The S.U.C.C.E.S.S. Formula: Joanne Butcher's Seven Steps to Get Your Film Funded, Made, and Seen Worldwide

Joanne Butcher has shaped the careers of more than a hundred independent filmmakers as a Consulting Producer, helping them navigate the business realities that define success in the industry. Her deep experience in fundraising and distribution has supported the completion and release of dozens of feature films, and she has been directly involved in bringing over 25 features to screens around the world.

What sets her apart is the way she empowers artists to evolve into savvy industry professionals—storytellers who not only understand craft, but who can confidently communicate with investors, funders, and distributors. She has supported creators at every stage of their journey, from first-time short film directors to teams building multimillion-dollar productions that attract top-tier talent. Joanne is a relentless champion for diverse and emerging voices, pushing open doors and dismantling long-standing barriers within the filmmaking ecosystem. Through her leadership, guidance, and industry advocacy, she continues to help filmmakers transform their passion into sustainable careers—ensuring that the stories that need to be told find their audiences, globally.

Her 2024 book, *Getting Your Film Funded, Produced and Distributed Globally: A Seven Step System — The Film Box Office S.U.C.C.E.S.S. Formula, distills her two-decade methodology into a complete roadmap for indie filmmakers.  joannebutcher.com

Link to her calendar:
https://www.filmmakersuccess.com/book-a-call

Current Films In Distribution
https://www.filmmakersuccess.com/filmsindistribution-

Website
https://www.filmmakersuccess.com/

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/joannefilm/

Facebook Group
Getting Your Film Funded, Produced, and Distributed Globally
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1588227901352330

LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joannebutcher/

Join our new educational platform From the Heart THRIVE and get free classes on film funding: https://fromtheheartproductions.thrivecart.com/from-the-heart-thrive/

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 1:15

Stay with us because Joanne Butcher is about to reveal why most films never get funded and seven steps that can benefit your project and your funding.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

So glad you could join us here for the Art of Film Funding podcast. I'm Claire Papan, co-producer with Carol Dean, writer, producer, and president of From the Heart Productions. And we have film financing information to share with you today. Our guest is Joanne Butcher, the Film Vision Alchemist, a consulting producer and film funding coach who has helped indie filmmakers put 21 features into distribution and over 150 more into development. Joanne is the author of Getting Your Film Funded, Produced and Distributed Globally, a Seven-Step System, the Film Box Office Success Formula. The book filmmakers are calling the missing manual for how to actually pay for the movie you want to make. This book distills her two-decade methodology into a complete roadmap for indie filmmakers. Over her career, Joanne has raised millions of dollars, led teams of professional fundraisers, and trained nonprofit boards across multiple sectors before turning her full attention to teaching filmmakers how to raise money. Today she works with both documentary and fiction filmmakers, helping them develop their projects through the lens of the funds they actually need to move their films and their careers forward. Carol sits down with Joanne today to unpack the seven steps, why most indie films stall before they ever raise a dollar, and how filmmakers at any budget level can build a real world to a real-world plan to get funded, get made, and reach a global audience. Carol, I'll turn this over to you now. Thanks, Claire. And Joanne, thank you for joining us.

SPEAKER_02 3:43

Thank you for having me. Well, there's so many things we want to cover. So we're going to get started about your story. It's a fascinating story. You're a fundraising executive, a nonprofit trainer, a consulting producer, and now a best-selling author. So let's start with what was the moment when you realized filmmakers needed a completely different approach to raising money.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

I was like, wait a minute, you know, some of our members have made feature films already. And uh let me bring them in. I think it was about 11 of them, and do a focus group with them and see what it is that they need and what I can help with because we were tended to be teaching uh practical. You know, I used to teach screenwriting myself. Uh, we taught sound, we taught directing, we taught all kinds of things. Um, and so I thought, what do we need to do for feature filmmakers? What how can we help them? So I did this first focus group, and basically I said, you know, how can we help? And what the answer was that I mostly got was nothing. We're doing it all by ourselves. And I was like, oh, that's what the independent in independent filmmakers means. I do it all by myself, I don't need any help, but that kind of thinking. And that was a big moment for me because I realized, but you know, fundraising, there are all there's all kinds of techniques, there's all kinds of strategies. They don't know any of these techniques and strategies, but they also don't know that they don't know how much they would benefit from them. And it's interesting because still to this day I find that at least half the filmmakers I speak to, and I speak to a lot, don't actually know that there is a possibility to learn fundraising. That's that's the first thing. So you can become a better fundraiser, you can become a better, a more experienced, more educated fundraiser. It's a skill that you can learn just the same way you learned lighting, just the same way you learned interview techniques. Um, but they don't realize that's a possibility. And then the other half I speak to know that fundraising is important and they don't know how to do it or how to get better at it. And um so that there are sort of two types of filmmakers: the ones that don't know anything, you know, that there is such a thing as fundraising, and the others that do, but but realize that they don't know anything about it and don't understand. And it's not their fault. I write about this in my book. Even the top film schools, I was speaking to AFI recently, do not teach anything about raising money in their programs. So you can get a film school degree and not know the first thing about raising money to make your films.

