Financing
Filmmaking - Financing
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Pitch to the Pros at IFP’s Filmmaker Conference
Think you’ve already thought of the next best film idea? Pitch it! Filmmaker magazine is happy to be co-presenting the Pitch Panels at this year’s IFP Independent Film Week and Filmmaker Conference. Five days of panels and presentations meant to educate and energize emerging filmmakers, the Filmmaker Conference is your place for inspiration, action and community, September 15-19, at Lincoln Center in New York City. Impressing your friends and family at the dinner table with your pitch is one thing, but with these exciting sessions, filmmakers of all stripes have the chance to dazzle a panel of industry experts who […]
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Rooftop Grants Past and Present
As the summer draws to a close, another year of Rooftop Films grants is upon us. The New York-based nonprofit, though perhaps best known for its alfresco screenings across the four major boroughs, also functions as a dedicated support system to independent filmmakers in various stages of the production process. Beyond the traditional cash grants, Rooftop offers assistance in the form of equipment, workshops and post-production services. Those who have previously screened at the festival are exclusively eligible for grants through the Rooftop Filmmakers’ Fund, ensuring a continued, symbiotic partnership between exhibitor and artist. As such, this year’s recipients feature […]
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Tangerine Entertainment Announces “Juice Fund” to Support Women Directors
Tangerine Entertainment, Anne Hubbell and Amy Hobby’s start-up production company focusing on women directors, has announced the Juice Fund, “a donation-based initiative focused on changing the landscape for women filmmakers.” The Juice Fund’s financing will be crowdsourced. Those interested in Tangerine’s goal of supporting women directors and increasing their presence in the film industry can make tax-deductible donations via New York Women in Film and Television. From the press release: The initial $25,000 raise for the Juice Fund will be used to instigate concrete change in three ways: Rewarding – Ten participating U.S. festivals will present cash Juice Awards to […]
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Indiegogo: Ann Marie Bryan on The Shattered Mind
Ann Marie Bryan is the writer-producer-director of the upcoming film, The Shattered Mind, which is currently in postproduction. She’s raising finishing funds for her film so she can submit to 2014 Sundance Film Festival. Filmmaker invited her to write a guest blog about her film and the campaign, and she submitted the following, in interview form. To learn more and/on contribute, visit the project’s IndieGoGo page: Support The Shattered Mind on IndieGoGo. Q: What is The Shattered Mind about? A: The Shattered Mind, based in New York, is a psychodrama and surreal story about a hard-of-hearing teenager who juggles family, […]
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How Not to Make a Kickstarter Video
As some of you may know by now, I am running a Kickstarter campaign for my new film Bomb It 2, which is the follow up to my global graffiti and street art documentary Bomb It. I have consulted on a number of campaigns, but never run one of my own, and I wanted to experience the complete process for myself. I am now personally more obsessed with checking for new backers when I wake up (and every 10 minutes) but what I found to be one of the hardest things to do is to make my own crowdfunding appeal […]
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Sundance Institute Announces 29 Documentary Grant Recipients
Yesterday, the Sundance Institute announced the 29 documentary projects that have been selected to receive in total $550,000 worth of grant money from its Documentary Film Program and Fund. A lot of these are for projects in development by emerging filmmakers, but in there are also some films by more established names such as Jesse Moss (Full Battle Rattle), Lucia Small and Ed Pincus (The Axe in the Attic) and Ashley Sabin and David Redmon, who received audience engagement money for their 2011 doc Girl Model. In a press release, Cara Mertes, the Director of the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program […]
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Summer Grant Deadlines for Independent Filmmakers
With all the recent focus on crowdfunding, filmmakers shouldn’t forget about more traditional sources of funding, such as grants. Over the course of the summer are a number of grant deadlines for filmmakers seeking all stages of financing. Chicken & Egg Pictures First up is the late deadline, this Friday, for Chicken and Egg Pictures’ 2013 Open Call. From the site: “Chicken & Egg Pictures is dedicated to supporting women nonfiction filmmakers whose diverse voices and dynamic storytelling have the power to catalyze change, at home and around the globe.” This year’s average grant will be between $10,000 and $15,000, […]
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U.S. in Progress Accepting Submissions for American Indie Post Funding
A joint program between the American Film Festival in Wroclaw and the Champs Elysées Film Festival in Paris, U.S. in Progress is a twice-yearly showcase for American independents that should be on the radar of all indies seeking post financing and services. The events present American independent works in progress to groups of European buyers, with two films each year winning post service packages. It’s the only European event devoted exclusively to American independents. The Wroclaw edition is upcoming, October 23 – 25, and has an August 15 deadline for submissions. (And, there’s no submission fee.) The Paris edition recently […]
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Should Crowdfunding Sites Ban Overfunding?
Tweets with an unusually high level of disgruntlement have begun to appear in my feed in the last few days. These tweets all have one thing in common: crowdfunded projects that have failed to deliver in one form or another. These projects range from film to gaming to industrial design, but they were all very successful campaigns that have since turned into projects that left a sour taste in the mouth. In observing these complaints and interacting with some of the frustrated individuals over Twitter I began to see a pattern in the projects that caused so much grief: they […]
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The Rasmussen Brothers on Shooting the Low-Budget Horror Movie Dark Feed, Part One
Many filmmakers make a low-budget movie in the hopes of getting to L.A. and working on a big-budget movie. The Rasmussen brothers went in a different direction. Going out to L.A. they wrote and sold a script that was made into The Ward, directed by John Carpenter. But they wanted to do more than just write the script, so after completing their next screenplay they came back to Boston and made the movie Dark Feed on a shoestring. The Rasmussen brothers, Michael and Shawn, spoke to us recently about this experience, and what they have learned about making a movie […]
