Creative Financing: An Interview with Producer Cora Olson
by Richard Sheehan on May 11, 2011 in Financing
Cora Olson & Jennifer Dubin have produced four films. Their latest, THE PERFECT FAMILY, starring Kathleen Turner, was a hit at this year’s TriBeca Film Festival.
In between meetings on a rainy afternoon, Cora sat down with me at Norwood to discuss financing for independent films, and how creative producers need to be in this current market.
Jennifer Dubin, Cora Olson, Kathleen turner, Rebecca Wackler, Angelique Cabril, Anne Renton & Richard Chamberlain at the Tribeca premiere of The Perfect Family
RS: So, your latest film, THE PERFECT FAMILY, was financed by one investor. What advice would you have for a producer with a great script and possibly talent attached, to find someone like that? It’s the question everyone has – what’s the secret?
CO: It depends on what the movie is, but we always start with the director. We’ve worked with first time directors that have a community of people that may have the resources and network of family and friends that want to help that person’s career. That can happen in a number of ways. This was how we were able to identify the financier of THE PERFECT FAMILY.
In the case of I AM I, which begins shooting in May, we took a “crowd funding” approach to work the network within the director’s community, as well as that of Present Pictures (Cora & Jen’s production company). That is usually how we work. That community expands if the director has done some other projects, and has fans out there that know their work. It can be a good place to look to find equity investors that may be interested in being a part of the new project.
RS: This is about constant networking?
CO: Yes. Pounding the pavement. It is always good to network with friends, friends of friends, etc… to see who is out there that might be looking for an investment opportunity. It also helps if you have a specific element, like an actor that someone is excited about. It’s all about finding what that excitement is that might attract someone with a specific interest.
RS: In the case of THE PERFECT FAMILY, was Kathleen Turner attached as you were trying to find financing, or did that happen later on?
CO: The financing had come together for quite some time before any actors were attached, but our approach was that we didn’t want to make the film without a certain level of cast because of how competitive & difficult it is. Just because you have the money doesn’t mean you have to run out and spend it.
RS: Was it because of the caliber of the script?
CO: We believed in the project. We believed that director (Anne Renton) had enough of a vision for the film to attract an actor; that we could sit anyone down with Anne & get them comfortable with the project.
RS: How many films have you worked on, and what size budget do you typically work with?
CO: We are starting our fifth film now, and our budgets have ranged from $200K to $2M plus. So, it just depends on what the package is and what kind of business we think we can do on the other side. A lot depends on the talent attached to get distribution.
RS: Tell me a little bit about your experience using Kickstarter or is crowd funding the term I should be using?
CO: We heard about crowd funding when we were in the midst of self distributing GOOD DICK, which we had at Sundance in 2008. We understood it to be a tool people were using not only to raise money, but to raise awareness about their projects because you can reach out to your social network, and the social networks of your social networks. We were sort of curious about it, and when we were putting together the financing for I AM I, we were talking to an investor who seemed interested in matching the funds we could raise by using Kickstarter.
It was a great opportunity for us because it is somewhat of a risky project as it is an independent drama with a very talented writer/director that is also going to star in the movie, which kind of limits some of the casting potential. This was great for the investor because he gets twice the bang for his buck. Plus, it allowed us to create this awareness and an impression of the film before it has even been shot.
RS: I had not thought about the marketing aspect of the process, just the fundraising.
CO: That part is huge! In some ways, the money is a secondary benefit to the marketing because to have that kind of awareness around your project at this early stage has turned out to be really valuable to us.
What we did was send the director to a seminar at the DGA to see what she thought about it, and she got really excited. At that point, we started working on what our campaign would look like – built a website for the film, the key art, and figure out what the reward structure would be based on people’s budget and participation.
That took a long time, and the director of this movie really researched it, taking the time to watch other people’s project videos, all that stuff, and ended up writing a little script for a video to try to let people know about how the film was being put together, rather than what it is actually about. We launched the campaign on November 30, just a couple of days after Thanksgiving, and the video got a lot of attention. People started blogging about it, and it just sort of went viral. People were very excited about it. And I think it helped that I AM I had some great talent attached before we launched our campaign. For example, Simon Helberg (“The Big Bang Theory”) is executive producing and playing “Seth” in the film, and when we launched on Kickstarter he had over 40,000 Twitter followers, many of whom became backers or helped us by tweeting to their followings. Jason Ritter, who is playing “Jonathan”, has 10,000+ followers as well and did a ton of tweeting. All of that was vitally instrumental to our success.
RS: Having been in THE PERFECT FAMILY and GOOD DICK, he seems to be a good luck charm for you.
CO: Yes! We love Jason. So, we knew we were going to be able to get the word out there instantly, but I don’t think we anticipated how people would react to the video, and how successful that would be.
RS: You have to pick a target goal to hit, don’t you?