SPEAKER_02 7:05

I know that because working as a sponsor and uh you're having taking people on when they've graduated from some of the top colleges, it's it's really shocking when they come out and they know how to make a film, but they don't know the first thing of fundraising. Joanne, you're so right.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Um, they did teach me. I have a client, I have a client who graduated from NYU film school. Yes. And he was a very young man. I met him through his mother, actually. And he told me, you know, I want to make my own film, and I don't have any idea. My film school training taught me to go to LA and get a job, and I don't want a job. And he made his first feature film with me, a micro-budget horror film. He made his second feature film with me, a micro-budget horror film. It was supposed to come out in distribution in January, and about two days before it was supposed to get released, Bloomhouse swooped in and picked up the film. So I have my first like hot in Hollywood client, but that's exactly the trajectory. He graduated from NYV Film School, can't do better than that, and knew not a clue about how to get his first film made. And now he's going to be famous.

SPEAKER_02 8:26

Isn't that wonderful? This is the kind of stories we like to hear. Well, let's talk about the title of your book because it's very bold. Getting your film funded, produced, and distributed globally. So, why did you put globally in the title? And what do most American indie filmmakers misunderstand about the international market?

SPEAKER_01 8:51

Oh, what a great question. Um, well, what I saw when I looked around me and saw uh my friends making, you know, multimillion dollar films, um independent but still, you know, with A-list actors and everything, what I saw was that they already had distribution before they made the film. And so I thought, well, if my client is making a $200,000 film, a $500,000 film, a $2 million film, then I want them to have distribution before they begin as well. So uh the way that I work that is I work with a couple of sales agents, and um, you know, I could work with more, but I there's a couple that I've gotten used to working with. And uh we actually created some language um that my clients can use in their pitch decks. Uh it doesn't say we already have distribution, but it does say we already have access to sales agents and access to distribution once the movie is complete. And I actually kept it on that level because I don't really want my clients to sign anything, right? Even that story I just told, um, I wouldn't before he made the film, I wouldn't have wanted to sign with a sales agent because I don't want them locked in. You know, what if Bloomhouse does come calling? You want to be able? And actually, it was a bit messy because of the sales agent he was signed up with, which wasn't one of mine. But um so um I have my clients begin with the end in mind, begin with, I'm getting distribution for this film, and then we reverse engineer backwards. And so learning how to be able to speak about a film that's going into distribution as opposed to a story that I want to tell, has the conversation start being about business from day one. Does that make sense? Could I explain it?

SPEAKER_02 10:52

Absolutely, that's really great. You're so right. This is um, it's really very difficult for filmmakers when they get two-thirds finished and say, okay, now what about distribution? Where they would have been thinking of that since day one. That's very so terrific. That's the number one thing is to let them know. So let's walk our listeners through the framework of your book because it's built around the success formula, a seven-step system. So you take the word success and break each letter down. So um give us a high-level tour of what each letter stands for and why that order matters, and then we can go through it together.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

