Increase the Budget of Your Film

Increase the Budget of Your Film

by joannefilm

Increase the Budget of Your Film

Every filmmaker that I have ever met dreams to increase the budgets of their films as they progress in their careers. They make shorts. Sometimes many, many shorts, and they dream of making a feature. They make a feature film for $150,000 and dream of making a $1,000,000 film.  After that they dream that their films will continue to grow and grow in size and budgets.

And yet. Filmmakers get stuck in this process of growing their budgets. They make their shorts for no money. They ask all their friends for favors.  No one gets paid. Everyone works for free on weekends. When they expand to a more expensive short, they “self-fund” their films. (If you have read my book “Getting Your Film Funded, Produced and Distributed Globally” or my blogs, you will already know that I don’t believe in the term: “self-fund.” I think it’s just a way of trying to sound fancy, to impress, when actually it means that - in plain language - “I paid for my own film out of my own money.”  

Then, when the filmmaker moves towards making that first feature, they try to use the same “strategies.”

• “I’ll get my friends to work for free.”

• “I’ll self-fund my film.”

• “We’ll shoot on the weekends.”

Or perhaps they learn about the film industry and they try:

• “I’ll find a producer to raise money for me.”

• “I’m a director and someone else will raise the money.”

• “I’ll find a rich person and they can afford to pay for it.”

• “I’ll design a beautiful pitch deck and that will land investors for me.”  every aspect of their film: their scripts, their directing chops, editing, acting, and all the other creative aspects of the filmmaking process, hoping against hope that someone will recognize their talent and pay to make their films.

But almost no filmmakers actually think about the most basic thing: fundraising.

Fundraising is an umbrella term that includes many different approaches to bringing money to your film.  At the beginning, when you are making shorts, perhaps you start out with crowdfunding. Check ou my Demystifying Crowdfunding class. This is a great way to practice speaking to people about your film + money. Filmmakers are so used to talking about story, but they are shocked to find out how difficult it is to talk to people about money.

Wherever you live, there are grants available for artists and for film projects.  There are foundations supporting all kinds of causes.  And yes, there are investors.  Each type of fundraising has its own style, its own skills, its own communication approach.  Each type of fundraising draws on different strengths and weaknesses of the filmmaker.  Every single filmmaker at this point says: “I’m not good at asking people for money.” And my response is always the same:  “No. It’s just that you haven’t been trained. “

Even if you went to film school, there was training for screenwriting, for acting, for directing, for editing and for all the skills you need to make a film.  But there is never any training in fundraising.  What I have learned is that most filmmakers can’t even hear me when I say, “Where’s the money?”  

If you are serious about making your own films and telling your own stories, you will have to face the fact that you will need money to make your next film, and you will need more money to make the one after that.  The fact is that all filmmakers need to learn how to raise money.  It’s time to start fundraising now.