Filmmakers and Financing

Louise Levison (www.moviemoney.com) has a 30-year track record for creating business plans for films (both single and slates) and other entertainment companies. Her clients have raised money for low-budget films such as The Blair Witch Project, the most profitable independent film in history, and for slates with budgets totalling up to $300 million. She is publisher and editor of The Film Entrepreneur: A Newsletter for Independent Filmmakers and Investors, which is available for free downloading at moviemoney.com. This book is the inspiration for the feature documentary Movie Money CONFIDENTIAL, in which Levison is interviewed and for which she was the technical advisor. She taught at UCLA for 22 years and has been a Visiting Professor at the Taipei (Taiwan) National University of the Arts and the University of Montana (Missoula). Levison holds an MA in Asian Area Studies and an MBA in finance.

Introduction: Controlling Your Destiny 1. The Executive Summary: A Short Version of Everything 2. The Company: Who, What, When, Where, and Why? 3. The Film: The Investor Needs to Know the Whole Story 4. The Industry: The Facts and Nothing But 5. The Markets: The Spin 6. Distribution: Theatrical and Managing the Changing Landscape 7. Distribution: Streaming and the Wild West of Non-theatrical 8. Risk Factors: Truth in Advertising 9. The Financial Plan: How It Works 10. The Financials: Forecasting Without Fear 11. Sample Business Plan for a Fictional Company 12. Breaking the Rules: Documentary, Animation, and Large Format 13. Other People’s Money: Them That Has the Gold Makes Some of the Rules 14. Rick’s Story "Fini": Independent Filmmaker Rick Pamplin Interviews Himself