The perfect double play: Levison to Trenker equal your chance!

Thomas Trenker and Louise Levison both carry tremendous weight in the fields of film financing and motion picture business planning for independent filmmakers. Each has been instrumental in creating some of the most groundbreaking areas regarding independent filmmaking. These distinctively influential individuals have parlayed their positions into solid long-term spheres of influence.

In Levison, who specialized in creating business plans specially designed for filmmakers in this sector; the pattern of success is punctuated by the plan for the greatest success story in independent film making history: The Blair Witch Project. The 1999 release was pitched on a business plan created by Levison. While the actual cost of shooting the film is disputed (est. $20,000-$750,000), the world wide box office for the film according to BoxOfficeMojo.com was $140,539,099. This is an amazing figure. Moreover, she has gone to develop business plans for other indie films, lectures at prestigious film festivals, and has written the book considered to be the standard for independent filmmakers: “Filmmakers and Financing: Business Plans for Independents.” Her credentials are very impressive (Levison, 2009).

On the other hand, Trenker serves at the head of the influential FilmAngel motion picture Angel investment group and as director of the Institute for Film Finance. The Swiss educated entrepreneur has taken his background in finance and has leveraged his position in order to create an influentially sizable organization of investors. This positioning of private funding has created a place which was described in the Wall Street Journal in 2009 said Saad Khan, a FilmAngels member and partner at CMEA Capital:

A lot of investors I see FilmAngels resonate for are already successful investors and very heavily weighted in other asset classes such as technology or software. This is a way to diversify their whole asset class in new areas.

So, in these two cases, the need (investors) and the product (the plan) are combined by these crafts. Levison approaches the elements needed to create business plan of attention. She especially gets to the root of their interest; they want to know when and how they are going to profit (and why)?

Financial projections show investors how and when they’ll make their money.
Vital elements investors look for are:

• Worldwide revenues and costs for comparative movies
• Projected profit
• Projected cash flow
• A detailed explanation of the assumptions underlying the financial projections for your film (Levison, 2009)

Accordingly, these are areas which must be clearly laid out before the investors. It can be the difference between funding and being stuck without the necessary capital. On the other hand, the prevailing nature of investing is to gain a return. As noted above, this underlines the importance of the four elements outlined by Levison.