Top Five Film Financing Problems

New York City filmmaker Ted Hope posted a fantastic blog (or utterly depressing depending on how you look at it) last month titled 30 American Independent Film Problems/Concerns.  The list below contains the top five as they relate to independent film financing.

1. Too many films available and being distributed to allow films to stay in one theater for very long, making it more difficult to develop a word of mouth audience.
2. Reliance on large marketing spend release model restricts content to broad subjects (which decreases films’ distinction in marketplace) and reduces ability to focus on pre-aggregated niche audiences.
3. Collapse of International sales markets requires reduced budgets for filmmakers, and thus resulting in limiting content.
4. Collapse of US acquisition market requires reduced budgets for filmmakers, and thus resulting in limiting content.
5. Bootleggers have developed a platform that allows audiences to simply download whatever they want where ever they want whenever they want — something that the film industry has yet to do.  (This is a contributing factor in the demise of the DVD market – something that pushed many independent films in the black.)