Finding financing for your original digital content | One Stop Business
hi everyone welcome my name is Clara Lee and I'm manager in the business and rights group at CBC and I'll be your moderator for today's session we want to acknowledge those nations on whose lands we live and work and as we're gathering virtually today with people across the country and since land acknowledgments are specific to each region we urge you to visit the native land digital website to identify the first nations territories on where you're located in today's session you'll be hearing from Suzanne lacy from Belle fund and Shelley cool Tish from the Canada and media fund they'll each give an introduction on the digital funding programs available under their respective organizations by the end of the session you'll understand that each production fund is unique and has its own set of eligibility and evaluation criteria and that it's important to be aware of the differences and to cater your applications accordingly Suzanne lacy is belphins Deputy Director of English Canada and Shelley Kohl Tish is a deputy director with the Canada media fund program administration team at telephone Canada today's session is going to be exactly 30 minutes long we'll have a 20-minute presentation with 10 minutes at the end for questions we will answer the questions that you've provided when you signed up for the session but if you have any questions that pop up during the presentation please send them to the email address in the event write email and we'll go through as many as we can there will be your presentation on screen and the slide deck as well as a video version of today's session and some follow-up materials will be made available afterwards let's go to the next slide Suzanne is going to start us off today and provide a list of considerations to think about when looking for financing through a digital program she'll then go into details about the bail fund short form digital series program and quickly review some sample finance plans then Shelley will go through the C MF digital linear series program and provide tips to keep in mind when putting together an application for consideration let's move to the next slide and Suzanne from Bell fun will take it from here Thank You Clara hi everyone I can't see myself on the screen but maybe that's just how I have myself set up so I'll just jump in I'm Suzanne Lacey from the belphin of belphins deputy director for English Canada the bail fund is one of several certified independent production funds we support production of short form digital series both fiction and nonfiction and TV and we have a slate development fund but for today our focus is on the short form digital series program the bail fund is a small but mighty team with our Montreal office handling French applications and our Anto office and learning English application I want to add as well that we really encourage creators and producers from outside of Ontario and Quebec to apply we try to get out to meet everyone in the pre Cova days I was recently in Halifax Manitoba BAM Vancouver Whitehorse last year to meet with producers and and also through our industry development program we support organizations like the Doc Institute and imaginative to run some really effective programs that are geared to producers outside of the major centers and to support underrepresented voices so we're really excited when we see these efforts pay off and we we see applications coming in so do get in touch with us we will talk with you we will answer the phone well in this case your phone calls will be directed to us we continue to be available to you you can email us at info at Valvano CA with your questions or you can request a phone meeting we just had a line this week for short-form digital series but not to worry if you are not able to apply there is another deadline in the fall so you can go to the next slide see if I can so distribution what's the best fit for my series so basically you've developed your series now you have to determine the best home for your series this is a very important decision because among other things it will affect your financing are you looking at a broadcasters digital platform a YouTube channel Facebook Vimeo Amazon on demand a new streaming service like high ball TV for instance here in Canada so this is where your homework starts you have to do your research you have to figure out what is a the best fit for your series and also be sure to talk to the funders you know we are here to talk to you see if the channel you are considering is acceptable to to the funder that you plan to to go with so and specifically for bail fund unless you're working with a broadcasters digital channel you must seek approval for that digital channel before you apply and to do that a little bit in advance of the deadline so we have time to do the pre-approval so make sure you leave time for that in terms of financing yes there is money but you do need to do your homework first of course you have to create your production budget and you have to create your finance plan and you're going to look at all the various options there are for financing such as the certified independent production funds we call them CIP EPS for short bail fund is one of those also the independent production fund also known as IPF the Telus Fund for instance other funds like zmf we have Shelley here today to speak about the M F which is the Canada media fund federal and provincial tax credits they can get complicated if you haven't experienced than before take some time and enjoyed learning about that process there are provincial agencies like Ontario creates Manitoba's film and music television with web-based production