DEVELOPMENT

3 LESSONS FROM 10 MONTHS OF FUNDRAISING

In around February of this year, my business partner and I at Telekinesis Entertainment set out to do the impossible: raise money to make movies.

Every day for the last 10 months, we failed. It’s a harsh reality. Raising money to make movies is a zero sum game; you either have raised money or you haven’t.

Until this week, that is. We’ve officially succeeded at raising money to make a movie. Here’s a few things I’ve learned along the way in hopes of helping anyone starting out on a similar journey.

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NOTES & TAKEAWAYS FROM AFM 2015

A few weeks ago I attended the American Film Market for the second year in a row.

It’s an annual film market where Sales Agents are selling the films they represent to foreign distributors and buyers.

Producers, like myself, will often attend to try and meet with these Sales Agents and find one to represent their films, but it’s also a great place to learn as they have great conferences and workshops centered around every aspect of the filmmaking process.

Here are my notes from the week. Hoping something is useful as you go out to make your own films in the future. To see last years notes, check out this post.

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I DON’T CARE HOW MUCH YOUR MOVIE MADE

Last night I met another local filmmaker who excitedly told me about how his $150,000 movie made $2,000,000 in foreign sales and DVD. Now, that’s super impressive, and I’m happy for him-

But I’m also massively pissed.

When you make a movie for $150k, you generally — not always — have to make some sacrifices. These sacrifices are typically at the expense of everyone else that worked on the film, other than you and your producing partners.

Some examples —

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