Domestic and Foreign Sales Teams

We all wish film financing was like having a wealthy uncle who could write a check so we could make a movie for however much we want. In reality, filmmaking is based on a reasonable business model where the goal is to make a profit. As everyone know, profit is defined as revenue minus expenses. After you have assembled your film package, foreign sales agents will evaluate it off of the three most important elements: 1) What is the genre? 2) Who is the director? 3) Who are the actors? Based on these answers, the sales agent will estimate the value of the revenue on the film. Unfortunately, most filmmakers never learn this simple concept which is used to value every film sold before completion. I used to work for a film finance company and I was amazed that they never read the script!

Now that you have a professional estimate of your film's sales revenue, you know that your film must cost less than that to make a profit. It is at this point, that you create your film budget by taking the total desired budget amount and back into each of the accounts.

If you would have first estimated your budget based on the script without any consideration to sales, your rich uncle could stand to lose a lot of $$$.