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The Art of Film Financing:
Alternative Financing Concepts

by Carole Dean

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Carole Dean PictureWe think about plenty, and as we think of it, lack, its opposite, will become absorbed or disappear. All our thoughts must be directed to that one thing which we desire in order that our desire may be fulfilled. Raymond Holliwell—Working with the law.

I want you to start at the end to create the beginning. That is, I want you to see your film finished. Pretend you are in Raleigh’s plush screening room and you are in the control seat where you’re talking to the projectionist and people are scurrying to their seats, the lights go down and your film comes up on the big screen. You’re filled with pride as you see the title. You smile when you see your name as producer, you feel the power of completion and you feel successful and every cell in your body is in a state of joy.

This is what I ask filmmakers to do as home work. I believe you want to keep this feeling of completion and success in your mind and let every cell in your body feel it. The power of the mind is paramount to successful film production. The mind is the “producer’s control center.”

Your mind can be a healer or a slayer, it’s your choice. Are you thinking, “But I can’t make my car payment this month, how can I see my film finished?” “How will I get the money?” I would say to you, these are not the right questions. Get your thought process working and your emotions under control so that you can feel completion and success and you will attract what you need. The “how” is not your concern; it will happen when you believe it.

In Bruce Lipton’s book, The Biology of Belief, he explains how placebo pills heal people. It has been proven that sugar pills cure all sorts of ills because people think it will. Lipton goes on to tell an incredible story. A doctor decided to find out just how much his knee surgery was the catalyst for healing. So instead of doing his normal operation, he created three groups of people and preformed three types of operations. On one, he did the normal surgery, the second was a partial knee operation and for the third group he did nothing to the knee; instead he went through the process of cutting the knee open and turned on all the machines and pretended to operate. All three of these groups healed perfectly. The Doctor concluded that it was the power of their minds that healed them.

“Ok, ok, I have read all this law of attraction stuff before and it just doesn’t work for me. I have positive notes all around the house and there is still no money in my account. What now?”

Go back to the beginning. What are your values? What is your five year plan? What is your mission as a filmmaker? Why are you making this film?

When I ask people, “why are you making this film?” That’s not what I really want to know. I want to know if you’ll finish your film if you win my grant. Are you going to put years of work into this film and if so why? You can’t answer my question until you have your purpose as a filmmaker and until you are truly aligned with your future through your vision. These things need to be part of your DNA.

That vision and that purpose are your driving force and it comes through when you talk about your film, when you apply for grants and when you ask for money. Now, couple that with your physical and mental belief that your film is funded, that money abounds and you are a successful filmmaker. You need that unbeatable combination, vision, purpose, faith and tenacity. Tenacity is an acquired talent and you find this in the biographies of the most famous and the richest people in history.

I see tenacity when I pick up a grant application with the words THIRD TIME on it. I love to see you put down that you are “back again.” In fact many people have won on the second or third time they have submitted. Tenacity is the backbone of the filmmaker. I think filmmakers should take the 1920’s Suffragette’s motto, “Never give up!”

I know filmmakers who keep going back to money people until they give them a definite “No.” They won’t be brushed off, they just keep updating these people and sometimes they can turn them into donors or investors after months of communication.

The second foundation for your film is your pitch and your proposal. How do we manifest? I do a list of things to achieve each day and usually cross most of them off the list, just like you do. So, we manifest with words, right? We bring our thoughts into this reality and write them out, plan how to achieve them and then we just do it. It’s that simple.

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