Thursday, March 31, 2011

Why would anyone put money in your film ?

I have been trying to ask and answer those questions. I have with me - a list of items that need to be brought to any pitching meeting table. But those are the secondary reasons for anyone to shell out the money. What are the primary reasons ?

To get a solution I turned the table - and asked myself - why would I fund - put crores of my hard-earned money on xyz's film ? What do I have in store. My answers were the following two mandatory things:
1) I get a sense of pride associated with the material.
2) I get my money back (atleast! - even if I don't make millions - there is no freaking way I want to lose money)

And essentially in that order. I really had no more reasons. Just these two.

For 1 - The more clarity on the film the better. The ideal case is the person putting money sees the film. But since we are short of money, we can't give that luxury to him/her. So the best is to provide the best possible approximation of the film - idea of the moments, moods, tight scenes, jokes, look and music of the film. Basically find out elements that represents your film well. Provide past work to give confidence that you can execute what you are talking about well.

For 2 - Again we have to use some data mining -find the best and worst movies of similar genre and try to see - if your film is rightly priced for fail safety. This requires work and research on the cost and recovery breakdown of other movies.

And I guess - in all the pitching meetings concentrate in these two.

It's one thing to make the movie, it is another to sell it.


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Random aside 1: There is a counterfeit 50 rupee note in my wallet. And I can't place where I got it from. Patel stores or Subway. Dunno. But I am stuck with it. 

2 comments:

Saurabh Nanda said...

How similar is it to a VC making an investment in a startup?

arati kadav said...

It's similar - but the problem is that the producers do not think that way. They only think about recovery of money. And then they say - make commercial stuff with regular ingredients of shaadi, dance, comedy. Content is not important for them.

As that has high chances of making money and recovering the cost.