Dealing With Money Control in Film Making

Video Transcript

"SCOTT DUPONT: Scott duPont. Welcome back to Expert Village and we've got an interesting segment here about Film Producing 101. Who controls the money? Well, it's real simple here. If you're the producer, we're talking about you're the first time feature film producer here. If you're the guy going out raising all the money, you should control the money, okay? And if you want to bring on a family friend or a business mentor someone that actually is a CPA as well or a lawyer and they're willing to co-sign on the bank account or help you manage the money, that's a good thing as well. But you want to keep the money away from the director. Okay? Because the director's focused on the creative aspect of making the movie. Your job as a producer to keep things on budget, on track, and to safeguard the money. And that's why in one of our earlier segments, we talked about setting up that separate escrow account where all the money is safeguarded until right before you go into production. So that's pretty much the way it is. And if you bring on a partner that wants to be a producer as well, unless they're going out and raising all the money, you really need to control the money yourself if you're the main producer. That's it for this segment. Thanks to Expert Village. We'll be right back with a few more."