IN THIS LESSON

We’ll be exploring how you go about getting your film made, from pitch decks to budgets.

You’ll need to know your film inside out and be able to communicate it to get funding and support.

We’ll discuss key things to consider when getting your film idea off the ground.

Short Film Producing Process

CREATING YOUR PITCH DECK

As you know from the video, pitch decks are documents that outline the film project, the creative team, budget and mood board. It’s a simple way of communicating the plot, tone and visual style of the project as well as outlining what it needs in order to be made.

You don’t need to overthink or overcomplicate it, as long as it communicates the key points, you’re good!

Title Page (with a strong visual)
Key information - the format, the estimated length, genre & budget
Log-line (2 sentences max)
Synopsis (roughly 3 paragraphs)
Visual references and other projects its comparable to
Director’s Statement (why does this need to be made?)
Breakdown of the Key Team (Writer / Director / Producer)

Once you’ve got a pitch deck together, you can send it to a range of people who might be interested in supporting, or use it as a basis for doing a Crowd funder video.

FUNDING YOUR FILM

Nothing in this life is free and unfortunately neither is film-making. Making a film is expensive but with advances in technology and the accessibility of it, it’s easier to make it on a shoe-string budget. Regardless, it’s important to know how much your film costs to make. This is where a budget comes in handy!

Here you can see the basic budget that I made for my last narrative short film, ‘Capsule’.

We were able to deliver Capsule on roughly a £5K budget but that didn’t include admin time, however, it’s definitely possible to make a film for less.

Pros and Cons of Different Methods of Funding Your Short Film

Once you’ve created a basic budget, you can have conversations about ways you might be able to save costs or call in favours.

You've Got Your Film Idea, Now What?