How To Attract Financing To Your Film Project

Why is there a magnetic pull to some projects and not others?

How To #14 & $#6: Back in July, I offered up almost 40 suggestions on how to make our industry more hospitable to film investment. I didn’t have “resolve the strikes” on that list, but I should have. Really it was a suggestions of “best practices” that the stewards of our industry could follow to help the business thrive a wee bit more. Oh, yeah, we don’t have any stewards for our industry. I guess that’s a problem, eh?

You’d think that those that make the most money --- the agents, the studio heads, the top dollar actors and directors – would want to try make our industry sustainable, that they’d want to try to solve things for the future, that they’d want to level the playing field a bit, and actually try to guide it towards longevity. Or rather, you’d think that would never happen, and if you thought the latter, you’d be more right than I am with such crazy dreams that the ones with the wealth and power would actually step forward and, well lead.

However now that The Strikes are resolved, and now that we all have suffered through well over 100+ days that our studio and platform heads did nothing to try to resolve the-crises-that-was-their-own-making, we are looking at an industry that won’t recover anytime soon. Hear that sucking sound?

And you know what part got hit the hardest? The indie sector. Well, it’s been getting dismantled for awhile, but the dual strikes was close to the proverbial nail. If you were the conspiracy-minded type you might even think it was a plot. Think of it: if you were a disruptive technology and you knew what people were watching, one thing you’d want to do is make such a predictive ability more predictable. How do you do that? You dismantle the competition, Silly!

The Europeans may have had their subsidies and government funding for the arts, but the American Indies held strong for thirty+ years because we had a robust private equity community. That community thrived because there was an international sales business. There was an international sales business because there were a wide supply of territorial buyers. But what happens when a decade of free money fuels The Era Of Peak Content?

Predatory pricing happens baby! That new technology gobbles up everything on a global basis to ruin the local exhibitors which ruins the territorial distributors which ruins the international sales business which eradicates the private equity field, and soon that technology has no competition. Without the cultural course correction that Indie Film consistently enabled, the GlobalStreamingPlatforms faced no competition; So soon what happened? They became more predictable! Hurray and hoorah. Boo hoo, boo hoo. And you thought boys don’t cry. I’m sobbing here, man! Get me a tissue!

I am also smiling though. I am smiling because I know it is often darkest before dawn and I can sense a new day coming. Sure those missing revenue streams are a bit of a problem,  but they can be built back better I believe. Audiences are going to be hungry for something other than that same old, same old. The Youngs long for something that is devoid of the corporate cast of respectability. Remember the good old days when you could count on art to offend someone? The kids want a taste of some of that, don’t they? Yup.

All that is needed is a merry band of mischief makers willing to sing things their way and a movement will be born. Well, that movement will be born when that gang of darer-do’s know how to pull in some financial support. They may be punks and witches but they still need to know how to present for those that want to dress in suits and shiny shoes.

I am here to provide YOU some tools to win those hearts and minds. Yes, this is yet another list of bullet points— this time on how to attract financing to your project. You need some ammunition to hit the bullseye, don’t you? I’ve written a few of these out as posts on their own, so they’ve earned their golden links. The ones devoid of such glory will one day be forthcoming; although you may have to wait until I get around to writing that damn book. Which will begin as someone sends me an offer (hint, hint).

I call these “steps” because they really are cumulative. It’s not that you need to have all of them, or even that you need to follow them in a specific order – but both of those could help significantly. The main thing is you need multiples. The more you have , the more they are going to feel the vibe that you are the one. Hell, yes they are going to invest in you and your project! Why? Because you’ve got multiples. You are the thing. So get to getting this stuff done my friend. I want you to have a box of gold.

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25 Steps To Attract Financing To Your Film Project

1.          Make your project feel inevitable.

2.          Build trust and confidence.