Whichever sector of the entertainment industry you’re in, you are reliant on content getting financed. Yet in my years of working in the film and TV industry, I’ve met so many people that don’t know how entertainment financing works.
It’s always struck me as strange. In which other industry would that be normal? If you worked in real estate, you’d need to know how mortgages and appraisals worked. Surely if you want to work in entertainment, you need to know how content is financed. You’re only helping yourself.
Nobody is saying that you have to be an expert. But if you’re looking to raise money for your film or any other kind of content, you need to treat yourself like a business. If you want investors to take you seriously, you need to show them that you’re serious too.
Don't worry - it doesn't have to be that complicated! This series is designed to pull back the curtain and reveal some of the industry secrets that will make your life a lot easier.
Here are four of the main reasons why I wrote this series of books on film and TV finance:
1. Frustration
I’ll be honest with you – my initial reason for writing these books was pure frustration.
I’ve had so many meetings and conversations over the years with producers and filmmakers, lawyers and agents, all looking to raise financing for their projects with little or no concept of how to do it or – even more dangerously – what to do with it if an investor actually committed some money!
I’ve sat in meetings with experienced producers where I’ve had to explain what a pre-sale is multiple times. I’ve had to explain to filmmakers what a tax credit is, and why a 20% tax rebate doesn’t cover 20% of their budget. I’ve had to explain to a producer with a number of credits behind her why we can’t just “gap finance” her entire movie.
And above all, I was tired of having producers and filmmakers coming into my office looking for millions of dollars for their next project without having the slightest idea of how we would get that money back.
So, when I first started pitching a series of books on film financing, I’m sorry to say that it came partly from a place of negativity. I got so frustrated at having to explain their own business to certain people!
2. Lack of Resources
However, the more I spoke to people, the more I realized that many producers and filmmakers – the good ones anyway! – really WANTED to learn these things. They just didn’t know how.
Obviously there are courses out there that one can take, but these are often costly, sometimes hundreds or even thousands of dollars at a time. Independent filmmakers generally don’t have that kind of money to throw around.
And honestly, the best way to learn is via experience, by working with more experienced producers and filmmakers, and cutting your teeth on a few deals. But getting that initial experience is difficult when you are first trying to break into the industry, particularly if you don’t know the very things that you are trying to learn.
So, I realized that my frustration was less with the filmmakers themselves and more with the industry as a whole and the resources that were available.
3. Better Resources
Now, in fairness, it’s not that there are no resources available. If you go to Amazon, you can scroll through pages and pages of books on the topics of film production and financing. If you read them all, I’m sure you’d have a vast knowledge of pretty much everything you’d need to know.
The problem is, you can’t just cherrypick the best and most relevant bits of each book. When I was trying to educate myself about this stuff, I read book after book and went through that process myself.
I know from experience that not all books are created equal. Some of them are really useful and also a lot of fun to read, filled with hilarious anecdotes about old Hollywood legends and the craziness that went on behind the scenes on some of my favorite movies.
Others frankly seem like self-indulgent vanity pieces where the author spends the first quarter of the book simply talking about themselves as if to reassure you that they are important and you should listen to everything they have to say. However, these books often lack substance, and if there was any useful information in there I had usually given the book up in frustration before I got there.
Our series of books is designed to be factual. There may be the odd anecdote here and there to illustrate certain points – after all, theory sometimes makes the most sense when a practical context is applied – but they are meant to be descriptive and fact-based.
If you’re looking for flowery prose and dinner party-worthy stories, this is not the place for that. But if you need simple and clear advice from someone that has been through it all before, this series is designed for you.
4. These Are The Books That I Wish I’d Had
I was just like the rest of you. I arrived in Hollywood with a burning ambition to create powerful content that could change the world… and very little knowledge of how to do it.
That is why I read books and looked for resources in a desperate search to obtain the skills I knew that I would need here. After all, how could I survive in this industry if I didn’t understand the very thing that drove it?
There were some good indicators here and there, but most of what I learnt was through experience and simple trial and error – and believe me, there were many errors along the way.
Looking back, I set out to write the books that I wish I’d had available to me when I first got started in the entertainment industry. These are the books that contain all the information (and more) that people badly need but cannot seem to find.
I hope that you enjoy them and find them useful too! As always, let me know your feedback using the contact form here, or feel free to leave a review on our Amazon page.
Happy filmmaking!
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