CO: Yes, and that was the subject of a lot of debate. For a while we hovered around $50,000, the someone thought we should do $25,000, and, at some point, after all of this work went into the campaign, a couple of weeks before the launch, we thought “let’s just go for the gold”, and make it $100,000. I think we all just shut our eyes and said we think we can do this. With Kickstarter, if you don’t make your goal, you don’t get any of the money – it is a tremendous amount of pressure.
There are other crowd funding sites, like Indie GoGo, that don’t work like that – you keep what you raise. But, we felt that the urgency of having to make a goal would make us work that much harder. The campaign was 38 days, through the Winter holidays and New Years. It was a little bit of a nail biter, but I think we ended up with three $10,000 pledges in the last weeks. 60% of the pledges were $20-$100. 80% of those people we did not know – that was a bit of an eye opener! It shows that you start with your network, and it just mushrooms. We had 902 backers that are built in fans that have already shown support that will reach out to their own networks about the film. They also volunteered to do all sorts of stuff for the movie – one person volunteered to create an iPhone app, someone else offered free trained dogs, stuff you never think about. It’s been a really cool experience.
RS: How much did you end up raising?
CO: $111,000 in 38 days!
RS: Can people continue to donate after the 38 days?
CO: They can’t pledge through the Kickstarter site after the campaign is over. But, some people were emailing us saying that they’d had server issues or weren’t aware of it in time, so we created a contribution part of our website, iamithefilm.com, so that they can pledge.
RS: So, you are sold on this idea?
CO: Yes. It is a lot of work. The director really ran the campaign, and it was pretty much a full time job. It is not for the faint of heart, but if you want to do something well, you have to be willing to put your blood, sweat & tears into it.
RS: When you are looking at scripts for projects, and deciding where you will want to film, do you focus on which states offer better tax credits to make use of the extra cash flow?
CO: I would say that for a movie that small, even though we are not eligible for the California tax credit, you don’t want to shoot outside of Los Angeles or New York because you can cast locally and there are competitive rates on equipment in those cities. There is the cost of travel to take into account; you don’t have to have actors travel and put them up in Best Westerns somewhere. They appreciate being near their families, and being able to go home at night.
I do think the tax credits are important, and there is another picture on the horizon that is a larger budget that we are looking to shoot in NY.
RS: When you receive a script, and I imagine you and Jen are always reading something new, how much of your decision goes into how you will raise the money to make it as opposed to how passionate you are about the project?
CO: That is such a good question. I think if the writing is really amazing, we are gluttons for punishment and will take on something that we know will be difficult to get done. But, lately we have been looking far more critically at what we think it will cost, where it will come from, recoupment at the end of the day, and trying to avoid the head banging that goes into some of the projects. More often than not, though, it comes down to the writing because it is so hard to find something that is exceptional and original. So, for us, it starts with the writing, then the director.
RS: Have you always worked with first time directors?
CO: Yes. So far we have, but we are talking to Marianna Palka about her second film. We did GOOD DICK with her, and we are going to do something else with Anne Renton (THE PERFECT FAMILY).
RS: I thought she did a great job for someone who said she’d never been behind a camera before.
CO: She is very grounded and very mature. I felt she was incredibly balanced throughout the process.
We are also working on a thriller to shoot in NY with a second time director, so it’s evolving.
RS: You and Jen have been very creative in the whole DIY distribution front; are you trying to be as creative on the financing end?
CO: Yes. I think that it is where the whole crowd funding comes in – we thought let’s go for it. I do think in what we’ve gone through in distribution makes us think and work a lot harder at this stage. Getting an education on that end has changed the way we look at projects as producers. We’re also keeping up on new technologies, and how they impact filmmaking, what it cost to get your movie out there, and what kind of circulation you can get.
RS: Do you want to tell us a little about your experience in the whole college circuit distribution?
CO: That is a really difficult market. We had some success with GOOD DICK, and tried experimenting with it on some other films, but we found that even the college audiences are looking to see something that they’ve heard of, that has some buzz around it. We found that doing that could be a full time job, and it took us away from what we love most – making movies.
RS: So, in the end, are you optimistic about where things are going in the Indie world? It seems, according to whom you listen, it is either the best of times or the beginning of the end.
CO: I am optimistic, fundamentally as a person, and simultaneously a glutton for punishment. I think Jen and I will always be depression era producers. We’ll always be stealing the sugar packets. We will always keep the budgeting and spending as low and responsible as we can while providing the maximum quality. I do think that’s just smart for any business not to spend foolishly. At the same time, people have to make a living. Filmmaking cannot be a hobby, so it’s about finding that middle ground. If we could focus more as a community on doing that, the more money will be there for everyone. It concerns me seeing huge sales at festivals because then the films become a huge burden to the distributors to live up to expectations, and, if they do not perform, it affects everyone making independent films. We all suffer the consequences. I am glad that there were healthy sales at Sundance this year, and very happy for those filmmakers. It’s a tricky place to be. I’d rather see more films sell for reasonable prices instead of a few selling for $4M-$5M, while many others sell for $50k. There should be some healthy middle ground. But, I am optimistic.