Lovely. Um, so if I I guess if I really spoke to a filmmaker and said, we're going to start with distribution, they might not want to listen to me. So S, the first letter in success, stands for script. Now every book filmmaker is happy, you know. Oh, we're talking about a script. That's the most important thing, right? We all agree on that. What I teach them is how do we make this not so much a more excellent script? They've already been working on that by the time they find me, most of them. Um, they want it to be the best script it can be. They've worked on it sometimes for years. And then I come along and I'm like, how do we make this more marketable? How do we make this more appealing for a sales agent? And I have people who have like I have a client right now, he's written a crime thriller in London, and um he realized as he was going through the process with me that he wanted to make it a faith-based movie. So we're going to have a faith-based crime thriller. It was already there in the bones of the story, but now it's it's clearly from a marketing standpoint a faith-based film. And um, interestingly, we have attached a casting director who was particularly interested in faith-based films, who's bringing along with him an investor who's particularly interested in faith-based films. So again, the story is really the same, but the butt the approach makes it much more marketable. Another uh client I had, she was making a um a drama, she told me. And then um first thing I do is I read my client's scripts. I read the story and I said, but this is um a thriller, Debbie, it's a thriller. She said, No, it's not, it's a drama. I said, No, it's a thriller. She said, No, it's a thriller drama. I said, No, it's a thriller. I said, Because the main character ends up being jumped by a gang. For several minutes of the film, we don't know where she is or what happened to her or if she's even alive. She wakes up in a hospital and then she gets herself out of the hospital and she goes to the place where she had seen that hidden gun and she goes and rescues the child. It's a thriller. Yes. And she had not seen that. Most most filmmakers don't. For some reason, every filmmaker I say, what's the genre of your film? It's a drama. I don't know what that's about. Well, it's about not understanding the industry. So if she had gone out with a, if she had made that film and it had been a drama with no names and, you know, very micro budget, she would have had no office of distribution. Instead, she did a one-page rewrite, took it out as a thriller, and she got 15 offers of distribution. Oh wow. How incredible! Yeah, yeah. One page rewrite. But that one page turned it into a far more marketable script. And that's the kind of work that I'm doing with my clients.

SPEAKER_02 14:53

Most people that are interested in investing often just read that one or one and a half pages, right?

SPEAKER_01 15:01

Well, uh, or just the log line, or um, I train my clients, uh I do a lot of training in their verbal pitch, and I train them to really give very little more than the log line, whether it's a documentary or a fiction film. Um, the rest is about you know the business.

SPEAKER_02 15:21

Okay, so step one is the script. Create a marketable script. So one creates the script that investors and distributors will actually back from one that's beloved by the writer. I mean, this sometimes they tell me I channel this script. I'm not changing a word.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

Yes, yes, that's common. Well, if you're making a film with an A-list actor, then that's your marketability. You don't say I'm making um a five million dollar film um without mentioning that you have a star in it, right? The only way you have to pitch that film is I have a star in my film. That's it. Um when you're making a micro-budget film, the the thing that separates some micro-budget films from others is that there are genres that sell. So I could go to any sales agent with a horror film, they're going to be interested. I can go to any sales agent with a thriller, they're going to be interested. I can go to certain sales agents with a faith-based film, they'll be interested. And so there are certain genres that sell, and because filmmakers don't think very much in terms of genre, for again, I often in my book I'll say, I don't necessarily understand this, but this is how filmmakers think. And so genre is one of the things that they just are not thinking about. But um, those genres are very marketable, and there there are certain genres that are very marketable. Um, the least marketable genres are drama and comedy. If you have a drama, micro-budget drama or a comedy, it's going to be very difficult to get distribution. What are the majority of first-time feature filmmakers doing? They're making dramas and comedies. In fact, when I ask them the question, what are the most marketable genres? They'll say drama. The next answer will be comedy. That's what they think. That's what they think.

SPEAKER_02 17:32

Right, it's a long way from true, but I'll guess. So many filmmakers want to jump straight into fundraising, but your formula puts calculate the value of your film before you ever ask for a dollar. So, how does a first-time filmmaker realistically calculate that value? And why does skipping this step kill so many projects?

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Yes, near a I would say half the filmmakers, I mean more than half, uh, you know, if I say what's your budget, they'll say whatever it is, 300,000, a million. Um, but they can't tell me how much the film is going to make. Because they've never actually thought of that question. And then the next thing they will say is, well, there's no way you can know how much a film is going to make. But there are plenty of ways you can know how much a film is going to make. For example, I don't have an A-lister in my film. My film is probably not going to be making, you know, in the millions. Probably. Um, I have a micro-budget drama, I can pretty much be with no names, I can be pretty sure it's going to make nothing. So those are just kind of broad strokes, but there are lots of ways. And the first session that I have with my clients, we go through a checklist of how to increase the value of the film. And so, for example, I have a documentary filmmaker, and one of the ways he increased the value of his film was he got the narration done by a very famous, probably famous to you and I, Carol, not necessarily to our younger generation, but uh he got Allie McGraw to do the narration on his film. Allie McGraw was a huge film star in the 70s, and um and she is a big, big supporter of film. And uh, you know, he said, Well, how much will I need to pay you to do the narration? She said, Oh, uh, if I charged you what I would have to charge you, you wouldn't be able to afford me. And it and so I'm gonna be doing it for free. She shows up at all his events, she's doing the narration on his second film. They've become really good friends. And the audience for his films will show up at a at a screening, and uh Ali McGraw is gonna be there, right? So she brings a lot of value to a film, and um, you know, fiction filmmakers are used to thinking about celebrities, but documentary filmmakers not so much, but that can be very, very valuable for your film. Um, so in my very first session with my clients, we go through this checklist. How do we increase the value here? How do we increase the value here? How do we increase the value here? So if we start off with a value of zero, by the end of that first session, we have ended up adding dollars onto the value of our film. So um, but it's a very, very important, and that's why I make it the first thing. It's a very foundational way of thinking. Stop thinking about what I want to spend and start thinking about how is this film going to make money?

