Don’t let lack of experience stop you from achieving your goals

Just like everything else in life worth doing, there is a steep learning curve to becoming a great film maker.  This is true whether or not you are trying to break in using the traditional route or the entrepreneurial route.

The traditional route is to start out as a production assistant, work you way up to line producer, then to production manager, and so on until you reach your goals.  The problem is you no matter how many films you work as a PA no one is ever willing to put their faith in you to do the next job up.  You just don’t have the experience.

The same is true for the entrepreneurial filmmaker.  If you are going this route, then you are out hustling for investors or for a studio to back your project.  “What have you done before?  Can you show me something?” will be one of their very first questions.

If either of these sounds like a situation you are currently facing, let me share with you the advice of a friend of mine named Donny.  This advice came up during a conversation with a friend of ours, a young actress, who was looking for a day job, but couldn’t find anyone who would hire her because she lacked some skill  for each of the jobs she had applied.

The advice he gave to her was golden advice that I will remember forever.  He said:

If you let not knowing how to do something stop you from getting what you want, then you’ll never get anywhere in life.

Donny has a great story of how he had got his first job working for a video production company.  He wanted to work the camera, but the company wasn’t hiring for the camera position.  Instead, they were looking for someone to do DVD menus and animations using the Lingo programming language in Macromedia Director.  Donny is a good friend of mine, and for all of his skills in art, film, animation, and business, if there is one thing he is not its a programmer.  So when they asked, “Can you program Lingo, because that is what we really need?“  His response was “Absolutely…but I want to give my old job two weeks notice…can I start in two weeks?”

He didn’t need to give his former employer two weeks notice…he didn’t have a former employer.  He was broke and jobless.  Instead he went out and bought three books on programming lingo, and proceeded to teach himself for those two weeks.  He got the job, and worked his way into a camera operator position in no time.

Now, I’m not saying lie about your abilities…and please please don’t lie to an investor about what you’ve done before.  There are severe legal consequences for lying to an investor.  But what I am saying is that you can’t let your own lack of experience dictate what you can or can’t accomplish.  People always tell you to think outside the box.  I’m here to tell you there is no box.

Let me give you a real life example.  I have an a friend who is an actor who wants to start producing some feature films.  However, he has absolutely nothing produced.  He has all the contacts to make a film.  He knows crew and talent both here in the south and Los Angelos.

He called me asking me to do some random projects for him to use as a reel that he could use to approach investors.  The thing is, what he is basically trying to do is do a bunch of projects for the sole purpose of building a reel, because he thinks investors won’t give him money without one.  The fact is, he hasn’t tried to raise money yet, so he doesn’t even know if they will ask for that sort of proof.  Ultimately he might spend the better part of a year doing purposeless projects, just to make a good reel.

Capitalize on other peoples experience

If you aren’t trying to get a ‘job’  but are instead trying to get a movie funded you have another great option available to you.  You can capitalize on the experience of your team.  Think of the above example.  My friend wants to raise money for a film.  He thinks he has the investors, but is afraid to approach them without some proof of experience.  However, he pretty much knows who his core crew is.  They all have experience and extensive reels.  Do you think that if he had a good possibility of getting funding that that crew wouldn’t let him use their reels to get the money?  After all, as a crew person it means you will get work and get paid.  Try this experiment: Call any professional camera operator in the world…preferably a steadicam operator because they usually have killer reels.  Tell him you have a feature script, you want to hire him as Director of Photography, but you are still raising funding  If he is interested, ask him if its ok to use his reel  to convince an investor to fund the movie.  He won’t say no.

Take the group of experience crew who have agreed to work with you. Form a Production Company, and edit together an extremely awesome reel from all of them.  Then say the following words: “This is an example of various projects my crew has worked on in the past”.  You haven’t lied, and you aren’t really even being deceitful.  After all, the people responsible for this reel will be working on your film, so the investor can probably expect close to the same quality of work.

Does it really matter if you personally don’t have the experience?  It shouldn’t because obviously you are good enough to surround yourself with smart enough people to get the job done.  Are you smart enough to get the job done?

Ten steps to raising $1 million dollars for your film

I’ve recently uncovered a really cool forum at FilmmakerIQ.  One of the posters there has an excellent forum post about how to raise money for a film.  You can check out the original post here.

I agree with nearly everything on the list with one exception.  Setting up your LLC in Nevada has some benefits, but it may not be worth it.  You have to have someone in Nevada you acts as an agent on your behalf whereas if you incorporate in your own state you can be your companies agent.  Also, you may miss out on some incentives that different states offer.  For example, where I live in Louisiana you can recieve a 25% tax credit on all spending over $300,000.    You can then actually sell that credit for cash.  But you can only get that credit if you are a Louisiana based corporation.

Film Finance and Distribution - Keep on keeping on.

