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Where the Money Goes in Hollywood

11.15.11 @ 2:54PM Tags : craigmazin, hollywood, johnaugust, money, podcast

Hollywood’s accounting practices are so infamously convoluted that you could write a book on them. Two, in fact: author Edward Jay Epstein has written two books on the topic, The Big Picture: Money and Power in Hollywood and The Hollywood Economist: The Hidden Financial Reality Behind the Movies (with an update of the latter on the way). I read his first book, but by this point my memory’s a bit hazy, so listening to the latest episode of the Script Notes podcast by screenwriters John August and Craig Mazin was a great refresher on the topic of where the money goes in Hollywood. More »

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Your Film May Be More Appealing to Investors if You Start* by the End of the Year

10.12.11 @ 10:37AM Tags : budget, financing, incentives, indiewire, investment, irs, money, taxes

Did you know that for the last seven years, film investors could tax-deduct the entirety of their film investment (up to $20 million), in the same year they made the investment, regardless of whether the film made a profit or loss? This has been possible thanks to IRS Code Section 181, which, according to indieWIRE, is the only federal tax credit available for independent film investors. Section 181 is set to expire at the end of 2011, however, and is not likely to be renewed. So if you’re looking for investment in a film project of yours, and you want to entice investors with this significant deduction, you’ve got a little over two months to get started — and by “get started,” I mean getting your paperwork in order and filming at least one day (thus the reason for the asterisk). More »

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Can a blog be self-sustaining? NoFilmSchool's traffic and revenue

05.4.10 @ 12:00PM Tags : blog, career, meta, monetization, money

Can a blog like NoFilmSchool be self-sustaining? As a blogger you can make money by being a contributor to a huge tech or political blog, wherein you’re one of many staff writers churning out content every day — which I’ve done — but can you turn a profit by writing about what’s important to you, on your own site, in your own way? In my recent manifesto I talked about blog revenue being one (small) slice of the self-sustaining pie, and on this site’s about page I wrote, “a big part of figuring out how to be independently creative — and by this I mean, being able to work on your own creations, for yourself, without having a day job — is figuring out how to derive value from the content you create.” Here, then, are the traffic and revenue stats from NoFilmSchool for the just-concluded month of April: More »

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Save New York's TV and film tax credits

02.14.09 @ 5:45PM Tags : money, nyc, taxes

I’m a few days late on this, but as someone who’s been trying to get a low-budget NYC production off the ground for the past six months, this is not a pleasant specter to stare in the face: More »