SPEAKER_02 21:05

Well done. That's a great idea because sometimes I see films that are a business, actually, that the film starts out to be one thing like forks over knives, where there's a way of how to eat better, healthier, and then it the film has become such a tiny part, it became a big business. They I last time I looked, they were charging $350 to learn how to cook the proper food. So it became a very lucrative business for them, and sometimes people have that with their films and don't recognize it. You're the only one I've ever heard talk about increase the value of your film so terrific. Um would that ever include uh books or creating a book to go with it or um anything like that, a secondary product?

SPEAKER_01 22:07

You know, it is extremely hard to market a film. And I hear, in fact, I just heard from a filmmaker today saying I'm I'm going to be creating a book. The thing is, it's very difficult to market a book. So um I am not sure of the value of adding a book to a film. Um, however, I have a client um and she has a business as a coach and she is making her first feature film. It's got nothing to do with her coaching or anything like that. Um, but that film will actually increase her coaching business. And the second film, which is about around the topic of her coaching business, will definitely increase that business. So it's not that I think any of that doesn't work. It it it does, but I think that the heavy lift of marketing, um, I wouldn't suggest, you know, I don't I don't really. Believe in that model, although it's certainly worked in the past. But I think that yeah, people will end up with a film that they don't know how to market and a book that they don't know how to market, and that's a lot. Okay. I don't need to be negative about it, but I just think, you know, just make raise your money, make your film.

SPEAKER_02 23:36

Yes. This is it. One focus. All right. So you teach that creating a distribution plan comes before fundraising, not after the film is finished. That's the opposite of what most indie filmmakers think. So why is this reversal of their thinking so critical?

SPEAKER_01 23:58

Because even though I start my clients thinking about distribution from day one and I teach them a lot about distribution, they can speak very confidently with a lot of clarity about distribution. I also want them to think through what does distribution, what would your ideal distribution plan look for you? Right. So my client who made the horror film that got picked up by Bloomhouse, that would have been his ideal choice. Or A24, and they were actually in a in a bidding war for a little while over his film. You know, um maybe not everybody is gonna have that experience, you know, um, but it's still something to look at because one of my clients said to me yesterday, oh, my film is an A24 film. That's a big thing to say, but um it fits that model, his film fits that model better than most, right? And so um, you know, he can start now, he can he he watched an A24 film the other night, he's gonna watch another one tonight. He's gonna start familiarizing himself with that whole tone, and that might change things in his script. Um, and then one day when that film goes into distribution, um whether A24 picks it up or not is is not necessarily the point, but it will have been part of the vision and part of shaping the film. Um I have a uh documentary client right now, and I taught her as I teach all documentary filmmakers the concept of an impact campaign. And so um an impact can well, you know what an impact campaign is, but for the audience, I would just say um the simplest way I think of an impact campaign is say for the for the documentary bully that was about bullying in middle schools. And if I were making that film today, maybe I would start my impact campaign small and I would say, I'm gonna have one screening a month at a middle school, or I'm gonna have one screening a month at an event for middle school teachers, and I'm gonna uh raise money to pay for that uh those 12 screenings. That's kind of the minimum version of an impact campaign as I can describe it. But an impact campaign is to take a film and put it in front of the audiences who need to see it. Um with my client, now that she understands the concept of an impact campaign, she's raising uh $300,000 for her documentary. Um, I ask my clients now to raise a minimum of $60,000 for their impact campaigns. And if you really had a successful impact campaign like the campaign for bully, which was made like 30 years ago, and still hires three full-time people to get that movie in front of middle school teachers, right? And middle school districts. Yes, um that that her impact campaign could eventually raise more than the money it took to make a film because it's about screenings and getting in front of people and um some films are used to change legislation, you know, uh the impact of a film. Like you mentioned, forks over knives. Forks over knives, that's not a business, that's a movement. I I have a client, she made when she told me the film she wanted to make, she wanted to make a film about um racism and sexism at the highest levels of the corporate world in the UK. Yes, and I said, that's not a movie, that's a movement. And she she raised uh money to make her films, very small budget. She made over a hundred thousand dollars in her first year with that film, showing it in corporations that wanted to retain uh black and minority hires that they're losing, you know, at a huge rate. And um, and so for for employee retention and and hiring, um, she just did very, very well with her film. She was a first-time filming.

