Scheduling decisions

I have recently started to look into funding, as it is important to me to make a film at a professional level and to make sure that my cast and crew are at least somewhat recompensed for their work. And boy, is it long-winded and complex. There’s arts partnerships with private companies, public funding like the film commission, foreign (or in my case back home) funding possibilities, frame by frame funding, angels, and the list goes on. Sara and I did a budget today and realised that if we wanted to pay everyone properly we could easily hit the $100k mark. Wow. Probably not going to happen, but we will try to find as much funding as we can so we can at least get the kit, feed everyone and pay something towards people’s efforts. So I have decided to look for various funding possibilities and defer the production till later in the year. At the moment we are looking at shooting to take place sometime in the last 2 weeks of September (for a 6 day-ish shoot). I realise that it would be difficult to know for most of of the crew what they are doing so far ahead, but would still love to keep them on my team. I will start again looking for crew towards the beginning of August and will contact all of them again then. In the meantime I will be polishing the script and try and pry some money out of various organisations/individuals so that we can make a shiny, pretty and amazing film. If anyone has any ideas for funding or wants to be involved with the money hunting process, please let me know: the more the merrier.

EAT funding meeting

Just attended a meeting to discuss funding applications for the new Emerging Artist Trust. This new trust is in the very first funding round, so it was as much a meeting for them to find out what they can do better next time as for us to find out how to apply for the dosh. The fund is unusual in many ways, not least that it is privately funded when the other NZ funding bodies (Film Commission, NZ On Air, Screen Innovation Fund) are all at least partly publicly funded. The cash amount they award is very small - NZ$2000 - so not really any use for a decent size film production, but unusually they will fund wages and more interestingly they will pay for preproduction costs for documentaries, i.e. research, something no film fund in New Zealand pays for. Unfortunately, apart from the small award, they are now thinking of having only two instead of the three funding rounds initially planned. Since this really only funds a tiny part of any production, or only a very small one, it seems that they should award money more often, for quick and dirty projects, not try to match the ponderous application process the other funds have. If I was knocking out a small piece I wouldn’t want to have to wait up to 6 months to find out whether I get any money for it. Still, the more funding bodies the better in this hostile climate. And these guys have promised to give feedback for rejected applications, which would be useful in itself.

Fringe Friday

While not totally applicable to us, we attended a Fringe Friday meeting tonight. The Fringe festival in Wellington consists mostly of theatre, concerts, exhibitions and other performance based events, but as it turned out we learnt lost of interesting stuff about where to get money from. There were people there from the Cuba Street Carnival, Wellington Council, someone from a new fund called EAT (Emerging Artists Trust), and the usual rabble of artists.

 Since the Fringe events lend themselves to this, there was a lot of talk of finding private sponsors and branding. This made me think that it could be applied to film funding, too, if only in the shape of asking for favours and promising logos in the credits. But even a short film could include branding, if it is appropriate. this started me thinking that at least the boat scene and the bookshop, as well as other businesses in the background could be hit up for sponsorship for product placement. Why not? 

There is a lot of work to be done before any sponsors can be approached, more probably than if we just applied for straight funding: research audience and target market, consider the aims and content of the film to find sponsors who match them. Researching potential sponsors mission statements would help to connect with them and their brand. One other interesting statement made was that when writing a budget, we should always put in proper wages for all crew and cast, even if we can’t pay this in the end, since this is a more professional approach to budgeting and gives a clearer picture what this production would actually cost.