funds phone PV sank in Quebec there's broadcaster or digital channel license fees as well lots of options out there again lots of homework to be done to figure out who they are or when the deadlines are and and what what is it fit for are you in terms of deadlines again we're talking about not just elephan but overall for all of the funder so yeah you need to make that plan again list out all of your funding options what works for you all of the deadlines and start to build your application and we do recommend three months in advance that you're working on that application it does take a long time and you don't want to rush it because it is super competitive for all the funds in terms of eligibility requirements you know all the funding sources we try to align but each each source has its own unique requirements be it for a fund a broadcast or a digital platform so you need to read all the guidelines familiarize yourself with this source of financing and when you're ready to ask good specific questions get in touch with them and ask your your questions so I think we can go to the next slide in terms of the bail funds specifically so what are we fund well for the short form digital series program we fund premium original linear video series we fund series in both French and English language the episodes can be a maximum of 20 minutes it used to be 15 we increase that 20 minutes this year and you still need a minimum of 6 episodes in your series in terms of the available funding yeah we provide a non repayable contribution of 75 percent of eligible costs for your series production and that is to a maximum of $150,000 we also provide a non repayable contribution of up to $50,000 for discoverability and I think we get into discoverability a bit more a little bit in terms of eligibility criteria again you need that broadcaster digital platform or a pre-approved digital platform or channel that's super important and if you don't have that you will not be eligible to apply your channel must be accessible to Canadians and it must feature entertainment content some examples might be an established YouTube channel and again an example might be a highball TV the short form digital series program does not support news current affairs talk shows nor does it support content that has a primary mission of providing a public service so again be sure to read the guidelines carefully to see what kind of content is eligible and what kind of content is not eligible and of course the content must be of a professional quality and intended for commercial exploitation 1% cash yes you need a 10% cash contribution from a source other than belphin or the producer so this cannot be for instance an in-kind contribution or a producer deferral it has to be a commitment at the time of application and basically we want to see that somebody out there believes enough in your project so you commit some cash at the time of application you also and of course you need the rest of your financing plan in place also we're going to talk about financing shortly in more detail but in terms of your application you also need your discoverability plan and and budget discoverability of course supports audience development putting your content in a place where the audience can find it and and bringing that audience to your to your content you need a trailer 2 minute maximum duration we want to see your original footage from the applicant company and your trailer should reflect the look and feel of the proposed series ok next slide moving on we have some financing scenarios we'll just take a quick look at these in this first scenario this is a scenario for a first season fiction series and I can tell that because I'm seeing IPF which is as mentioned earlier one of the certified independent production funds and they support fiction series as a as a first season so that would be a typical scenario there's bail fund in for the 150 IPF you've got both provincial and federal tax credits again if you're not familiar with tax credits something for you to look at after this panel basically you've got to make sure that your content is eligible for them and show how you're eligible for them and in this case there is a license with a platform so this lucky producer has almost a 40,000 dollar license so so that's great the next scenario would be for a non-fiction season 3 which bail fund has support and in this scenario again there you're seeing some producer deferrals some sponsorship dollars as well and is there anything else again when it comes to tax credits just want to mention that make sure you're eligible for them you have to show us how you did your calculations they're based on labor and we only want to see you put up to 90% of your estimated tax credit in your finance plan and talk to the tax office just call them and talk to them you want to make sure you know what you're doing you don't want to get it wrong and expect that money and and not get it when it comes to financing these scenarios they're like puzzles so we really hope you like puzzles because it's it's like putting a puzzle together and pieces don't always fit there are many ways to finance the series but you do again have to think about those big buckets of license fees provincial agencies tax credits independent production fund CMF all these requirements and enjoy I'm going to pass it over to Shelley now to talk to us about CMS hi I'm Shelley coltish I'm a deputy director at the Canada media fund program administration team at telefilm Canada are our email address to talk to our coordinators is pretty complicated so I would suggest emailing the organizer and I'll give it to them to give out but it's basically it's C M F dot F M C dot coordination