SPEAKER_02 28:30

That is wonderful, and that's very true. So you're really making them focus on it, put it in uh the uh budget and actually think and plan ahead of time. So I'm all about intention, visualization to create the future. So this is exactly what you're doing. You're helping them create that future ahead of time because too many people have no idea. They wait till they get there, then when they find out the cost, they're shocked. Um, and they're not ready to go back on the street and start raising money. So that's a great idea to put it in the budget.

SPEAKER_01 29:13

Wonderful. Yeah, for an impact campaign, I do advise filmmakers not to spend any money on distribution if they're going a traditional way with a sales agent and so on. Um, there are uh a number of schemes out there that charge filmmakers money, and I don't believe in any of that.

SPEAKER_02 29:32

Good. Good. Well, in your work as a consulting producer, you've helped people get 21 features into distribution and 150 more into development. So, what are the patterns you see again and again in filmmakers who actually finish and distribute their films versus the ones who stall?

SPEAKER_01 29:57

That's that's a great question. Um it's we're now up to 25. We have 25 films in distribution on my website. We have another 10 to 15 coming out this year. So um by the end of the year, we'll be at about 40. And so out of the 150 projects, 40 are already in distribution. And then there are some clients, um, I call them my failures. So I had this one client, she was going to make her first short film with me and raise money to make it, and but she loved working as a PA. And I said, Oh, let me um, I I I got her a job interview with with a friend of mine. That didn't really lead to anything, but but I have all my clients work on their resumes and you know, things like that. So then she got a job as a PA doing something or other. Then she got a job at HBO, now she's an executive at uh CAA. So I call her one of my failures. Oh okay. She kept failing upwards. So, you know, sometimes uh people find out that maybe the filmmaking isn't what they really wanted. I had a client who made a historic documentary, and he is now a history professor.

SPEAKER_02 31:21

Oh, how wonderful!

SPEAKER_01 31:22

Yes, he found his colleague from filmmaking. Yes, that's great. It was not filmmaking, but it was that deep interest in history. I have a I had a client who was a VR filmmaker, and I ended up getting her a job interview at a university, and that didn't pan out, but the next job interview did, and she's been working there now for about five years, full-time, running their VR lab and teaching and making her own films. Oh, wonderful. So so those are, you know, and then I think that some people um just sort of give up. Uh, they get they uh they think they can't do it, or or maybe life happens, you know. I had two filmmakers who were making this wonderful um children's film, and and something happened, and I was like, why are they not communicating with me and what's going on? Well, they went through a breakup, and now it's you know a while's gone by, so it's time for him to get back on the horse. But all kinds of things can happen, but I think that giving up is is the probably the most difficult um thing to get over. Um, and you know, when I'm working as a coach with someone and they have the support, that is really what they they need, and probably what they need to do is to to continue coaching rather than to to give up. Um, but that's that's always something that we negotiate. But um, you know, I I just um a colleague of mine, we'd become friends and we've tried to work on projects over the years, he just uh contacted me. He's gonna be the head of a studio, a new studio that's being built, and he's looking for projects. And so I ended up, we actually went through my 150, well, minus 40 projects, and um he picked out six. He read the scripts, and he is moving forward with two of them, and um really wanted to move forward with a third, and we can't find that filmmaker, so uh I don't know what's going on there. Yeah. But this has happened. I I've had a client die and not get her film made, you know. Yes, um, she has health issues, and various things happen in life.

SPEAKER_02 34:04

I know from mentoring people too, life gets in the way, and you have to stay with them through the life trauma and keep them uh using the film to for because sometimes when you have a creative project to put your your attentions and your focus on, it helps you get through the difficulties of life, but it's all your work. Well, your book talks about finding the easiest fundraising plan. So not one size fits all. So the question is how do you help a filmmaker identify which strategy of fundraising fits their personality, their network, their project, and uh, whether that's equity, grants, crowdfunding, tax incentive, free sales, how do you handle that?

