Film Funding

27 Aug 2003

I was recently thinking of ways to fund films. South African institutions aren't usually too happy about funding motion pictures as they see it as too much of a risk (which it is). I thought why not spread the risk? Ah-huh, although not locally... internationally, thus benefiting from the competitive exchange rate!

Thinking about spreading risk brings to mind the South African Oliver Twist film which is now in production. The director, Tim Greene, asked for 1000 pledges at a R1000 each, which came mainly from people in South Africa. My idea is to have international pledges at say $100 or 80 pounds so when exchanged you have more than one million rand.

Example: 2000 American citizens each pledge $100 = $ 200,000.00 then a rough exchange is = R 1,560,000.00 (it will probably be valued even more after this week).

With the demographics of the states, there are more than enough people to fund a big budget movie produced within Southern Africa. All you have to do is make the offer/investment attractive enough, have an e-commerce enabled website connected to a film fund and a have a committee with young balls, bam... you have your film funding. You could even perhaps find a European or up-and-coming US actor or actress to star in it with South African actors.

That is the key though, you must create a Hollywood styled film and not an arty farty, as for the film to stand a chance at success it must be created and marketed for a broad audience. When I say success I mean in monetary form and not ego or something to talk about the next time you visit mother. Everything must be run strictly like a business.

South African production must learn not to fight Hollywood (when I speak of Hollywood I don't speak of the town in LA, I speak of the whole film style, production and commercial quality). Europe was not doing well film-wise until they decided to let Hollywood have their way. In no time big movies like xXx, Ronin and others with big stars in were being shot in the Czech Republic and South France. Many of these movies turned out to be highly watchable and have financial success. I'm sure these also boosted international tourism to those areas where production was done.

South Africa needs to accept the Hollywood way and by creating a system to create funding and the right selection and development of entertaining screenplays, South Africa could start attracting bigger investors like studios and you could soon be seeing Cameron Diaz or Vin Diesel having coffee at your regular hang out?

Allow the big players and ideas in first then you can play around with "indie" films.