eve photo from Flickr by Paul (Dexxus)

A digital version of the Film Finance Handbook is now available for all eBook and smart phone readers

"Indispensable"  "Magnificent"  "Essential"

After a long wait, we're very pleased to be able to offer digital versions of the Film Finance Handbook: How to Fund Your Film. It's over a year since we ran out of physical copies, after selling some 11,000 print copies across five editions. We have DRM-free EPUB, Kindle and PDF versions of the 2007/08 edition - which between them will work on all eBook readers and smart phones. 

The ePub and Kindle versions are in 'fluid' text, with a layout created specially for the digital edition; the PDF version is a direct copy of the original print edition. Digital books - unlike physical books - are subject to VAT, so our price of £14.40 each includes VAT (if you think that's unfair, sign the petition). You can also get all three formats bundled for £15.99.

All three versions do not include DRM, so you're free to move the file between different devices, and print it out. By buying a copy you're supporting the book (which took over a year to produce) and increasing the chance of future updates.

Please let us know what you think. And thank you!

Nic Wistreich and Adam Davies

What's in the book?

How to Fund Your Film, the Film Finance Handbook puts in one place details of over 1,000 funds and tax schemes in some 50 countries, alongside exhaustive and easy to understand explanations of all aspects of indie film financing, from microbudget shorts and documentaries to multi-million international co-productions.

Over 40 experts from six continents contributed to the 480 page how-to and reference guide for filmmakers, producers, funders and advisers. Published in 2007/08 and now available in digital eBook editions, it features:

  • All forms of film finance explained in short accessible articles;
  • In-depth international incentives (tax breaks and public money) covered for 50 countries (and dozens of states and regions), written in collaboration with the legal experts in each country in language that makes sense to the rest of us;
  • Details of 1000 funding awards from over 300 bodies;
  • The internet as a film studio - how to use the web for fund-raising, marketing and distribution;
  • Cutting budgets, a guide to microbudget and low-fi digital techniques;
  • Dozens of case studies and interviews, including Oscar-winning producer Jeremy Thomas (The Last Emperor), Jim Gilliam (Brave New Films) - who raised $300,000 via the web, Susan Buice and Arin Crumley (Four Eyed Monsters)m Roy Disney, Gus van Sant, Nik Powell (head of NFTS and legendary producer), Lance Weiler and Paul Haggis (Crash).

Contents in full

The Handbook is split into three parts, each roughly taking a third of the book.

Part I, Theory and Practice, takes you through all the aspects of independent film finance, and includes various case studies and interviews throughout. 

  • Chapter 1: Getting Started gives an overview of the film industry, with essential background information and advice on how to prepare yourself and your project in the best way to attract finance.
  • Chapter 2: Low & Micro-budget Filmmaking looks predominantly at ways to reduce budgets for low and microbudget films - while still putting the maximum value onto the screen - through tips, interviews and case studies with independent filmmakers.
  • Chapter 3: Production Financing describes in-depth all the various aspects of production financing. It explains the types of financier that tend to provide funding, what type of deal they want in return, how they need to interconnect with each other, and what needs to happen for the film to turn a profit. We cover step-by-step the entire range of film finance currently available, including Soft Money, Equity, Deferments, Pre-Sales, Gap, Sales Advances, Negative Pick-ups, EIS and Venture Capital, Sponsorship and Product Placement. We also illustrate the roles of the various other companies integral to the financing process, including Sales Companies, Distributors, Discounting Banks, and Completion Guarantors.
  • Chapter 4: The Internet explores how tools, networks and services on the web collectively offer the independent filmmaker great power for financing, marketing and distributing their films, and some of the ideology which underpins these developments. We're pleased to say this chapter was talking about crowd-funding long before Kickstarter and IndieGoGo launched!

Part II, International Incentives, provides information on incentives for 50 countries, in many cases written together with local specialists. We cover all the popular countries in depth, and bring to your attention a number of others with attractive and interesting regimes.

Part III, Funding Directory provides a full breakdown of 1,000 public funds available from over 300 organisations around the globe. Wherever possible, we include details on their criteria, objectives and (most importantly!) the amounts they are willing to provide.