at telefilm dossier so I don't expect anyone to have caught that we have many programs we have a three hundred and fifty three million dollar budget for the year and we have the bulk of our programs are convergent television programs but we do have several digital programs under what we call the experimental fund one of which is called the digital linear series program ours is a little different from bail fund in that we are going for web series or digital linear series rather we change the name from last year that already exists that had at least one season already and we're looking to come in in the second season or subsequent seasons on shows that are initially created for online platforms and in our designated genres we also have several other writing funds and development funds but I'm going to focus on these ones today and if you have questions about our other funds please contact the organizers to get my contact info you can move to the next slide so the CMF Digital linear series program who is eligible you have to be a for-profit Canadian corporation that is Canadian controlled so permanent residents can also be in control but there are certain eligibility criteria surrounding that so please give us a call if you're not sure if you're eligible you do not need to be incorporated to apply but you will need to incorporate if you do get selected we only fund certain genres then that is drama which also includes comedy children's and youth and documentary so for our nonfiction programming its documentary only which needs to have some sort of a critical analysis of a subject it cannot be lifestyle or reality shows the series must be in a second season or subsequent season and the series must have at least three episodes of at least two minutes in duration and we need to be able to see the previous season in order to know that you qualify it has to have aired on an online platform how much funding can you get from this fund so it's a selective fund we hire a jury and you can ask for 60% of the projects eligible costs up to a maximum of 250 thousand our funding is not a grant it is a recoupable investment which is based on gross exploitation of revenues minus comission expenses cmf does get a portion of their of the net revenues to get their money back so we are looking to see that there is market interest in your series we want to see your Google Analytics from the previous series or any other kind of information you can give us critical success Awards anything like that the evaluation criteria are used by the jurors there's 40 points for market interest which is broken into 20 points for the previous seasons and 20 points for the current season the team and the creative elements of the of the scripts and/or the documentary idea you can move on to that slide so we have one deadline a year at the moment for the digital linear series fund and that deadline this year is October 1st 2020 so some tips on applying for our selective funds and this would be any selective fund really but specifically this one we have a portal to apply it's called dialogue we suggest that you sign up for this if you're interested in applying you can also if you're not sure if your idea is eligible you can put through a pre application consultation request for us to read your project so not system tell you whether it would be eligible but sign up well in advance of the deadline you can't sign up for dialogue and apply on the same day it doesn't work that way you really need to do it in advance use the pre application consultation service if you have eligibility concerns as I just mentioned only submit your project when it's ready so when Suzanne was saying give yourself at least three months that's exactly what I would say - I have had people who discover the program like the week that it's got a deadline and they try and whip something together at the last second it's never a good idea you really do need to take some time with it to do a thorough job look at all the evaluation criteria and the guidelines and make sure that you address all of this so the scoring criteria is published in the guidelines just read that through and make sure that you're addressing all of the things in the little bullet points under each scoring criteria also use our documents use the required documents checklist which at the back has a full dialogue guide that tells you every field and dialogue and what to put there the required documents checklist is very detailed use our budget template do not try to make your own and just follow our rules essentially and and that we'll help you make a thorough and competitive application and then at the end when you get your decision whether you get the funding or not you are able to access the comments from the jurors and encourage you to take a look at their feedback so yeah I'm gonna wrap this up because we have questions and answers so that's it for me awesome thank you both to be named Shelley hmm all right if you for the audience if you have any questions please start submitting them I've already got a bunch my way so we're gonna get right into it um I'm going to start the first question for Suzanne so you've noted that sponsorships and producer deferrals are acceptable forms of financing it's crowd funding allowed it was another source of financing yeah I'll just quickly say that would be fine what we would say is you would have to have secured that in advance of apply yeah same thing for cmf we do allow it you know depending on the percentage that it is of your budget because we recoup a little investment it could be an issue if a lot of that is foreign support but if you have any questions about it you should just call us and talk to us about it but definitely