September 30 Skill Bill Start organizers held a master class dedicated to film funding, finding co-producers, working with foundations, crowdfunding, as well as FILM.UA scholarships.
To reveal this subject, several speakers were invited to a discussion.
The first to speak was Simone Baumann, German Films, Germany. We had a discussion through Skype, and Simone talked about common rules of creating co-production projects, benefits and difficulties of such cooperation, financial and legal aspects of the question, optimal number of countries - co-producers for the project. Before starting a project, Simone recommended to weigh all the pros and cons of such a move, cause it can be easier and cheaper to produce the whole film in Ukraine. Regional funds of Germany when financing a project demand a budget plan in the respective region. Simone also drew attention to the countries whith tax incentives, which may Ukrainian producers may find comfortably to work with - Hungary, Czech Republic. Particular attention was paid to the importance of being in the context of European film making, which means that producers (especially beginners) should as often as possible go to festivals, watch movies, participate in professional industrial sections, workshops, seminars and conferences.
Elena Fetisova continued the discussion on the international co-productions. She debuted as a producer with the film "Parajanov" in 2013. Elena said that pre-production was difficult, but the experience that she received enabled her to successfully continue to do what he likes. It took 9 months to negotiate all the legal issues and the allocation of budget for the film "Parajanov". Currently Elena is working on a new project and have just returned from pitching in Utrecht, Netherlands, and recommended to visit it to anyone who wants to find a co-producer abroad. The result of her visit, in particular, was getting very valuable prize - script doctoring from a professional screenwriting agency. In the section of questions and answers, we also discussed cooperation with the State Committee for Cinematography and where to find co-producers in Ukraine. Elena Fetisova gave many useful tips like how it is important to speak English at any level, but when filling application forms not making any mistakes, and also about the features of international projects producer.
Vita Bazan, project coordinator at Spilnokosht, and her colleague, Denis Bortnikov told about crowdfunding system. As it became clear from the data presented, crowdfunding allows involving a large number of partners, interest people, though, can not be a complete source of funding. Colleagues told about the projects that were produced in Europe thanks to crowdfunding, and told that the greatest success have socially oriented films. The campaign will bring the most success if it correctly and professionally planned. In this regard the platform is planning to launch a crowdfunding course.