SPEAKER_01 35:00

Well, it's different for everybody because it's different not only for every film, every filmmaker, and every different place they're at in their careers. So I have a client who's a very well-known filmmaker, his name is Thomas Allen Harris, and we are currently finishing a $1.3 million documentary. And, you know, when we first started working together, he was certainly not working at those budgets, and he didn't have me. So, and he was already a good fundraiser when I met him. Um, but we have uh grown exponentially. We also, for that project, we won a grant from the National Science Foundation for $3.2 million. Oh, okay. And now the NSF is reaching out to us to ask us to apply again. So um, but in a in a somewhat different program. But um so, you know, uh, but not all my clients are at that level. So this one client that I was just talking about, her impact campaign, for her, it's her first feature documentary. She's raising $300,000 to do that. And we started, she worked with you, thank you very much. She worked with Alyra and she raised about $10,000 on her crowdfunding campaign. And uh then she uh started working with a major donor, she won her first grant that she and I worked on. That was another $10,000. Now we're working with a brand sponsorship person who's going to be bringing uh brands. The film is going to be on PBS. Um, brands love to be on PBS. Um, so you know that works for some. And then another documentary filmmaker I was talking to yesterday, we just decided to not go with PBS. So um every film is different, things can change, um, but the funding strategies uh work differently for everyone. So I ended up, I had my my filmmaker group about a month or two ago. It's like, oh wait, everybody in this group is running a crowdfunding campaign. Um but uh now I have a client who's not, he's raising $1.5 million to make his campaign. I mean, sorry, to make his film. And um, he's not gonna run a crowdfunding campaign, he's just gonna be going to investors. It's what works for the person, you know. But a lot of my clients got really excited about crowdfunding all the same time. I was like, yay, because I love it when my clients decide to do a crowdfunding campaign. It's a great way to start fundraising, it's a great way to practice talking to people about your film and money. It's a great starter. Um, we I have a client who raised um, what was it, $13,000 on her crowdfunding campaign. She also is with you. And thank you very much. And she took $10,000 of those dollars to pay hire one of the casting directors I work with who is an A-list casting director. So now we're we're still gonna make her film for $300,000, but it's gonna have much higher level actors in it. So we've increased the value of her film radically by adding this uh casting director. So all of these are, I think, I think in terms of business models, right? So if we're making a small budget film, what can we do to increase the value? It might be attaching a casting director. So it might be simplest to do a crowdfunding campaign. Now we can hire the casting director. You know, so um there are so many paths, and I'm I'm just good at you know, seeing what the best path is. And then the truth is, documentary filmmakers, um, I teach seven different types of fundraising. They often have access to more types of fundraising than a fiction filmmaker has. You know, for a fiction filmmaker, it might be crowdfunding than investors. That's only two. But um now I'm working with this uh brand sponsor person, so uh some of my clients are working with her. Um, and that's great because that was always the one I knew the least about. We often we get a lot of um uh companies working with my clients. I have them work on that from day one, you know, uh, giving locations, food, all kinds of things to bring down the budget because there's two ways you can raise money. You can raise money or you can lower your budget. You know, those are the two ways you can do it. Um, so we've done that for a long time, but now I'm working with somebody who's bringing cash to films. So that's really exciting and and uh very, very, very exciting.

SPEAKER_02 40:13

Yes, this is what the big and uh in filmmakers do. I mean, sometimes when they're multi-million dollar budget, they're still they've got Ford, their Chevrolet with all their cars, they've got their branding. They open a cabinet, there's Anne Jeremima's something or another. Right. Right, and so you're working now with a branding person. This is brilliant.

SPEAKER_01 40:40

Yes, yes, that's very recent. I I I've discovered I have a cousin who works in product placement, but he only works with A-list actors, right? So I I didn't have uh films that would work for him, right? But now I didn't even think of this till this minute. But now that we have a casting director who can cast A-listers, maybe I can go back to him and say, what brands can you bring? So yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:12

It's wonderful. So documentary filmmakers and fiction filmmakers often feel like they live in two different financing worlds. So, from your vantage point, coaching both of them, where do these worlds overlap and where do filmmakers get in trouble by borrowing the wrong playbook?

