Financing an independent film is no joke. For those of you who have gone through this process, you know just how grueling it is — taking meetings and phone calls with potential investors, entering your script into conferences and competitions — it gets overwhelming.
We’ve seen and experienced this firsthand with the films we’ve put together, and with clients as well. The process for our films and our colleague’s films begin with a process of cutting, compromise, and parring the script down to the very essence of the story.
While attending this fall’s film festival circuit and working with writers across the globe in mentorship programs, we saw a lot of great stories get wrapped up $50m-$100m bows.
Coming from film finance and production backgrounds, we were able to help these writers par their screenplays down to reasonable budgets while keeping the essence of their story in tact, and conveying one simple truth — the essence of every story costs nothing.
I like to tell myself there is great success to be found in the details. A justification for my own obsessive nature? Probably, but often true. Getting sucked up inside the tornado of sweeping, acute tasks necessary to get a film made has been easy. Distribution plans, business plans, breakdowns, pavement pounding, relationship building, due diligence and rewriting. Important details appear less important and fall by the way side. But, like Dorothy landing in Oz, I eventually find myself back in the land of detail. For example: a look book. 
As a moviegoer, I like to keep an open mind, but I also have a crisp understanding of what I like. Because I know this, I know there are other people who share my understanding and also like what I like. How do I know this? I see them leaving a theater as happy as I am about having watched a great film, sharing what they felt, taking that positive experience home with them. Knowing this affords me comfort in the simplest approach as a filmmaker. I write the types of stories that I would want to see and steer clear of pandering to a potential audience.