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