Three Principles for Film Financing
Every film needs money to turn the idea into something an audience of people can watch on a screen, whether it be in a dark theater with a hundred strangers, or on your phone on YouTube on the subway to work.
Filmmakers often abdicated the responsibility for raising funds to a producer, but doing so will pause any progress on your film until you find that person.
Instead, I recommend that you become that person, and today will share three principles that have helped me raise money for film projects, as well as an episode of Truly Independent on the same topic.
Track Everything
The first principle is to track everything. Build a simple spreadsheet, and add the following columns:
Name | Phone | Email | Company name | Industry | Intro From
Then checkbox columns for Contacted | Pitch Deck Sent | Appointment | Pitch | Result | Committed | PPM | Closed
It should look something like this:
It doesn't have to be fancy. You don't need some SaaS app that costs $20 a month to keep track of everyone.
Every day you'll spend time in this tracking sheet following up with people who are already on it, and adding people to the list.
Expect that you'll need to talk to dozens – if not hundreds – of investors, so keeping track of where everyone is in the process is essential.
Find The Leverage
As we talked about in our episode on pitching, you'll be talking to hundreds of people, and setting aside time every day to do this work of fundraising.
In any given hour, you have a choice over how to spend that time. Will you cold message a dozen more potential investors? Or is there a more leveraged activity that you could spend your time on?
I've found that the more time you spend finding and creating leverage up front, the easier the process becomes down the line.
For example, on my current fundraise, I spent months and even hired a younger producer to help me with direct, cold outreach to potential investors. After messaging hundreds of people, I ended up with exactly one meeting.
One.
Dozens of hours, one meeting, and the individual wasn't interested in investing in film, as he'd been burned in the past.
Consider another hour that I spent and how that worked out:
A friend called me about a guy he'd met at a networking event who was trying to find some people in the film industry to help mentor his daughter who had just done a short film. He asked if I'd be interested in going to lunch with this person, and I said yes.
Over that hour lunch, I answered a bunch of questions from his daughter, but then at the end he asked what I was working on. I told them about the two films we were self-distributing in theaters, and how I was raising a film fund. He asked how he could help.
That one hour led to a neighborhood party at his home that he hosted on our behalf. 30 people, many who were potential investors, were there. That led to five meetings, which led to another 10 because they had people they wanted me to meet as well.
That initial hour turned into 15 connections that are now on my tracking sheet as they're interested in the fund, or are willing to help connect me to someone else.
That's leverage.
Make sure that each week you aren't just doing the grunt work of cold messaging, but spending time finding "connectors" or "bridges" that can connect you to more people than you can find on your own.
Don't Stop
There's a final mindset piece that's essential to your success raising money: don't give up!
As a producer, you're always fundraising, even if you don't have a current offer out in the marketplace. You should always be meeting new people, adding them to your contact tracking sheet, and following up with them when you are raising for a new project.
It's hard work. It takes a ton of time, and it doesn't pay you anything to be out fundraising. But if you don't do it, it's unlikely anyone else is going to come in and do it for you when they can be raising money for their own projects.
These principles, combined with the steps for pitching your project will help get you on the path toward raising money with your projects.
Take it from me though – start small. If you've never raised any money, it's going to be hard to go out and raise millions unless you already have the network that can do it.
Start with a five-figure budget short film. Then do a six-figure feature. Then raise for your million-dollar movie.
Investors look to invest in lines, not dots. Dots are single projects that don't have anything that came before or anything coming after. Those are harder investments because there is so much pressure on that one project performing well in order for the investor to get their money back.
If you can produce a few projects before you go out and raise money, it becomes easier. That means working on other people's projects, being a part of their success, and using that as a springboard for your own projects.
Before I started raising for Producer Fund I, I had done four independent feature films and four seasons of television, and had nearly 15 years in the industry as a producer. That's a very clear line that people could trace from the beginning until now, and they can see the trajectory of where that line is going.
Start where you are and don't stop. Keep going, keep adding to your own line, and then get people excited about where that line is headed.
We recorded an entire episode of Truly Independent on the topic as well. You can watch or listen to it here:
Member discussion