The Reality of Paying Back Investors for Film Investment

Video Transcript

"SCOTT DUPONT: Scott duPont here, welcome back to Film Producing 101 on behalf of Expert Village. Now, the segment here is "The Reality of Getting Money Back to your Investors" and what they can expect. First of all, I hope you did your proper disclosures, both written and verbal so they know that film is a very risky business and there's no guarantees. You have to be honest about that. The good thing about low-budget films is the lower the budget, the quicker you're going to be able to pay them back. For example, this dating video that I did, I had less than $50,000 into this project. We got picked up by a catalog company called the "Johnson-Smith Company" and we got money back to that one investor very, very quickly. Now this is a short film I produced, okay? We didn't get any money back to investors; we didn't take investors in this because most short films don't make money back. So stay away from short films if you're trying to raise money. That's something you do with your own credit card, yourself on a few weekends. There's no money coming back there as a rule of thumb. Now, on something like this, "Acting 101," this is another ultra-low budget project. This was done for less than $50,000. We got money back from the investors very, very quickly through some websites, through Tapeworm who is a distributor that supplies a lot of the public schools and bookstores and colleges, school systems. This one, "The Bros" which we distributed to Lionsgate, that's a different ball game. Our budget was closer to a million dollars on that one. And unless you're getting major distributor like Lionsgate or if you're really, really lucky and get a theatrical release and get some foreign distribution, it's a lot tougher to recoup the money. So keep the budget low and just understand there's many different ways that the money could come back and I would strongly recommend once again, go to Dov Simens Film Seminar. He does 'em all over the country. I'm not getting a kickback from Dov, but I just think it would really, really make a difference in your first feature film if you listen. He's the expert. And by the way, he has a couple of great books out too and great websites. So check all that out and stay tuned to Expert Village. We've got a few more segments coming back."