Fincaning Option

I'm not quite sure I follow:

Financing on credit? Let's see if I understand: My company agrees to loan you $300,000 with no interest. You agree to pay LFM $1,000 a month for 13 years. We let you use our studio, equipment and staff and you control all the creative aspects. We have to pay overhead on the studios and salaries to the staff. You make the movie and control the production/marketing/distribution.

No matter what happens you continue to pay my company $1,000 a month for 13 years. The risk is still there if the movies makes no money. What's in it for my company?

Are you referring to a private line of credit or did I read your post to say "Let Tony Soprano finance it."

And what if the indie filmmaker stops paying on the loan? He's already made his film, there's nothing stopping him from taking his reels and running like hell to Cannes...

thanks

Exactly, it's basically like buying a house or car on credit. The same type of financing....I agree-there are holes in the idea of it and it's been done before, but curious if filmmakers would still go for it if they weren't the one's actually producing the film-if those aspects were controlled by someone else. Anyway, thanks for the reply.

I suspect finding a company willing to loan you the money for little or no interest and provide you with studio space, staff, equipment and post production would be just as difficult as finding an investor. If not more. Using my hypothetical: if the movie follows the path of 80% of indie movies made and doesn't turn a profit my company would get the $300,000 back in a little over a decade but I'd still be out the costs of the studio, staff, equipment and post production.

It's an interesting option to discuss. I've found that if you can show it's a good deal for the other people (financiers, prodCo, filmmaker) and not just a good deal for you, it helps. So for the sake of discussion - I'm the filmmaker/company you're coming to with this project: I have the money, I have the studio, staff, equipment and post production. You come to me and want me to loan you the production money and provide the studio, equipment, staff, and post facilities. I could use all that to make my own movie. What will you offer me that will make me want to invest all that in YOUR movie?

Maybe together we can come up with a workable scenario.

This type of financing already exists...it's called credit cards, indie film producers use them all the time. Then they rent from a rental place...just about the same, just with out the one stop shopping.

As a business, I could see this as working, but the risk is really high, the interest would be huge on these investments.

your right

"I could use all that to make my own movie. What will you offer me that will make me want to invest all that in YOUR movie?"

You are right...I was actually meaning I was the studio. I can provide studio space, staff, equipment, post, ect...and I can and do make my own movies, but I have been trying to find ways to help others and a recent new development that allows us to utilize these things came up-but coming up with any partnership scenario that's actually feasible is tough. Most people simply want to make the movie themselves and we considered (still considering) offering this service, but it is a risk for us and the big issue is finding a producer that is actually willing to let us devise and handle the production and marketing. I feel like we would need to set the budget (definitely less than $70,000) and channel it thru our marketing and distrib channels to ensure success as poth parties would be highly motivated for success. But maybe that's a control freak trying to trying to do something that just won't work with creative people..and yes, it's the same as a credit card, but without the interest and with some of the facilities, equip, staff that you probably couldn't nessacarily scrape up for the same amount as a credit card..

Anyway, I knew the concept had been done before and banks basically quit doing it and the reason it failed was because they let filmmakers without a distribution agreement or a good plan spend tons of money and then they made maybe a good movie, but no one saw it and it lost money. From a business perspective that is a bad idea unless you have a business model that works and you can control each production to fit into that model.

It's just an interesting concept to me, but will probably remain as "concept"

I got exactly the opposite of what you were asking. Sorry about that. You are wondering if there are producers out there who would make a movie using all of your resources. You would handle all the production and marketing and the producer would be a hired hand - making the project happen?

Am I understanding it better?

yeah

Yeah, that's basically it...I'm just not sure it's a perfect marriage-I think it could be just as hard as finding an investor. Maybe too many creatives weren't meant to work together-it seems like a lot of people say they want to, but is that limiting each person's creativitiy? From a business standpoint it's great with a pre designed distribution/marketing set up..but filmmaking as a whole is very complex.