had been satisfied and with this investment I wanted to make some money. So my whole approach this time was very different.

The mindset of an investor is important to know and I think this is a major part of the puzzle that most producers, directors and writers forget about when setting out on their projects.

As an investor in both these movies, I was not investing for the directors, writers or producers reasons (they wanted money) but rather for my own personal reasons. Interestingly none of the crew ever asked me what i wanted from the investment or how to make it a better experience for me.

I did learn a lot about what to do and what not to do when it comes to financing movies and the experience will certainly make for more understanding when I go to find investors for my movies.

I thing is sure: In order to get investment, focus needs to go on the investor rather than the recipient.

I will certainly be looking at new and unique ways and reporting about them here as we look for new ways to support our Film Finance.

My Life Is My Passion
A Film Finance article written by Tim Bennett
Of Argon Animation Inc for Argonette