It always seems to come down to the money. The search, the quest, the mission to find that ever elusive moola. I talked about one aspect of our film financial plan in my last blog posting. Crowdfunding. The part we want to involve as many of you as will have us. Yet we also had planned some other pieces, but it hasn’t gone as planned. Bear with me as I explain.
When the now much talked about JOBS bill passed early last year, a lot of us filmmakers thought it was the holy grail answer to our future film financing plans. However, we should have been somewhat more skeptical about anything that involved our complicated federal government. The SEC was supposed to have come down with the rules to this new law by the end of last year (2012). But it dragged its feet, and that deadline came and went.
Only recently, on September 23, did one of the pieces of this legislation finally get its rules laid out. But it is a part that hardly affects us. Mainly, it sheds off an 80-year tradition (SEC law passed in 1933) of not allowing general solicitation of certain financial deals, albeit only to accredited investors. Which means it doesn’t affect most of us, only about 9 million of the elite in America.
Go here to get the rules on this part of the new law — http://info.slated.com/how-to-qualify-for-general-solicitation-fundraising/. Filmmakers have to jump through a lot of complicated hoops to make this work for them. Good luck with that.
And in case you just might want to know what an ‘accredited investor’ actually looks like — http://www.sec.gov/answers/accred.htm.
Anyway, there is another section of this new law that we had been looking at more attentively. The section that they have yet to make rules for, and the section we had planned to make as a part of our financing plan. It involved equity crowdfunding. Currently, ‘non-accredited investors’ (which are most of us) can only participate in donation based crowdfunding. Equity crowdfunding would allow you to actually participate in the potential profits of a film, which you now cannot do because the SEC is still dragging along on those rules. Word is they may be out sometime next year. Which for us, probably will be too late for “One Hand Clapping.” Sigh … we were hoping we could offer that to you, which means for now we can just legally offer you the now traditional donation based crowdfunding. Not that that is bad, but we wanted to do even more for you. We will be as generous as we can with the rewards. In fact, if you check out our Launch Our Film campaign, and don’t feel the rewards are enough, email us and suggest others. We just might be able to accommodate you!
One more note. I and my wife Berry will be at a “Dreams Awake” screening in Sedona soon. If you’re in the area — https://www.facebook.com/events/1394391264127652/
JAD
OUR PROMO TRAILER