Tag: Matthew Helderman

By Matthew Helderman, & Luke Taylor

Launched officially in January of 2014, BondIt found an audience fairly quickly. Liquidity (ease of cash-flow) proved to be a major issue for a large portion of the independent feature films being produced in North America – which was our target audience.

Providing cash-flow/financial coverage for union deposits was a new idea – a concept we devised after producing 30+ feature films between $200k – $4M budgets, We recognized a need to utilize union performers and workers – but the deposits (surety bonds) required often crippled the productions liquid assets.

By Matthew Helderman, & Luke Taylor

Determining specifics on the success of a product’s launch is always speculative. We’ve seen the same story countless times — a studio primes their latest release to be a massive box office success, only to watch the film crash and burn into box office bomb oblivion. Cloud Atlas, Mars Needs Moms, John Carter, Battleship, The Lone Ranger— we’re all familiar with these recent examples of big-budget bombs that were projected for success and proved to be poor investments.

The reasoning and research behind the cause of these failures and successes is endless — timing, marketing, money, foreign sales, lead actor status, direction, writing, length, acting — any of the above can be blamed for poor results. The reality is, it is simply impossible to determine the exact needs of an audience or consumer before any product is launched. Market research, development, and beta testing can certainly provide some statistics to lean on — but there is unfortunately no exact science until you are out there in the marketplace.

By Matthew Helderman, & Luke Taylor

The smoke & mirrors of the entertainment business

The entertainment business has long been known for its less then above board dealings. Sharky agents, ridiculous financing structures, limited transparency and faulty business models.

That hasn’t stopped an influx of great content, great talent and hard work to get done — it’s just a reality of the territory. But does it have to be? With technology enabling scalability of information and transparency through widespread communication abilities — the entertainment business stands to benefit greatly at the bottom line level.