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The right team can make or break a project at any stage in the filmmaking process, including those that happen long before any actual filmmaking occurs. Even financing is a challenge best met by a squad of professionals equipped with the right variety of expertise.
In anticipation of this year’s American Film Market, Wrapbook and IFTA gathered a panel of industry experts to discuss the fine art of team-building for film finance. Join us below to mine their insights and explore four key takeaways for up-and-coming producers.
Before we dive into our breakdown, take a moment to check out the full event, Building Your Dream Team: A Key to Securing Film Financing.
As part of the 2024 How to Film Finance Webinar Series from AFM, IFTA, and Wrapbook, this online session goes deep on the keys to assembling the right team and securing funding for your project.
A recording of the event is available on-demand for free. Watch the full video at your convenience to expand the principles outlined below and discover new insights straight from the experts themselves.
Wrapbook’s own Ryan Broussard was kind enough to moderate Building Your Dream Team: A Key to Securing Film Financing. Broussard has built his career by helping clients optimize their financing with production incentives. He’s implemented incentive strategies for countless productions, developed innovative measures for financial reporting, and even helped design incentive programs for some states and local jurisdictions.
As the Vice President of Sales and Production Incentives at Wrapbook, Broussard continues to serve the filmmaking community with forward-thinking incentive solutions.
His rich expertise and hands-on approach epitomize Wrapbook’s commitment to a concierge service model. Combined with the next-gen technology of our platform, the invaluable contributions of team members like Ryan Broussard are what makes Wrapbook the next standard for production finance and accounting teams.
Ryan Broussard is joined in conversation by four industry experts. Their collective experience and points of view provide a window to the full spectrum of our current film financing ecosystem.
For further context, let’s meet each of our panelists in turn.
Dwjuan Fox is a producer, line producer, UPM, and co-founder of Decipher Entertainment. Budget-forward and logistically-minded, Fox describes himself as right in the middle of above and below-the-line talent, a position from which he merges the ambitions of a creative vision with the realities of physical production.
Patrick Rizzotti is a producer and the CEO of Blue Fox Financing. Having produced more than 20 films over the course of his career, Rizzotti knows what it takes for an independent project to get a financial greenlight. At Blue Fox Financing, Rizzotti leverages his expertise to help filmmakers work with its network of lenders to get more movies made.
Jason Marc Schoener is a production accountant and the president of Ten Key Accounting. Schoener and his team manage accounts on film and television productions with budgets ranging from one million to upwards of 40 million dollars. Thanks to this diversity of experience, Schoener provides pivotal insight on financing and its integration with the day-to-day work of a professional production.
Jackie Ward is an attorney and senior associate at Ramo Law PC where she represents producers and production companies with a focus on issues involving rights and clearances. Working at the intersection of producers, production entities, and financiers, Ward is perfectly positioned to demonstrate the impact of legal concerns on the film financing process.
Now that we’ve met our panelists, let’s find out what they had to say. Here are four key takeaways about building your dream team to secure film financing.
Our panelists all agreed that the process of financing your project should begin with an examination of your budget. Rizzotti sums up the point succinctly:
“The number one thing is, what is this movie going to cost?”
Your project’s price tag is the core of its financing process. Not only is the budget the single most important clue to a project’s financial feasibility, it also determines secondary conditions that will influence how far your dollars can go. For example, a project’s SAG contract and IATSE tier can have a dramatic effect on the cost of its payroll.
Most importantly, a budget gives you concrete information that you can use to build an actionable finance strategy. It’s a tool that your team can use to find the most cost-efficient to make the movie. Therefore, producers should develop and begin working with a budget as early as possible.
In team-building terms, that often means hiring someone like Dwjuan Fox onto a project first, a line producer who understands how numbers in a budget will eventually correspond to a complete movie on screen. They can help to develop a realistic set of financing goals and expectations. That information will be critical as you continue to build your finance team.
Independent producers shoulder an enormous burden of responsibility to keep a production on its feet.
They often feel like they have to do everything, all the time, all on their own. However, no producer is an island. Everyone has limits on their time, energy, and expertise. When building a team to assist with film finance, it’s important to hire professionals who can accentuate your strengths, reinforce your weaknesses, and expand your limitations.
