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About Tips to Raise Funds for Short Films in India

These may be “N” number of things we need to think about while making a short film. Forming the right team with the right skill set. An even more critical element is raising funds for new short film projects. Here are some tips you can follow and raise funds as quickly as possible.

Sponsored Telugu short film from Shortfundly OTT:

1. The pitch deck

Keep the pitch deck to no more than 15 to 19 slides. The most important slides are the ones related to the storyline (i.e., full script), making tools and equipment, cast & crew (i.e., team), market, and the amount that you are raising. Ultimately you will need two different sets of pitch decks. One version will be with a lot of text and information which will be shared with people via email. The other version will be the pitch deck that you present to investors in person with much more visuals. Having more visuals will contribute to having investors focused on you.

2. The Follow Up

Basically, an investor will invest when the dots of your story connect over time. Let’s say when you meet for the first time with the investor you explain/narrate your full storyline. If a few months down the road you reach back out to that same investor and demonstrate that you‘ve accomplished many of the promises you are one step closer to getting that investor REALLY excited. Meeting investors with teaser/trailers ready for your film. It makes it more comfortable to meet them again.

3. Do Your Research

Filmmakers or short film directors or anyone from the team should understand what is the investment thesis of the investor they are meeting with and other feature films / short films have invested in.

4. Never say you are fundraising unless you have a lead investor

One of the biggest mistakes filmmakers make is when they tell an investor they are fundraising without having a lead investor that has established the terms of the round. Unless you have a lead investor never say that you are in fundraising mode. Some strategies to put the terms in place include doing a syndicate yourself in which you establish very attractive terms for investors or perhaps bringing your ideal investor as an adviser and get her excited to lead the round once she gets to know you, the team, and the short film.

5. Master the art of listening

When you are raising capital funds for your short film, you are always going to get the same type of questions with regards to your film over and over again. Some of these questions will help you understand where you are weak. You will need to listen enough to understand where you need to apply a correction. Such correction will be applied to either the story that you are going out with when meeting investors or to the short film itself.

6. Be grounded with the numbers

It is a big no-no to not have a clear understanding of your numbers. This involves the amount spend on filmmaking, marketing, and so on. Filmmakers need to understand they will be managing other people‘s money. For that reason, the short film filmmaker/directors or anyone from that film-making group needs to give confidence to the investor so that they can trust you with capital investment. This is one of the tips to raise funds for short films in India.

7. Have a good amount of confidence

Without confidence there is nothing. Investors also smell desperation from very far away. As a filmmaker, you will need to be optimistic and to have that level of confidence where you know that everything will be alright no matter what. It is critical to never be attached to an outcome. There is not one single plan to succeed. There are actually many roads to get to the finished film project.

For more information on this topic, feel free to go ahead and sign up with shortfundly and Join the thousands of short film filmmakers’ professional community. These are the tips to raise funds for short films in India.

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Shortfundly is an online technology and design-focused, data-driven OTT platform company that curates and shares the best short films and stories through our global multi-platform network. Our video and editorial platform enables a global audience to easily discover, watch, and share unique stories anywhere on their desktop and mobile devices.

Our vision is to continually grow the community of short film audiences to enable a wide and accessible market reach for short films and become the leading micro-cinema/short film platform.