Funding Ghostkeeper -- "How low can you go?"

I'm hoping some of you stay with these notes on financing a movie, some might ask what this has to do with writing, but since I'm more of a "filmmaker" than a writer, I think that the future is going to be like this.

Anyways, back to GKPR2, and the different ways to fund it. 

Right now we are hoping to get under the cover of Telefilm, a movie financing part of the Canadian government, which helps filmmakers get their movies made. Telefilm can give a production up to 49% but to a maximum of $500,000. This funding comes directly from the government because Canada doesn't really have a big studio system like the U.S. does.

So, lets say that we get $500k (although it would probably be less), that leaves us with $1,100,000 so that means we have to find that money. Another part of the funding would be 30% of the budget coming from Alberta, which also has it's govt funding.

This funding is comparable to all the states in the U.S. offering tax credits and so we get 30% tax credits from the province, totalling (at the best) $480,000.

So just from Federal and Provincial govts in Canada we have almost $1 million. This, of course is a dream amount but you get the idea.

That leaves us with about $600,000. 

There's another provincial funding agency and that's the fact that Alberta pays no sales tax. Where does that come in? Well, film productions have to buy lots of things, props, clothing, food, etc. etc. and that comes in for a good 7-8 % and that combined with the exchange rate can close up a small but valuable gap.

But it leaves us with around $400,000 to find elsewhere. Here, our sources would come from Pay TV or network or even a small amount of theatrical potential.

And if it doesn't work --

Then we go back to the basics, a low budget movie of maybe $400,000 in total. But with this we probably couldn't film in Alberta because their labor union is difficult to work with and rather than argue that, I would just probably shoot in Vancouver where it's a lot easier. 

But the industry is changing greatly, smaller crews and technology that makes any production go faster. I always like to refer to Ed Burns who made Newlyweds for $9000!

My last produced movie, The Town Christmas Forgot, was made for $1 million and was done in 12 days, which is remarkable, but is becoming the reality.

So there we are; 

The hardest part of this is that our movie can be made anywhere with any assistance, it all comes down to finding the best deal. All crews are okay, union or not, the films get made regardless of how much people are paid.

From here, I will continue to post blogs about the progress as well as other stories that I might find interesting for you.  I also have a FB page for Ghostkeeper 2 that you might want to have a look at.