I was having lunch with a couple of Producers last week who are totally kicking ass on the Strategic Producing front. They are doing precisely what we’ve been talking about on here lately… they are packaging their film with ‘name’ talent without having financing in place. Yes, you read that right – no confirmed financing [...]
Financing
I’m in the process of strategically producing a couple of projects right now and prepping them for Cannes, and as I go through the process I’m finding that part of being a strategic producer means not only having multiple Plans in place (A,B,C and so on) but also having the ability to execute on several [...]
There was a really interesting discussion that transpired recently in the Film Specific Forums about the bottom line of being a Producer – you better be bringing one of the Big Three to the table at any given time, especially when you’re first starting out: Money, Cast, or Distribution. In my previous post Thinking Big [...]
I think it was Donald Trump who said – “If you’re going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think BIG”. I really love that statement as it relates to producing films because here’s the deal – if you’re going put in all the blood, sweat, and tears anyway to make a movie, why [...]
Once again I find it really depressing reading blog post after blog post about filmmakers just scraping by in their lives and spending all their time trying to get more fans on facebook and more donors to their crowd fudning campaigns, instead of actually earning more fans and donors. And I’m so tired of all [...]
“Buyers and sellers said the indie business is past its painful bottoming-out phase of the last few years. A leaner, smarter model has emerged and while minimum guarantees and P&A commitments are smaller than years past, filmmakers are keeping their budgets at sensible levels.” I read this quote yesterday about what’s happening at Sundance Film [...]
Happy New Year everyone! This is my first blog post of 2011 and first I want to apologize it’s taken me so long between the last post of 2010 and now – but with the holidays and a little vacation, I’ve been off the blogging grid for a bit. But the good news is I’m [...]
Everywhere I look I see filmmakers waiting for their knight in shining armor to show up in the form of a film investor. They want someone who will just write them one check to fund their film’s budget – meanwhile they haven’t even accurately portrayed a recoupment scenario to pay the poor investors back (but [...]
Because Film Finance Overwhelm (Part 1) was such a popular post, I decided to do a Part 2. And because many of the comments and emails I got came in the form of questions, I decided to make the format of this post in Q+A form. I think seeing the answers to some of the [...]
As I’m unwinding from AFM last week, it occurs to me that while many of you are experiencing Distribution Overwhelm, even more of you are experiencing Finance Overwhelm. Why? Because unless you have 100% cash in bank to make your film, what can you do to get your project off the ground? The way I [...]