Today’s post is going to be something a bit more on the inspirational side rather than being purely technical (and secretly I’m also testing something on the backend…shhh…don’t tell anyone). Nearly any venture, any idea, any product…or anything…works at least some of the time. Specifically, what am I getting at? Fund raising…

I’m sure most of you are trying to raise funds for an independent film, and it seems impossible. It’s just too hard…everyone says no. But indie films get financed every year. What are you doing wrong?

Probably nothing. The secret lies in knowing that everything works…some of the time. So, if you are asking for money to make a film, someone will say yes. It’s about percentages and ratios of success. Lets throw out an arbitrary number, such as 0.5%. Lets say if you ask people who can afford to finance a film to give you money, 0.5% of the time you will succeed. Seems pretty dismal doesn’t it? It’s not.

Robert Kiyosaki, author of the famous Rich Dad Series (a set of books I highly recommend) was once asked, “How can you recommend people start their own business when 9 out of 10 businesses fail”. His response, “If that is true, then I will start 10 businesses.”

So by the same token, if only one out of every 200 people you ask will finance your film …then ask 200 people.

This is much the same logic we use in the world of web promotion. For example, my other website Killer Film has some pretty high server costs, which we pay for through advertising. We get paid when someone clicks on one of our ads. Generally, only about 2% of people actually click on an ad. Do we waste our time trying to make more people click on our ads? No, we can’t control if people want what our advertisers are selling. So instead, we focus on growing our traffic. More people means more clicks.

Those of you who have a film already produced should also take note of this principle. Finding distribution is hard, and its easy to get disheartened if you get turned down the first time you visit a market like AFM. However, I’ve had friends take the same film back to AFM for two years with no luck. Then finally, they take it the third year and sell multiple territories, and completely pay back their investors.

You can’t predict everything that can happen. Maybe your potential investor just lost a ton in the market. Maybe the distributor just filled up their roster for this year five minutes before you walked in. Or maybe you’ll show up at just the perfect time and find an investor who just sold off a huge property and needs to move some money before he’s hit with a huge tax bill. You can’t predict what happens with a single person you speak with…but it averages out such that perseverance eventually breeds success.

On a crazy side note: Bizarre as it might sound, things that seem completely impossible are often possible…just very unlikely. It is entirely possible that you could drop a pencil onto a desk, and have it fall completely through the desk, passing completely through solid matter. In quantum mechanics a phenomena called, “tunneling” has been show to occur where a solid object passes through another solid object. You’d probably have to drop the pencil a few quadrillion times before it happened…but eventually it would happen, probably right after you win the lottery.

Louisiana Film Tax Credits extended to 2010

The Louisiana Film tax credits were set to expire as of January 1st 2008. As of the passing of House Bill 139 (PDF) the credits now extend to 2010. Also, the credits do not completely go away as of 2010, but rather they reduce to 20% until July 2012, and then become 15% after that.

Why Louisiana is the place to produce your next film.

Louisiana has a ton of incentives that are great for filmmakers. Even if you are located elsewhere, you may be able get great benefit out of producing your next film in Louisiana, through a Louisiana company. In fact, the current laws in Louisiana make it much much easier to raise investment capital than any other state.

The primary reason that production in Louisiana is a great option is the LA film tax credits incentives. If you are shooting a movie with a budget of $300,000 dollars or more, you earn 25% of the budget in tax credits. That’s $75,000. Plus you get an additional 10% worth of credits on the amount you pay to Louisiana residents. Lets assume that 50% of your budget is spent on cast and crew of Louisiana, so that’s $150,000. Ten percent of that (the amount you get of extra payroll tax credits) is $15,000.

So now you have a sum total of $90,000 in tax credits. So….what the hell are tax credits. Well, put simple if you owed $90,000 in Louisiana income tax, you wouldn’t have to pay it. But what if you don’t owe that sort of taxes? This is the part where it gets crazy…you can sell the credits to someone who does.

That’s right, you can take that $90,000 of credits…which you generated simply from finishing the film, and sell them immediately. You have to sell them at a discount (because why would someone spend $90,000 to save $90,000 in taxes). However, some firms who broker such transactions can get you as much as 80 cents on the dollar. That means that your finished film instantly nets you $72,000 cash..

But wait it gets better. These brokerage firms are often able to sell your tax credits ahead of time….that’s right…before your film production even begins, you have already made $72,000..

But what if you don’t have $300,000? Well, the beauty of this whole system is that it helps gaining access to that $300,000 so much easier. If you can guarantee your investors an initial return off the bat, they will see it as much less of a risk. After all, they are receiving around 24% return from day 1.

In addition to all this is the Federal Jobs Creation Act of 2004…a piece of US federal legislation that makes it even more lucrative for investors who invest in films of budgets under $15 million. But I’ll save that discussion for another article.

Because I want to raise awareness of Louisiana’s film production nationally, as well as internationally, I’m adding a Louisiana category for posts, as well as adding a section of Louisiana Resources to my ‘Resources’ page. Expect more articles focusing on Louisiana production in the future, in addition to my usual advice on filmmaking.