Hello sexy people - I am a director/producer from cologne, germany and I am currently working an up to 30 min short (somewhat unusual - aware of that). The project is through development stage mostely, we are now going with shootingscript (all the drafts and stuff done), we do have our maincast alltogether, large parts of the crew, some locations, clear vision and inspiration and some pools of equipment and resources. But still: We need some money to make it happen - round about 4k.
Now we were asking ourselves:
How do you go about budget with short films? Are there any distributors/studios who also support this kinda scale projects? Is it only possible through HNIs/Investors/Sponsors (Cuz investing is shitty with short movies as much as I know about it because the only real stream of income !can! be through festivals)? How to find HNIs/Sponsors who are interested in these kind of projects? Mailing, Caling, personal contact first? Should we involve a Co Prod. Company that will come with the funding if they are convinced?
Or should I be thinking more outside the box? We would be extremly glad for some advice here!!! Thanks for reading ;)
Xoxo,
Jonas
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Jonas, are you aware that you're doing things backwards? Smart producers first determine they're target audience and what genre will best catch that audience's attention.They then take detailed inventory of what they have at their disposal: budget, locations, crew, time, ideas, contacts, credit cards, etc. ONLY THEN should a script be written to INTENTIONALLY fit within those limitations. If you have not done this, you might consider starting over. The majority of short films are produced for under $5000, which isn't really a big deal either here or in Europe. Make a list of 10 crew or friends and ask each to contribute $500 as your co-producers. Remember, the Cavalry is not coming to the rescue!
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I'd forget the profits and fund the short film as a learning experience for you and your cast & crew. It's an audition reel. $4,000 is not a whole lot. Work a part-time job & use credits cards.
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I agree 100% with Dan MaxXx , Jonas David –– short films should either be self-funded as a learning experience (or series of them) or crowdfunded, but with the latter route, you'll be doing a lot of legwork, so if you're not prepared for that, then out-of-pocket is the only option.
Dan MaxXx and John T. Trigonis Okay. I understand! Thank you for the respond :) Altough I have made bad experiences with credit cards, working part time isn't too much of a bad advice. Just gotta make some more Imagevideo jobs etc. - legalwork is a argument, I agree Erik A. Jacobson How do you mean? I wouldn't go as far as writing a script for an audience. This would make a whole lot of sense in the overall structural aspect but I personally found that this is not how creativity works best since ideas are first and foremost bound by the excitement to it and than in the second place fullfill the wishes of certain target audiences (sure drafts should be read over to optimize for audiences and testscreenings should be done to make it work well but there is a place for every film as long as the filmmakers did a good job). When we wrote the script, we had in mind to not make it unrealisable.
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Jonas David Jim Cummings worked, saved, and sold his wedding rings to fund his short movie. He filmed on a Saturday w/ friends. Make it happen w/ sweat and hustle. Good Luck.
https://twitter.com/theThunderRoad/status/1108131210373591041
Hey Jonas - some good advice here from everyone. I have a webinar taught by a Sundance director, JT Mollner. He used his short film as a calling card to make his feature (which sold at Sundance) and he goes over a lot of great advice on how to raise funds for your shorts and gives a template for a pitch book, too, hope it helps! https://www.stage32.com/webinars/How-to-Finance-Your-Short-Film
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That's exactly what I did and boy did I learn a lot!!!