Film Finance Tips: 3 Reasons A Private Investor Will Support Your Film

everyone it's alexis here from exile in

this video i'm gonna take you through

the three reasons why

a private investor would choose to

invest in your film

okay so the first reason

is that the investor has disposable

income that they can afford to put

towards an investment that is as high

risk and as uncertain unpredictable

as film is

so it's important for an investor to be

able to actually afford to invest in the

film

and to essentially be able to lose that

money because film is so high risk high

reward it is a jackpot industry that for

anyone going into a film investment they

need to have that disposable income

available to them

and a lot of the time that means that

they've already

chosen to allocate a lot of their

capital to more safe investments so you

know property shares they might have a

business that they're running so they've

already kind of taken care of all those

other

investments they'll have a portfolio of

investments

and so film is something that they are

prepared to take a risk on and they have

that additional income that disposable

income to actually put towards something

like film

so what i've found is that it's much

easier to find investors who

are able to put in

investment to the film where they have

cash flow

so i'm thinking of things like

professionals doctors lawyers things

like that

business owners

and potentially even people that have

retired and the reason is that if they

don't have cash flow if they're in a

project industry so something like

property um where

you know often they're waiting for big

projects to land and then have a kind of

an influx of cash the problem with those

types of investors is it's very hard to

line up the time that you need

investment for the film and when their

projects are going to land

so the best and most common type of

investor is one that has consistent cash

flow and they have that disposable

income

so the second reason that they're going

to invest is because there's some sort

of emotional driver that's going to

cause them to invest in something as

high risk as film

and so

what

what is an emotional driver well it's a

reason that someone is going to invest

in the project

that is outside it simply being a

commercial decision for them because as

we know given it's so high risk if it

was just a commercial decision they

would likely go and put their money

somewhere else

so

as a filmmaker as a producer the most

important thing that you can do when it

comes to

finding investors or trying to think of

who the investors might be for your film

is to think about what are the emotional

drivers that makes your project

appealing to a specific type of investor

and so the emotional drivers could be

something as simple as you you know your

network people within your orbit that

want to support you it could be the

location that you're filming in so it

could be that there are local businesses

in that community that want to support

film production

it could be something to do with your

characteristics your ethnicity could be

one

it could be to do with the subject

matter of the film

and that's really obvious when you're

making a documentary

but sometimes it's not as obvious when

you're making a narrative film so with a

narrative film what you want to do is

start looking at the themes what are the

themes that you're exploring in the film

what's the message that you're trying to

convey

and can you find something within there

that you can hook onto

and that's going to give you that

emotional

driver

another one could simply be status so

you know it could be for the investor

something that is really just

a

something for them to tell their friends

right when they're having dinner uh it's

something that they might just want to

go along for the ride for

they might be

kind of excited by the idea of going to

a red carpet screening or

visiting you know on set maybe they have

children that are interested in the film

industry

so you really need to think about what

are these reasons beyond just the

commercial aspect of the project that's

going to cause someone to invest in the

film

so that's the second reason and then the

third and final reason has to be that

the numbers stack up so it's all well

and good for there to be those emotional

drivers there those reasons for them to

invest and they might be very excited by

those things but if the numbers don't

stack up for them if you can't

demonstrate to the investor a very clear

pathway to getting the film distributed

and to generating a return for their

investment and if you can't demonstrate

the likely time frame and the likely

returns that they're going to achieve

then there's no way that they're going

to invest in the film because while

those emotional drivers need to be there

they still need to know

in their mind that they're making a

well-thought-out well-considered

investment decision even though even if

they understand the high-risk nature of

it they want to know that they're going

into it with as much information as much

data and as much trust that you the

filmmaker the producer knows like has a

clear plan about how you're going to

return their investment to them so those

are the three reasons why an investor

would invest in your film