I found the following video clips informative about film financing in the UK independent film industry, as well as more broadly.
The first clip addresses the value in international co-productions for film distribution as well as tax incentives that different countries can offer to film productions, as well as highlighting that the more investors a film has the more complicated the financing structures will be, as well as there being a greater risk to the Director's creative vision as more people will have a say in the finished product.
The second clip offers some very practical tips to Producers, and although it was made by an American, can still translate to a British Producer. the most valuable advice for me from this video is the consideration of a contingency budget and ensuring you include distribution costs in your budget. As a student filmmaker it is easy to forget to factor in costs of festival entries when budgeting. The other valuable piece of advice in this video is considering who you hire based on whether they are members of a Union or not. In Britain it is also advisable to consider if your crew are self- employed and registered for VAT or not, this can add a lot to your budget for crew fees.
Crowd Funding
Crowd funding a film is made easy by websites such as Kickstarter and IndieGoGo and can be a valuable way of raising both finance and an audience for your film, but Producer Colin Pons (workshop, 2014) raised the point that these websites charge fees for all the money your raise through them and that it may be just as effective, if you know who your audience are, to set up another way of receiving finance and keeping your audience involved in the project, such as a PayPal 'Donate' button on a website, where the fees for each transaction will be lower.
Another consideration with crowd funding is that it's not simply about getting money from people but keeping your audience engaged with the project continually, making the most of social media and mass communication tools to do so. The most successful projects to be crowd funded will make creative use of media such as behind-the- scenes tit-bits, messages from the key crew and cast and creative 'rewards' for investors. The trick is to be quirky (if not relevant to the project) and have a low cost to the production.
A recent feature film funded by crowd-funding was The Veronica Mars Movie Project, and rewards ranged from a pdf of the shooting script (little cost to the production) to a speaking role on the film (a cost of time and a small risk if the performance is poor).
Other funding options
Dilemmas funding- http://www.farnorthfilm.com/dilemmas/
A project embarked upon by Sheffield- based film company Far North Film was to be a series of micro-short films distributed by phone/ tablet app. Each film focuses on a moral dilemma or social issue and filmmakers Toby And Fionn Watts intended to sell short series of these films to charities working on each social issue. The basis of this model was that the charities would have high-quality media representing their cause and could add their logo and donation information at the end of each episode.
YouTube monetizing- https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/72857?hl=en-GB
The online platform YouTube can offer monetisation schemes to filmmakers who permit adverts to appear before, during or after their videos. This model works most effectively for filmmakers with a dedicated audience who can expect high viewer numbers.
Bibliography
PONS, C. (2014) Producing and Production Management Workshop 5 [Workshop] Friday 28th November 2014, Sheffield Hallam University
The Veronica Mars Movie Project by Rob Thomas (2013) [online], last accessed Friday 19th December 2014, at: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/559914737/the-veronica-mars-movie-project
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