How to Write an Indiefilm Business Plan 2/7 - Company Section:

Last time we went over the basics of writing an independent film executive summary.  This time, we’re diving into the first section of a business plan.  By this I mean the company section.  If you want an angel investor to give you money, they’re going to need to understand your company.  There are some legal reasons for this, but most of it is about understanding the people that they’re considering investing in.

The company section generally consists of the following Sub-sections.  This section only covers the company making the film, not the media projects themselves.  Those will be explored in section III - The Projects.

FORM OF BUSINESS OWNERSHIP

​This is the legal structure you’ve chosen to form your company as.  If you have yet to form a company, you can tell an investor what the LLC will be formed as once their money comes in.  I’ve written a much longer examination of this previously, which I’ve linked to below.

Related: The Legal Structure of your Production Company

THE COMPANY

This subsection talks a bit about your production company.   You can talk about how long you’ve been in business, what you’ve done in the past, and how you came together  if it makes sense to do so.  Avoid mentioning academia if at all possible, and try to make sure this section only takes up 2-3 lines on the page.

BUSINESS PHILOSOPHY

This is what you stand for as a company.  What’s your vision?  What content do you want to make over the long term.  Why should an investor back you instead of one of the other projects that someone else solicited. 
Your film probably can’t compete with the potential return of a tech company.  I’ve explored that in detail over the 7 part blog series linked below. 
​

Related: Why don’t rich Tech people invest in film?

Since you can’t compete on the merits of your potential revenue alone, you need to show them other reasons that it would behoove them to invest in your project.  See the link below for more information.
​

Related: Diversification and Soft Incentives

PRODUCTION TEAM

These are the key team members that will make your film happen.  List the lead producer first, the director second, the Executive Producer second, the remaining producers after that.  Directors of photography tend to not add a lot of value in this section, but if you’ve got one with some impressive credits behind them, it might make sense to add them.

Generally, if you have someone on your team with some really impressive credits, it might make more sense to list them ahead of the order I listed above. ​

PRODUCT

This should talk a little about the films you’re going to make, and the films you’ve made in the past.
​

OPERATIONS

This is a calendar of operations with key milestones that you intend to hit during the production of the film.  These would be things like:

• Financing Completed
• Preproduction Begins
• First Day of Principle photography
• Completion of principle Photography
• Start of post production

You’ll also want to include when you intend to finish post production, as well as when you intend start distribution, but that should be less specific than the items listed above.  For the non-bullied items, I would say that you should just give a quarter when you expect to have them happen, whereas the bullets should be a month or a date. 
​

CURRENT EVENTS

The Current events are as they sound, a list of the exciting events going on with your film and with your company.  This could be securing a letter of intent from an actor, director, or distributor, completing the script or raising some portion of the financing.
​

Thanks so much for reading!  I’ll be back next week with the projects section.  In the meantime, you can find the other completed sections of this 7 part series below

​Executive Summary
The Company
The Projects
Marketing
Risk Statement/SWOT Analysis
Financials Section (Text)
Pro-forma Financial Statements.

Assisting filmmakers in writing business plans is a decent part of the consulting arm of my business.  If you’d like to know more or for me to review your project, you can submit your project with the button below.  Or you can reach out to me directly using the button in the middle to ask for help in punching up the plan for your project.  If all you have is a quick question, use the relevant button to book a call on clarity.  It's billed by the minute, but it's the easiest way to get some quick questions answered.

Ask a Question on Clarity

Email me to talk about business plans

Submit your project

Also, if you like these blogs, you should consider joining my email list.  You’ll get monthly digests of blogs coordinated by topic, as well as access to my Film Market Resource Package.

Join my Mailing List

Right Below our Sponsors (Who you should visit)