financing – Page 7 – Hope For Film

Where does the money come from that funds all those indie films applying to all those festivals? I am imagine 80% of it is somehow related to the directors of the work, but I have never been so lucky to have that situation.

Most of the movies we make over at This is that are funded at least 50% by private equity. We haven’t gotten money from hedge funds or venture capital groups, but still these stories/figures below gave me some cause to pause. And not that it was anything that everyone didn’t already suspect, but still unsettling none the less. Here’s hoping that there are still high net worth individuals who believe in the power of art and the future of entertainment. Feel free to give them my number when you meet them.

From your friends at Dow Jones:

Private equity firms raise 18% less in 4Q 08

US Venture-backed liquidity down 58%

We have a lot of great projects to make this year. It’s going to stay interesting that’s for sure.

But then again this kind of news is pretty crushing:

Unemployment Hits 16 Year High

Mind you most of film finance is probably classifiable as Loco-vesting, but I was struck by one of the ideas cited in the NY Times’ excellent YEAR IN IDEAS roundup. Locavesting is simply the practice of investing in local businesses.

A region’s benefit in incentivizing locavesting is akin to the logic around state tax credits: money spent in film is again transfered to the region’s other businesses generally. Civic leaders recognizing this might come up with additional incentives to encourage it. Certainly a savvy producer would be sure to foreground this with any locally-based investor-wannabe. The promise of regional cinema could be grounded by such a locally based film slate investment fund.

This is that excerpt from the article:

Locavestors
By AMY CORTESE
Perhaps you’ve heard of locavores: people who eat only foods that have been produced within a 100-mile radius. Now some people — call them locavestors — are investing in much the same way. The idea is that, by investing in local businesses, rather than, say, a faceless conglomerate, investors can earn profits while supporting their communities. To help match mostly local investors with capital-hungry local businesses, regional stock exchanges are starting to spring up around the globe.

Consider InvestBX, which was formed to serve businesses looking to raise relatively small sums in England’s West Midlands region. In February, InvestBX’s first listed company, Teamworks Karting, which runs an indoor go-kart center in Birmingham, raised more than $735,000 to open a new track in nearby Reading. In November, Key Technologies, a high-tech firm with 232 employees and annual sales of some $26 million, floated shares worth nearly $3 million. To list on InvestBX, a company must be based in the United Kingdom and have a significant part of its operations in the West Midlands. Companies can raise about $3 million from “local and U.K.-wide investors.”

Local exchanges address a financing gap for smaller companies, which may not be able to attract venture capital and for whom the major exchanges may be out of reach. “Small businesses need funding options more than ever in today’s recessionary climate,” says Trexler Proffitt, a professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., who recently completed a feasibility study for a seven-county Lancaster exchange. (His conclusion: affirmative.)

In a way, we’re coming full circle. Until the 1950s, when they began to consolidate, there were thriving regional exchanges all across the country. “Globalization has been advantageous, but we’re starting to see the sacrifices we’ve made,” Proffitt says. “People are interested in figuring out how to connect to their local communities again.”

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