The instructions are easy enough: Communicate your project idea in three pages. I think, “Great, I can bang this out in a day or two.” I sit at my desk and wait for the words to pour forth. And this is when my brain likes to take vacation. As 2014 rolls in and I am applying for grants for my new documentary project, I wish I could tell you that it gets easier to pen grant proposals each time I do it. Let me be honest: grant writing is tedious. It’s as much fun as writing a manual on video […]

Tonight at midnight film investors and producers will be faced with a familiar uncertainty. Section 181, the portion of the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 incentivizing U.S.-based film production, is set to expire, and independent filmmakers will lose a powerful tool in their fundraising arsenal. Section 181 encourages film investment by allowing investors to write off the complete cost of a qualified film in the first year. (Normally, this write-off is amortized, occurring in future years as a film demonstrates that it is money-losing. If and when profits then occur, they are treated as ordinary income by investors.) Scheduled […]

Back in October, Filmmaker spoke with a few of the driving forces behind Dogfish Pictures’ Accelerator Program, which seeks to bring the start-up financing model to independent film production. I’m pleased to report that James Belfer and Company’s months of hard work culminated in a successful Demo Day at the Microsoft Technology Center in midtown Manhattan last Friday. For myself, and a few others in the audience who aren’t necessarily of the tech-ilk, it was our first brush with this sort of presentation marathon, where one or two representatives from each team take to the floor for with a Powerpoint pitch before […]

Zach Clark’s White Reindeer is not your average Christmas tale. Flush with WASPy cheer, real estate agent Suzanne Barrington (the note-perfect Anna Margaret Hollyman) eagerly anticipates the holiday until her meteorologist husband Jeff is whacked in their suburban home. What follows is an earnest and surprising unravelling as Suzanne rides a second wave of grief upon the discovery of Jeff’s affair with a stripper. With a script both original and subversive, Clark and his producers Daryl Pittman and Melodie Sisk went out to finance White Reindeer as the debt crisis hit. Clark was kind enough to reflect upon the process […]

Only 7% of British films released from 2003 to 2010 were profitable, claims a BFI report issued this week at London’s Screen Summit. From Michael Rosser’s article in Screen Daily: The stats showed that just 3.1% of films with budgets under £500,000 turned a profit. The numbers increase as budgets rise: £0.5m-£2m: 4.1% £2m-£5m: 4.6% £5m-£10m: 12.1% £10m+: 17.4% Speaking on stage, Steele said: “What does one do faced with those sorts of numbers? Clearly, portfolio investment is necessary to negate the risk and secondly, qualitative judgement. Try to choose filmmakers projects that have above average chance of making a […]

The Thanksgiving tryptophan haze has worn off, your relatives are sprawled on the sofa, exhausted from their Black Friday marathons, and football blares on the flat-screen… is this a good time to hit them up for an investment in your independent film? Independent filmmakers seeking private equity in their films most often start by looking towards friends and family, and holidays do provide that necessary one-on-one face time. But, raising money from friends and family can be perilous at any time of year, with the holiday season offering its own particular dangers. Over at PandoDaily, Michael Carney has posted a […]

Please see important update at the bottom of this post. Plenty of tech vendors use Kickstarter as a pre-sale market, so why not filmmakers? In a letter to backers of his film Ned Rifle — reprinted here with permission — director Hal Hartley announces the inclusion of territorial theatrical rights as Kickstarter rewards. Pledge $3,000 and take Hungary. $5,000 gets you Finland. And a cool $9,000 gets you Spanish-speaking Latin America. Of course, these numbers are for theatrical only. Hartley is retaining home video and electronic distribution. But, as he notes in his letter, the asking prices are low, enabling […]

Three weeks weeks ago, I began a Kickstarter campaign for my first feature film, Namour, and it is not an overstatement to say that I feel like a changed person. I’ve never done a Kickstarter campaign and, to be totally frank, never thought I would. Something about it felt like it was too much about me. I’m a writer and director, and like most of members of that tribe, I inherently prefer to be behind the camera, not in the spotlight, explaining myself. I thought I would find the money to make my film in a more traditional way, by […]

Pre-awareness — in studio parlance, it usually refers to viewers' recognition of a film property before its release. In today's crowded landscape, it's considered an important factor when greenlighting Hollywood tentpoles, and it's why you see so many remakes, reboots and franchise films. In the indie world, there's pre-awareness too. It can be created by everything from grassroots publicity before a film's release to the ability of successful crowdfunding campaigns to stoke interest in a project. And, if the folks at Prefundia are right, there's crowdfunding pre-awareness — buzz preceding a project's launch on Kickstarter or Indiegogo that can help […]

“Distributing is easy, marketing is hard.” With that statement, moderator Ryan Koo kicked off the discussion at ScreenCraft’s recent Digital Discourse panel on the future of content creation and releasing. Nestled in the WGAE suite of a Tribeca high rise, the participating panelists included YouTube’s Amy Singer; Erica Anderson, Chief Marketing Director at Seed&Spark; Erick Opeka, SVP of Digital Distribution at Cinedigm; @radical.media’s Adam Neuhaus; and BOND 360 Founder and CEO, Marc Schiller. Chances are, you’ve heard it before: with so much of the independent film world unspooling in a viral sphere at a hair-raising pace, filmmakers must be prepared […]