Reference section also provides

  • 400-term glossary of financing and film business jargon
  • Sample delivery schedule
  • International co-production treaty table
  • Recoupment schedule
  • Table of financing contracts
  • Further reading
  • Internaitonal producer organisations

Case studies and interviews

Interviews and case studies with producers, financiers and filmmakers include (in order of appearance):

  • Jeremy Thomas, Producer, Recorded Picture Company, Dream Machine
  • Paul Haggis, Writer & director, Crash & Million Dollar Baby   
  • Nik Powell, co-founder Virgin, Palace Pictures, Scala & head of NFTS 
  • Nicole Kassell, writer & director, The Woodsman  
  • Lance Weller, Head Trauma 
  • Wendy Bevan Mogg, short film producer 
  • Jan Dunne and Elaine Wickham, director & producer of Gypo, Ruby Blue
  • Gus van Sant, director, Elephant
  • Patty Jenkins, Writer/director, Monster
  • Amanda Posey, producer, Fever Pitch
  • Jon Williams, writer/director, Diary of a Bad Lad
  • Neil Oseman, writer/director, Soul Searcher 
  • Alex Ferrari & Sean Falcon, Broken 
  • Chris Kentis & Laura Lau, Open Water 
  • Adrian Mead, Night People 
  • Alison Peebles, Afterlife 
  • Kenneth D Barker, Kingdom 
  • Gene Cajayou, The Debut 
  • Zack Coffman & Scott Di Lalla, Choppertown, the sinners 
  • Scott Pehl, Curiosity  
  • Susan Buice & Arin Crumley, Four Eyed Monsters  
  • Paul Andrew Williams, London to Brighton  
  • Mira Nair, director, Vanity Fair, Working with a studio   
  • Jacqueline Swanson, Checkout Girl, Product placement   
  • Roy Disney, former Chairman, Walt Disney Corp, the Studio   
  • Janey de Nordwall Silver Films, Business angels   
  • David Thompson, then head of BBC Films
  • Jim Gilliam, producer, Brave New Films, co-founder Nation Builder
  • Matt Hanson, producer, Swarm of Angels, co-founder OneDotZero
  • Ashvin Kumar, the Forrest

How old is it?

Funding awards and tax regimes change all the time (even in the gap between finishing writing and getting the books back from the printers in 2007). Of the 460 printed pages to the book, over 200 are articles, guides, how-tos, case-studies, resources and interviews that should still be relevent. The other 260 pages are a mixture of info on film funds and legal incentives for different countries. Many areas will still have more information than is available elsewhere, but many will also have changed and we would advise - as ever - to check for the latest info before making any plans. 

A bit of history...

In 1999, excited by how the Internet could improve things for filmmakers, I quit university with Tom Fogg and we set up Netribution. We put a free film funding guide up on our site, which was partly based on Chris Chandler's excellent Lowdown leaflet for the BFI. It gradually got expanded - Stephen Salter updated it considerably and Focal Press offered us a book deal. In the end we decided to self publish with Shooting People, who funded and promoted the first edition - Get Your Film Funded covering the UK ('the banana book'). In 2005 the book returned in partnership with Adam P Davies under Netribution and was updated a third time in 2007 as a global edition, in partnership with dozens of lawyers and writers around the world with info on 50 regions. We're really pleased with this edition, tho it nearly killed us to create it - and we finally now have a digital version of it.

The motivation now is the same as then - it's a question I want to know the answer to. How do you fund a film in this landscape? How do you make a business around your ideas to be able to keep on making films without jeopardising your creativity and freedom? Much of the knowledge has been kept in closed circles and subject to expensive adviser fees or courses costing thousands of pounds so we've tried to put as much of that info we can in one book for under twenty pounds.

Nic Wistreich

Film is a tyranny, and the tyrant is money. The great thing is that, in spite of that, impossibly, some people keep on smuggling out messages of hope from the other side, past the tyrant. I mean, there shouldn't be one good movie made given the way it's structured, and yet there are many good movies made. That seems to be implausible and marvelous at the same time

Writer of Australia, Richard Flanagan

Moneyback guarantee - if within 21 days of buying the book it doesn't meet your expectations… email us, delete the files and we'll refund you.