FILM FINANCING STRATEGY

As numerous veteran producers will tell you, cash to fund film projects has become scarce and raising financing for films has become even more difficult. In the past, a variety of different types of investors helped to contribute coin toward a film's negative cost (production budget). Some of the investors in film projects and independent movie studios included insurance companies with excess cash to invest, owners of television stations on a global basis willing to make advances for TV distribution rights, and film funds that sprung up to take advantage of tax advantages in several countries, just to name a few of the previously popular film funding sources.

The volatile global economy helped to create a risk-averse mood, impacting both large corporate motion picture investors as well as private investors who supported independent film projects. Film financing has changed and many of the previously established strategies for generating film investment dollars are simply no longer available. Other sources of film funding invest at much lower levels. In the case of some film investors, such as banks, have tightened their lending criteria so that only the largest, most-established, filmmaking teams have any hope of seeing film financing from that source.