Enticing Financiers At AFM
Hi everyone,
Hope your week is going well!
After my last email on Guidance For AFM a few questions came in I thought I’d answer….
First up: How to leverage a short film or other pitch materials for financing
As you all know, I’m a big proponent of putting as many resources as you can into development of a project and incubating it as much as you can for as long as you can before bringing on partners. In other words, doubling down on building value in your project rather than pedaling around just another ‘naked’ script.
In the case of short films, they can be incredible sales tools for a feature proof of concept or even directing sample… both of which can give financiers and investors confidence in your feature pitch.
I’ve seen filmmakers leverage a festival-winning short film into a $2-$3 million budgeted feature film because the financiers could see so much potential in their talent.
I’ve also witnessed a well-produced pitch deck with the right talent attachments create a feeding frenzy from sales agents who want to jump on to a project early and help get it made.
Right now in our FS Pro group, we’re discussing how much to offer talent and best practices for putting in offers with agents and managers. There’s definitely an art to it and sometimes you have to get really creative!
What’s Next?
Once you have your assets together you can register for AFM, get access to their attendee and buyers list (even if you’re not attending in person it’s a good investment), and do a targeted email campaign and try and set up some in-person meetings. Best piece of advice here is don’t forget to follow up! One email ain’t gonna cut through all the noise.
Need Extra Help?
If you need to short cut that whole process, I’m still offering AFM Consulting for completed films and projects in development. I’d love to work with a few more filmmakers in our FS community and add your projects to my current outreach efforts.
You can learn more about that here and fill out the questionnaire to start a discussion.
Click here for Film Market Consulting
On that note I’ll wrap things up for today and be back soon with more ideas on how to get results at AFM. If you have any questions, please post them in the comments section below and I will answer :)
More soon!
Stacey