SPEAKER_01 41:35

I don't see um filmmakers so much borrowing the wrong playbook as using a limited playbook, a too-limited playbook. Um, I was once hired as a consultant by a large women's documentary um organization, and I had five filmmakers to work with, and each of the five had received a $100,000 grant. That's really amazing, $100,000 grant. So they were doing something very well, right? But documentary filmmakers tend to have an obsession with grants, which is fine. Um, but they don't know the strategies I teach around grant writing, because grant writing is kind of my superpower, but they don't know those strategies, so they often spend way too much time working on grants and burning themselves out, and they they they don't know how to do it more efficiently. But what happened with each of these brilliant women was that not one of them except one had raised any other money. And one of them had raised a thousand dollars from a donor. I'm like, uh, you raise a thousand dollars from a grant, you need to be matching that with donors, and they were like, what? And you know, and I talked about, you know, all my clients, we start out, you know, with a $20,000 crowdfunding campaign. Um they were like, what? So documentary filmmakers think in terms of grants and they're very not thinking about anything else. Um, but there are certain ways of fundraising that are open to them. So I tend to, when I teach, I tend to not do something like a grant writing workshop. I'm always wanting to teach this concept of expanding your portfolio. And when I was a consultant to nonprofits, I did I saw the same thing. They would land on a couple of ways of fundraising and not do anything with anything else. And I would just start them out with the other ones, and that can grow over time, but you don't want to be only focused in one or two types of fundraising, it's just there's all this other money available, you know, and um and they're just missing out with fiction filmmakers. They never think about grants. And I remember one of my clients one time we were in a class, and he I saw this light bulb going off in his head about something I'd been talking about for about an hour, and this light bulb went off, and he's like, Wait, are there grants for fiction filmmakers?

unknown 44:25

I was like, Yes.

SPEAKER_01 44:27

Yes, there are screenwriting grants, production grants, post-production grants, all kinds of grants. Great. So it's not it's not that they're in the wrong playbook, they're just not they they're not aware of all the possibilities. So film fiction filmmakers think the only way to raise money is either crowdfunding or investors, they don't realize, oh, we could do both. How about that? That would be useful. Um, so all my fiction filmmakers who chose to do that crowdfunding campaign, they're they're also using that to leverage looking for investors. So, and and and each and once you Playing with this whole um these all these different opportunities, one helps the other, you know. So you write a grant, and all of a sudden you're communicating better about your film, and your film improves, all the grants improve your film. And once you run a crowdfunding campaign, you know, my clients start to have, they're like, oh my God, I'm so scared to speak to people. And by the end, they're like, Oh yeah, I'm talking to all these different people, and it becomes like a normal thing. Yeah, they don't know that at the beginning, and they have all this emotional baggage, spiritual baggage, and then by the end it's become normalized, and now they're ready, they're much in a much more ready place to talk to investors. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 46:05

Yes, this is wonderful. It's a confidence, you're giving them confidence, and the crowdfunding gives them confidence. That's wonderful.

unknown 46:15

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 46:15

Now, as a biracial woman and a global ambassador, you've been very clear that you want all filmmakers to have the capacity to tell their stories well. So, what specific advice do you give to filmmakers from underrepresented backgrounds who are walking into fundraising rooms for the first time?

SPEAKER_01 46:37

I think the most important thing that I've seen with my uh I'm half Trinidadian, I've had several clients from Trinidad and Tobago, I've had clients from South Africa, um, Australia, England. And the most important thing that they have to learn is that Americans are not superior, which is what they really have been taught by their cultures. And I remember years ago, I worked with the Brazilian Film Festival here in Miami for like 28 years, and we used to, I used to run their trade show, and we had panels on filmmaking, and we had simultaneous translation. They would bring 200 Brazilian filmmakers up every year, and I would bring Americans who were producers and different things. And I had this producing team who were friends of mine. Um, and uh so all the Brazilians are there to listen to how they're gonna make money like Americans, because America, you know, they get money. In the middle of the talk, these two producers, they're listening to questions and everything, and they're saying, wait, they said, Are you telling me that you're getting money from your government to make films? And the Brazilians are all yes, and they're like, the producers are like, What? Could you tell us more about that? Every other country in the world has um government funding for films, except America. The only one that doesn't have the federal government funds as other funds. But uh it was so funny, and all the Brazilians are thinking, Oh, we've got to learn from the Americans because we want to be in the American market and we want to make films like Americans and we want to be American, and the Americans are like, You said what now you're raising how much to make your movies?

SPEAKER_02 48:32

Right. Okay. Well, let's get tactical for our listeners. If a filmmaker is sitting at their kitchen table listening to this with a script and no money, what are the first three concrete actions from your book that they should take this week to start moving towards a funded production?

