SCREENPLAY: “How To Find Financiers For Your Film” by Oladapo Bamidele
Let’s say for example that you attach a Producer to your film, either by building up value in your project like we discussed and then pitching to Producers, or by pursuing an existing personal relationship or contact. I had a client in this latter situation who through a personal contact was able to attach a Producing partner to her film, but he didn’t bring the financing. A bit of a conundrum which leads me to….
Even if you get a Producer attached to your film, how do you find financiers?(assuming you are going after some private equity as part of your overall finance plan)
This is a major question I get asked all the time, and for good reason. Where are all these elusive financiers hiding??
Well if you’re like my client and you don’t know any high net worth people personally, there’s a few ways to find private equity investors, but it still involves building some value in your project first (although presumably you’ve done some of that already by attaching your Producer with a track record…)
Once you have a Producer, you can attach a Director easier, which leads to being able to start attracting talent easier, which leads to getting interest from Sales Agents.
Once you have these basic building blocks in place, one solution is you can submit your project to the service I talked about before called Slated (which matches up private money with films).
Or you can do what another client of mine is doing who I met with yesterday at AFM and he’s leveraging his Producing Partner’s track record to get in the door with Sales Agents and Financing Companies who are attending AFM. (using the AFM database and attendee list to find prospects)
I have another client who’s been studying the trades and looking for the names of financiers attached to projects and contacting them with their package. (clever, huh?) She was successful in attracting a equity financier this way who is ‘backing’ her paid offers to talent right now. (but yes, she had already done the work to bring together an incredible team with track records that impressed the investor).
Here’s another solution – something I’ve experienced personally is that once you’re at the stage where you’re attracting sales agent interest, sometimes they will introduce you to equity partners they’ve worked with in the past. I love when this happens as it’s a perfect synergy for getting things moving fast.
So those are a few suggestions for how to find financiers.Notice that ALL of them require building value in your project FIRST.
Do you have any others to add to the list? Join the conversation in the comments section below…
How To Build Value For Potential Financiers
If you’d like to study more on the topic of Building Value For Financiers, I did a two-part seminar not too long ago for FS Members which you can check out here:
Click Here For How To Build Value For Investors
If you’re not an FS Member yet, you can get started right here…..
Find Financiers For Your Film
