When talking about success in an artistic field like filmmaking or music, I usually tell people that I believe that talent accounts for about 20% of success.
The other 80%? Doing the work.
film
A Few Thoughts On Slated.com
I joined Slated in 2014 after attending a producer breakout session at the American Film Market in early November. The speaker was the co-founder and CEO of slated.com, Steph Paternot.
He was compelling, confident, and it felt like I was hearing the answer to my prayers! They had created a site who’s sole intention was to connect independent producers and filmmakers with financing and distribution.
As we’ve used the site over the last year and a half, I wanted to write about our experience, why our expectations haven’t yet been met, and what I think both the users of the site and those running it could do to make it more valuable.
Why We Paid $1250 To Validate Our Film
My greatest fear is that I don’t know what I don’t know.
The voices in my head go something like this:
“What if you’ve spent the last year, full time, writing a script, raising money, attaching actors, and producing a teaser, only to end up making a movie that sucks, and everyone around you saw it but you…”
That is seriously my greatest fear. Lucky for me (and for you), there’s a way to avoid this sort of outcome.
FILM INVESTING – PART 2
In Film Investing-Part 1 we talked about film as a potentially attractive asset class for investors. There are, however, some aspects of a “typical” film investment that make it unattractive to some investors, many that can be avoided by diversifying in a fund, just as you would invest in a venture capital, or VC, fund that invests seed money in multiple tech companies.
To further that argument, lets clear up some common misconceptions that an investor may have heard about how films make money:
FILM INVESTING – PART 1
In the process of putting together funding for our feature film projects, I’ve been doing as much research as possible to gain a deep understanding of how film finance works. I figured, if I’m going to be meeting with investors and VC firms, I better know my numbers.
What I found, however, was an even more exciting pool of data that makes independent film, as one man puts it, “an attractive asset class”.
WHY THERE ISN’T ANY FILM FUNDING IN UTAH
I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few months with the tech community in Utah. There’s a huge buzz going on in “Silicon Slopes”, and in an attempt to see what all the “buzz” was about, I started to attend meetups and other networking events put on by that community.
Come to find out, there are a lot of things happening that are truly buzz worthy. In Utah there are many companies that are valued over $500 Million, and in Provo alone there are three $1 Billion companies on a single STREET.
That’s one of the things that drew me to this community — there’s a crap ton of money circulating around. Check out these headlines from the last 3 weeks alone: