Ben Yennie‘s post on Medium, The 9 Ways to Finance an Independent Film, is one of the clearest summaries of film funding I’ve seen.

He breaks your funding sources into nine categories:

1. Skin in the Game
2. Soft Money/Deferments
3. Crowdfunding
4. Tax Incentives
5. Private Equity
6. Gap Debt
7. Product Placement/Sponsorship
8. Pre-Sales
9. Grants

“A lot of Filmmakers are only concerned with finding investors for their projects. While films require money to be made well, there are better ways to find that money than convincing a rich person to part with a few hundred thousand dollars. Even if you are able to get an angel investor (or a few) on board, it’s often not in your best interest to raise your budget solely from private equity, as the more you raise the less likely it is you’ll ever see money from the back end of your project.”

Ben also provides a graphic in which he displays a typical breakdown for three projects: first narrative feature, documentary feature, and second or third narrative feature.

It’s somewhat difficult to read, but here’s my best guess:

A. Narrative Feature

• 1 – 10%
• 2 – 10%
• 3 – 20%
• 4 – 20%
• 5 – 20%
• 6 – 20%

B. Documentary Feature

• 1 – 10%
• 3 – 20%
• 4 – 20%
• 7 – 10%
• 8 – 20%
• 9 – 20%

C. Second or Third Narrative Feature

• 3 – 10%
• 4 – 20%
• 5 – 20%
• 6 – 20%
• 7 – 10%
• 8 – 20%

Ben also has an excellent post called The 12 Slides you Need in your IndieFilm Investment Deck which you can use as an outline for your next pitch video.

My take: I love the visual which I think of as depicting your full budget as a pie of six flavours! Some are tastier than others and some come with strings attached. But the unsaid truth is that it’s difficult to bake this pie in only one flavour.