May 2008

This week was spread across Hollywood and more on film financing. The Hollywood session was taken by producer and completion bonder David Korda, who has spent years in Hollywood working across a wide range of budgets and genres. David talked about ways to break into Hollywood, the key three being 1) A great script 2) A strong track record and 3) Contacts. He discussed with us the studio system and how to get through to the execs with a project and how to get the agents to pay attention in order to attach the ever important bankable talent which is the immediate way to turn the eye of a studio exec. He also talked about what it is like working as a studio producer in terms of both fees and creative autonomy, which as one increases the other inevitably decreases… David went on in the latter half of the session to talk about completion bonds, and although this was something we had covered on an off throughout the project it was useful in terms of consolidating my knowledge in this area.

The second session of the week was part two of film financing with Neil. We started by revising what we had done in the previous session which was great as we all had more than a couple of questions and lapses of memory! We then used a case study to discuss in more detail the different finance options and the implications of each scenario in terms of budget, potential profits and recoupment. Once again this was a session that left my head spinning with figures but having had some time to take a look over the spreadsheets in my own time and had a play with some figures for my own project, I feel a lot more confident that I am beginning to understand how it all works!

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Roger Goldsmith

(Story To Screen In Eight Weeks) felt this course gave him the confidence he needed to take the films he writes into production. His graduation film has been selected for screening on two high profile websites and was well received at a recent screening in Portsmouth. He is now in pre-production for a short film he has written, to be directed by award-winning feature director Owen Carey Jones.