A Beginners Guide To Film Finance by Emily Corcoran

hi my name is Emily Cochran and I'm the writer producer and supporting actress

for a film called the stolen the stolen was shot in New Zealand and was funded

out of the UK Germany New Zealand obviously and a little bit out of the

States and it was a really really tricky thing to put together financially so

I've been asked by film courage to talk to you about film funding so the first

thing I'd like to say as a creative person who had to go into film funding

to fund my own film was it is difficult. I can't really express how much I dislike it I

really do I think if you're a creative which you may very well be you might be

a director or a writer trying to get your own project off the ground it's

probably the last thing you want to think about and frankly it is a very

very different skill set but let me see if I can help you a bit

so the first thing to have a think about is sales agents sales agents are crucial

to your financial package in fact without a sales agent and without their

projections it's really hard to move forward and to getting a film funded so

the reason for this is that investors have very little security when they

invest in a film they can't really say whether it will ever make anything

because it's an unknown quantity however a sales agent may be able to offer

projections based upon similar films they've sold or films with similar

actors in them and that kind of thing and if they're respected it does give

the investor a lot of comfort so how does a sales agent assess your project

well the first thing they look at is obviously the script and they look at

the genre and in some cases if it's for instance a horror or a martial arts film

the genre itself and if it's well written could be enough for them to give

projections upon because it doesn't necessarily have to have any named

actors in it but generally sadly you do need the actors and the actors are

really what they base their projections on if I'm honest so it'll keep coming

back to that the actors the actors the actors who is in it it's like everything

goes backwards from the screen so how do you get the actors it is a whole

different tutorial however what I would say is let me give you some advice if

your grandmother's second cousins dog knows Brad Pitt please get friendly with

that dog and if you can get something via the dog - Brad Pitt then do it

because it is so hard to attach name Talent particularly when you're a

first-timer you need to pull out all the stops work

out all your connections no matter how tenuous and give it a go my advice is

always be polite don't be too pushy some actors are really responsive

to an outside connection others are not and they really want you to go through

the agent the problem is the bigger the actor the more blockage from the agent

because they're being offered so much stuff and obviously the agent is

filtering and trying to get the best deals and your film even though your

script may be really great for that actor might be too risky you're a

first-timer they've never heard of you there's lots and lots of reasons so

whatever you can do try and get that to an actor maybe a different way if you

can run the back door the other advice is just write really good parts just

think about that and maybe offer it to an actor who doesn't normally play those

kind of roles and they might just find it an interesting thing to do and take

it I would also advise going via managers and the states because the

managers are looking much more at the overall career of the actor as opposed

to just you know what they're making and you know American agents are well pretty

hard-nosed and they will they would just curl you out they are obligated to give

the script to the actor but they don't have to give it to them for 12 months

and they could also say anything they like while they pass it over so just

bear that in mind so say you get to that point you've got

your actor you've got your great script you've

maybe got your storyboards you've got some professional team members and

you've got sales estimates what next

you can begin to piece together your film finance plan film finance can come

from all different sources and I would advise really doing some research a lot

of it is grunt work so one of the easiest sources of film

funding it comes from government tax breaks or tax credits or tax grants and

they can be given just for shooting a film in the area and this can be your

state if you're in America it can be an in Canada it can be your town it can be

your country and don't be scared of going outside your own country as well

because you might find that there are more or higher rates of tax breaks

outside and if your film isn't too low-budget

it could really work for you or you could look at doing a co-production

where you tap into a tax break in one country and a tax break in another and

they could fit together it begins to get a little bit complicated paperwork wise

because you have to do official co-productions but sometimes you don't

in the stolen we didn't we did an unofficial co-production with Germany so

it is possible that's the first thing I would look there you can get between

twenty to forty percent of your budget just from tax breaks so get online look

at all of the Commission's everywhere and see what they're offering in that

area and if it means you have to move to move your project to Australia or Canada

or you know just Connecticut then do it okay that will be the simplest thing to

do obviously taking into account having to hire a local crew and all that anyway

so that's the first thing the second thing is there are grants often given

separate grants so equity grants given by film Commission's in Britain it's the

BFI the British Film Institute in New Zealand for instance it's the New

Zealand Film Commission and most countries have a Film

Commission of some sort and you can apply now this is really really

difficult to get this money then normally as a hell of a lot of criteria

they have to take a lot of boxes because it's government money so they have to

have certain things in place before they can give it to you and often it is

leaning towards non-commercial projects so if you have a commercial project it

might be really difficult to get money but I always say put in an application

and then forget about it if you get the money from them and you get on to that

system fantastic because once you're in their system you can do really well out

of it so the next thing is I get private money there are lots of different

options there are bank well banking I guess is different than

private but I would say bank gaps which are difficult to get unless you have

done pre-sales and a lot of the first time is watching

this will not get pre-sales pre-sales have got more and more and more

difficult to get and a lot of banks just don't want to that they're incredibly

risk-averse and they do not want to risk not getting their money back so they

like to be assured that when the film is finished there will be a sale it's very

hard to do at the moment so banks are difficult but there are private

companies that do gap and when I say gap that is money that

comes out in first position with nobody else okay so it's got to

come out first and often that can be between 10 and 20 percent so it's worth

that if you can get 20 for sure but there'll be caveats

again Google gap financing and see what you find the same companies will

probably if you are lucky enough to have a presale they will also cashflow

pre-sales moving on there is other types of funding in Britain there are there is

