Independent filmmakers must get creative with financing

[katty]

more: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-ca-finance23-2008nov23,0,2538733.story

Independent filmmakers must get creative with financing

As banks increasingly opt out of funding, directors are using new ways to raise revenue to make movies.
By Rachel Abramowitz
November 23, 2008

Wanted: 1,700 brave investors each willing to shell out $30 for a credit as a co-executive producer on an independent movie about New York's illegal graffiti street-art scene. The reward: striking a "blow for artistic freedom."

That's the pitch espoused by tyro filmmaker Alice.ia Carin in a full-page ad that ran recently in the Nation magazine, a fundraising attempt for her film "Don't See This." Carin also promised to send profits from the currently unproduced soundtrack, book and film to "help fund public school programs in music and fine arts."

With a median income of $83,000, the Nation's readers wouldn't seem a practical film financing alternative to hedge fund managers or trustafarian movie producers. Yet as Wall Street swoons, banks such as Société Générale opt out of the movie financing business and Hollywood studios retrench, the plight of indie filmmakers, never a secure career, appears increasingly precarious.

The specialty film arena is teeming with gloom, given the summer shuttering of art-house distributors such as Picturehouse and Warner Independent Pictures

[Taverner]

1. They need to do like Ed Wood. Break into studios late at night and film

Guerrilla Filming - the new wave of Indie Cinema

[KoKo]

2. kick!