You may have been noticing, that I am on a mission to create a sustainable investor class. It can be done. Part one is creating a new infrastructure — and that will come through Institutionalized Staged Financing. Part two is an educated investor base. And this, the third part in this blog series of what an investor must have, is part of that second part.
Tag: film financing
If you have half a brain and STILL want to invest in the film business, you know you need access to one thing: quality projects. But how do you get that? The truth is that accessing quality projects is a barrier to entry for any but those of the deepest pockets. Sooner or later most wise investors realize that are shut out of the top projects and their only chance of success is dumb luck. If we want to develop a sustainable investor class, we need to develop a method for them to participate in true quality.
If new financiers don’t find the quality projects, chances are they won’t last. How is the industry to sustain, let alone grow and evolve if it is just the same old same old? We need a plan to
As I mentioned last week, if you have half a brain and STILL want to invest in the film business, you know you need access to quality projects. But generally speaking there are a few other things you want too. I think this post subject (TASIC) can become a regular weekly column. Today we will explore the phrase that should be on every potential film investor’s lips: a portfolio approach to investment.
Knowledgeable Investors are not going to bet the horse or house on one trick pony. Wise players want
I was meaning to build more Simple Fixes. I have posted some here already. Imagine how fast and far we could travel, if we all just generated a Simple Fix a month. Or even a year. Our progress would be astounding.
Here our filmmaker world people generally desire first and foremost to get funding for their film. You’d think there would be a single place you could turn to and find all the sources gathered or at least many of them. I don’t know of such a place.
So I built one.
By Colin Brown
For 15 months now the independent film world has been eagerly awaiting the regulatory fine print on the JOBS Act that many believe will both broaden and quicken their fundraising efforts across the U.S. Now that the SEC has finally published those first rules that allow filmmakers and film startups to advertise their investment proposals to the public, some will have been intrigued by a new amendment that specifically disqualifies bad actors.
Before film critics all rise up in celebration, let’s be clear that America’s financial watchdog is not about to outlaw scenery-chewers, hams, stilted amateurs and all those glorious Raspberry Award winners from being pitched to millionaires. There would be too little film industry left to regulate. But the “bad actors” referred to here will be just as familiar to anyone who has done enough time in the film market trenches: financial miscreants.
By Colin Brown
Think you’ve got problems getting your films financed and seen by audiences? Well, you are in shockingly good company. In recent weeks, everyone from Steven Spielberg and George Lucas to Steven Soderbergh, John Travolta, Mike Figgis, David Lynch and Lynda Obst have all bemoaned the near-impossibility of getting their own pet projects onto the big screen. Taken together, their published comments are a scathing indictment of a film establishment that is only obsessed with pre-assembled projects that pander to the planet’s widest common denominators.
I have been producing movies for about twenty-five years. And it still is a thrill when an executive asks me to submit a project. But does a simple request mean you should send the project you have slaved over on in to them?
I have never had a company actually finance a project that is not either already somewhat packaged with cast or has pre-sales done on it. I have to remind myself over and over. Good acquisitions execs craft all sorts of arguments of why I should submit my projects early — and sometimes I fall for it. I think when they succeed in suckering me in they too honestly believe that they can get it made without already being fully realized (short of execution); but they soon learn they can’t. Which is not to say that they can’t get it set up, but that is often a far cry from getting it made.
Acquistions executives job is to bring projects in, period. So they ask. And often we comply. If the sign of insanity is to repeat the same action over and over, expecting the result to change, are we insane to keep doing this practice?