SPEAKER_01 48:56

Well, the first thing is call me. No, the first thing is in the book uh we talk about the marketability. There's a long section in the book about getting that script, or if you're a documentary filmmaker, getting that documentary to a more marketable place. Whatever place it's at today, you can get it to a more marketable place by thinking through the marketability question. Um the second thing I would say is to um decide which of the seven types of fundraising you're gonna raise, you're gonna use. I would commit to a minimum of two and as close to seven as you possibly can get. And then uh to do all the preparation going through the box office success formula, do all that preparation before you start fundraising. So even if you're looking to raise, you know, I have my short film clients raise $11,000 or $12,000 to make a short. But even if that's what you're doing what you decide you're gonna do, you want to do all the preparation that's in the book first before you start your fundraising. You're a much better.

SPEAKER_02 50:22

Yes, this is good advice. Thank you. So, where can the listeners find you and get your book and possibly even work directly with you?

SPEAKER_01 50:33

The uh you can get the book on Amazon, you can just um go to Amazon, put my name in, and the book will pop up and you can get it there. You can get it in most countries uh in the world, I believe, which is uh interesting. Um, and then if they want to speak to me, um either email me. My email address is Joanne at filmmakersuccess.com. My business is called Filmmaker Success. Uh, or um there's a link to my calendar at www.filmmakersuccess.com slash book hyphen a hyphen call. That might be a lot to remember, but um if you go to my website, you'll find a link to my calendar so that you can book a call with me. And my website is www.filmmakersuccess.com. I would love to hear from you. I love talking to filmmakers. Filmmakers are my favorite people.

SPEAKER_02 51:33

Oh, how nice. This is a they will love to hear that. Filmmakersuccess.com.

SPEAKER_01 51:40

Got it. Filmmaker, it's one filmmaker, so filmmakersuccess.com. Singular. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 51:49

And now, um, what's one piece of encouragement you'd leave with the filmmaker who's been told no too many times and wants to know, do I keep going or not?

SPEAKER_01 52:04

Fundraising is a profoundly spiritual practice. And I had to have a conversation with one of my clients the other day and say every time we have a call, you show up with a negative comment. It has to go. We're we are graduating from being filmmakers to being fundraisers. The filmmaking is never going to go anywhere. The fundraising is going to change, it's going to keep changing. And eventually we have to make a decision that we're going to let go of negative thinking for the money to arrive. So that may not sound like a practical thing, but it's everything. It's absolutely everything.

SPEAKER_02 52:47

I totally agree with you. Totally agree with you. Your mind is your greatest benefit in funding films. It has to be working with you 100%, Joanne.

SPEAKER_01 53:01

But if a filmmaker has been trying and trying and trying and trying and getting no, it's because they don't have the correct strategy. It's not because of something to do with their work. It's they don't have the fundraising strategy. I like to tell people: if you were to sign up today for a class to fly a plane and you would know in three months how to fly a plane, you would not go out there today and get in a plane and turn the key on and try and fly it. You would know that you needed to do the study in the practice for three months. And that's that's what I'm trying to get across is that you can't just filmmakers have this idea that they can start from standing zero and become a fundraiser. No. And within a very few minutes of a conversation, I can I know exactly where the filmmaker is in is in the wrong strategy. And that's always what it is that's getting them the nose. Always, not sometimes, always.

SPEAKER_02 54:09

This is marvelous. So thank you so much for sharing your wisdom, your experience, and your generous spirit with our listeners. And what I love about your approach is that you take something that feels overwhelming to filmmakers, which is raising money, and you turn it into a practical, hopeful, step-by-step process that people can actually follow. Your success formula reminds filmmakers that funding is not magic, it's preparation, clarity, strategy, and believing enough in your story to keep moving forward one step at a time. So, for those of you listening, you can learn more about Joanne Butcher, her coaching programs, and her wonderful book, Getting Your Film Funded, Produced and Distributed Globally, a Seven Step System, the Film Box Office success formula at JoanneButcher.com and Filmmakers Success.com. Filmmakersuccess.com. And to every filmmaker out there who may be discouraged or wondering if your project will ever get made, please remember this. Every great film begins with someone who refused to give up on a story they believed that they needed to tell. So you have to keep learning, keep going, and keep taking the next step forward because your voice matters. You are the magic. Hollywood needs you. I'm Carol Dean, and this is the Art of Film Funding. Thanks for listening, and Claire Papan and I will see you next week. Thank you so much, Carol. Thank you, Joanne. You're so good to filmmakers. You're greatly appreciated.