a tax break for investors which is

different from the government tax break for filmmakers and that's called an

enterprise investment scheme and that means that the person investing gets a

30% well tax break on on their own tax bill

and there could be similar things like that and wherever you're living it's

worth looking into this is a really good thing because it is a risky business for

a private investor to put money in so that if they know that guaranteed some

think back like a tax break it becomes a little bit easier to convince them if

you do tap into this and you're fortunate enough to either find a fund

that's already up and running and can assess your project and put money and or

you find a private individual who's willing to do it you can really get a

big chunk of your budget you know I I would say 30% in my case I probably got

close to 50% of my budget from private individuals who went into an enterprise

investment scheme and and a startup Enterprise Investment Scheme which is

another form of tax break which was wonderful really really helpful the

other forms of funding are there are just straight equity funds out there

many in America there are a few and the UK and there's quite a few in Germany as

well their money has come from venture capitalists they've come from private

individuals who just really like film it's it's difficult but they are funds

and you should just again Google research really really research and look

up film equity funds okay that's different to film tax breaks it's

different to gap funding because equity is is a different animal they take a

proportion of the movie

one of the other wonderful options if you're lucky enough to meet them is a

wealthy person now they're really hard to find unless you're particularly

well-connected and if you're not well connected but you know somebody who is

and they might be interested in in doing film you know make a proposal to them

say look do you think you could raise fun funds for me on my movie for

Commission for a credit whatever you need to offer them and and we can become

a team it is worth finding these people if you can and prefer ending them and

really looking at a business deal the only thing that I would say is that if

you're talking to a private investor really really be as honest as possible

about returns about the risk and all of that because you don't want it to bite

you on the ass later it would be a nightmare and it's also really sad for

the rest of us who are being honest about whether the film's gonna make

money or not because if they lose their money they will never invest in a film

again so think about your future career now a lot of wealthy people who may be

wealthy from a different industry might get involved with the film purely

because it's a film it's interesting they might like the subject matter they

may like the actor they might like yeah the genre they might like where it's

being shot it might be meaningful to them in some way and it may not actually

be about money but ultimately you really want to try

and get their money back and the other point that I should make is that if you

do get a private individual try and ensure that in the waterfall in their

finance and the finance plan that they come out in a reasonably high position

so they're not last on the list because that that's not great so from a private

individual you could get 10% of your budget you could get more you could get

five who knows but there are other options which I will tell you about so

the option is to go and do a deal with a

post-production house or a equipment house and do in kind investment or they

may actually do physical cash investment for a movie and in a way that's their

way of discounting the their services however it can come in in a version of

an investment and that could give you up to 5% of your budget also another little

known and little utilized option is a music deal so there are companies out

there who will take the rights to your soundtrack obviously it has to be

original music and they will give you money for it upfront or they might give

it to you when you're in post often it's only approximately 1% of your budget but

it's really useful because it's cash they don't come out in the waterfall

they literally just take the the soundtrack rights and then they go away

so the other option which I've left to last which the main reason being is is

that it is less and less likely these days is a distribution deal so if you

have a movie that is very attractive and has a really well-known actor or it's a

particular genre that's very hip and that distributor believes that they can

make money out of it you make it a pre-sale so they may commit to buying

the movie before the film was made and in that case you can then finance a

foreign bank or a private investor and that could be multi territory or it

could just be one territory you have to be very careful about how many

territories they take for what money because if you've got other investors

involved you have to be sure that they're still getting a piece of the pie

when they come out so those are the options you need to get on Google you

need to start looking this stuff up and it's a

lot of grunt work okay but I'm sure you can do it

so lastly remember film funding doesn't stop once you've raised the money

unfortunately investors are gonna know what's going on

with their money all the way through the process they're going to want reports

they're going to want to know what's happening and boy when you have finished

that film and it starts being shown to buyers they're going to want to know

what the results are and unfortunately you're probably going to sweat because

if they're not selling the film is not selling for what you expected it to

where it's not selling it can be really stressful even though you may have

warned the investors of the risks they may not have really comprehended them or

done they don't want to hear it and that can be a lot of sweat so remember it

doesn't stop this is why I said it sucks because it doesn't matter that you raise

the money and then you get to make the film and you have that great time on set

and you really enjoy everything and then you get to show it to people you've

still got people to answer to at the end of it my final word is if you by any

chance get offered by a studio to be taken under their wing and they pay for

the whole lot and just give you a fee dear God take it okay just take it

forget about the independent thing just take the studio deal okay you don't want

to be thinking about this stuff alright really try and get away from it as

quickly as you can so just think of this smaller movie as your stepping stone to

being looked after later if you can okay now if any of you out there are thinking

about funding your own film and you think that I really know what I'm doing

please don't come to me I'm not gonna help you fund your film because I hate

it okay but watch the stolen