Schoener draws from his own experience with tax incentives to illustrate the concept:
“Especially if it’s a bigger budget movie going for a tax incentive, budget an extra person for that. There’s been so many times I’ve had to do tax incentives from start to finish, and it is very taxing if I don’t have an extra clerk or an extra second [accountant] to sit there and double check everything, to spend the time researching that state’s tax incentive, to double check me. Because I can’t memorize every state’s tax incentive. I’m jumping from state to state. I need to remember all of the different guild payroll rules. Everything.”
Make no mistake, this isn’t a matter of comfort, convenience, or luxury. Hiring the right team is a matter of fiscal responsibility. A failure to adequately account for your weaknesses can lead to waste, or worse, costly errors that put your entire project at risk. Again referring to the complexities of tax incentives, Rizzotti warns producers about the dangers of waiting to seek adequate expertise until it’s too late:
“I’ve seen projects take over a year to re-do their books… This is why it’s so critical. If you're fortunate enough to have your own financing and you are stepping into a new arena of producing, you absolutely need this type of team there or you will, at some point, regret it.”
Just as your budget guides your finance strategy, the workload of your finance strategy can guide the composition of your finance team. Be realistic about the experience and expertise that your production needs the most.
The context of your production will impact your approach to film financing. Therefore, the team you build to tackle the challenge of financing must be able to operate efficiently within whatever that specific context may be. As a producer, you may wish to hire additional team members or prioritize position candidates with relevant experience.
For example, the location of your production will influence nearly every aspect of your shoot. Large-scale operational categories like logistics, scheduling, equipment rentals, crew hires, and more will all vary from one state (or even country) to another. When producing a project in unfamiliar territory, it may be necessary to hire a local fixer or fill a position on your team with someone who’s previously worked in the area.
Fox emphasizes a similar need for familiarity when it comes to a production’s budget:
“For me, that’s key. They gotta know the price range that you’re in… Because if you’re picking somebody that’s got these amazing credits—hey just came off of Yellowstone. Well, Yellowstone has six times the amount of money you do. So can they really think in the same mindset [as your production]?… You gotta find somebody within your price range that’s made movies within that price range.”
The same principle can be applied to any meaningful element of context for your production, from tax incentives to specialized production technologies. If your team is well-qualified, your production is more likely to be well-prepared.
Sometimes, the simplest advice is also the best. Here’s how Schoener makes a small argument for a big idea:
“Be nice to everybody. There’s no reason to be mean to people.”
There’s no denying the importance of networking in the entertainment industry, and basic human kindness is the cornerstone of any positive social interaction. Being nice is a way to build the professional relationships that every producer needs.
However, the principle of kindness also extends beyond networking into the construction and management of your team itself. For example, producers should strive to make the creative team active partners in matters of production and film finance.
Creative and financial personnel are stereotypically portrayed as being in conflict with one another, but the reality of professional filmmaking is that they are two sides of the same coin.
For a film to be a success, financial and creative personnel must work hand in hand. By treating the creative team as if they’re a part of your film finance team, producers can expand their toolbox and create more flexibility in their financial strategy.
Teamwork itself is the ultimate key to film finance. The complexity of the task requires an incredible diversity of expertise, not to mention mass quantities of time and energy. Building the right team is a big job, but the reward—for both your project and you personally—is well worth the effort.
Don’t forget to watch Building Your Dream Team: A Key to Securing Film Financing in its entirety when you get the chance. For more deep dives into the state of the production industry, keep an eye on Wrapbook’s Events page.
At Wrapbook, we pride ourselves on providing outstanding free resources to producers and their crews, but this post is for informational purposes only as of the date above. The content on our website is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for legal, accounting, or tax advice. You should consult with your own legal, accounting, or tax advisors to determine how this general information may apply to your specific circumstances.
Loring is a Los Angeles-based writer, director, and creative producer. His work has been commissioned by a diverse range of clients- from Havas Worldwide to Wisecrack, inc.- and has been screened around the world. Through a background that blends project development with physical production across multiple formats, Loring has developed a uniquely eclectic skillset as a visual storyteller.
