Are You an Executive Producer?
The team at New York Private Finance loves film, but none of us had been involved in film production until quite recently. As a result, we only came to properly understand the meaning of the term, “executive producer“, in the past few months. For those not involved in film, an executive producer is NOT involved in the artistic side of a film project; those people are called producers and directors. Although the term “executive” would seem to suggest that the individual in question was involved in decisions about a film and the “execution” of what has been decided, such is not the case. The role of the executive producer is simply to raise the money to fund the film – think of the somewhat beleaguered Mr. Fennyman in “Shakespeare in Love”.
Middle market entrepreneurs are all executive producers, although most serve their companies as both producers and directors as well. They have the idea for the business and bear responsibility for bringing it to market, but without the money, they are nowhere.
That is where New York Private Finance comes in. Many of us assume naively that the money for films comes either from very large, rich corporations (and much does) or from wealthy individuals who are fascinated by film, and the latter is often the case as well. But the arcana of the film industry include many subtle and creative structures that leverage financing ideas which go well beyond the mere writing of checks. Independent film makers are much more like middle market businesspeople: they are scrappy and must constantly innovate to bring their product to market.
So too with our clients. As the executive producers of their own companies and, frankly, their own lives, they seek creative structures designed to fund their dreams without giving away all the “ups”. The lending structures of NYPF do just that: we enable smart, middle market entrepreneurs to fund their ideas without giving up control, setting themselves up for future interference, or tendering all the financial rewards to their backers. We enable the executive production sides of our clients to do their job, so that the producing and directing sides may operate freely and without constraint, and, ideally, without too many edits later on.
Cut.
Please contact us to learn how we can help.