you need to have secured it in advance to put it in your financial structure great and we've got a couple questions for Suzanne about what is considered an established YouTube channel in terms of established so basically we have a pre-approval form that we've implemented this year or again those non broadcaster digital channels because of course there are loads of digital channels all around the world and so we have to go through the process of making sure it's a good fit for you so you have to have the channel fill in this pre-approval form and you both sign it and if you look at that form on our website at balafon yeah you'll it'll give you an idea of what we're looking for certainly we want to know that channel is a good fit for your content we want to know that it features current content we don't set specific marks you know benchmarks for subscribers and analytics but certainly we're going to look at that as one of the variables when we look out the channel and ultimately we want to know that if your series launches on that channel you will have a good chance to achieve viewership right and any other goals that you have for pulling yourself and for distribution and ultimately ideally wider distribution and monetization so a number of variables but do check out the pre-approval form and that might help clarify great and the next question is for both of you wondering if co-productions with a foreign company like they are based in Canada and the other companies based outside Canada would that be eligible for applying for either of your friends C enough yes but there are specific rules surrounding doing that so it's complicated I won't waste the time here but definitely email me to talk about it because it would take me like the next ten minutes to go through it we also have a variety of international incentives where we're working with other funds like Northern Ireland screen and in various other you know Denmark film Danish Film Institute film fund Luxembourg and some of those do you accept webseries so that's something to look at as well but again call us if you're interested in any of those and it's a little bit of a different scenario with the certified independent production funds you must achieve 6 out of 10 points and III think that the CRTC regulations say that you could have a co-production with a treaty company I'm not aware that telefilm has actually any treaty Co pros for webseries no so that's kind of the rub I mean the wording is there but I think it's quite in place yet so again case-by-case as Shelley says just give us a call if you have a scenario they might be a way to work it through yeah yeah no no I just gonna say ultimately we need to see the six out of ten that certification points and the candidates and and beyond that we want to support you as the Canadian creator so talk to us about your situation yeah for cmf it's a little different in our television funds we do need to see ten out of ten points but for our digital funds we don't even look at the Kafka scale but the rule is 25 only 25 percent of your budget can go towards foreign costs so you can have foreign key creatives you don't have to structure it as a co Pro but there's a limit to how much you can spend on on the foreign spend and and the project must be under the control of Canadians like financially and creatively yes great all right let's put the next question so just thinking about our audience today are there elements of either of your funds that would be of interest to emerging artists who identify as black indigenous people of color LGBTQ plus women and persons with disabilities Suzanne do you wanna go first uh yeah sure so so thanks for asking the question in fact we designed the short form digital series program from the very beginning to to deal with barriers to entry for for emerging creators and we're really proud to have launched this program back in 2017 and you know it really provides an opportunity for creators to explore content outside of the traditional broadcast system because you don't require a broadcaster involvement and we found that that's been super helpful you know you can have a broadcaster digital channel but you can always go for instance with YouTube where a lot of our very successful series have launched and if you look at Bell fun dots yeah it's some of the featured projects you'll see that there are a lot of series that might have been considered niche in the broadcast spectrum that have of course become super popular with audiences and tokens is a recent example you know they've had great success and they launched on Facebook and YouTube and for those that don't know it's a comedy series about casting agency specializing in diversity and it's resonated with viewers not just in Canada it's sold internationally and you know other series like barbell female queer musical webseries bit players avocado toast and running with violet the story is followed by women and floor women and it just just as a quick aside our industry development program as well we revamp that recently to support organizations that that must support emerging creators discoverability training content from regions and underrepresented voices so when we do initiatives with you know all access and Manitoba factual last the st. John's Women's Film Fest and then initiatives and urban centers as well that support you know events that support diverse representation then then those have also been good opportunities better pass it on to Shelley because we have a lot of ground I'll be really quick so yes we do have some in the web series and all of our selective funds as a matter of fact and our performance envelopes we do have a gender parity criteria to to give extra points in the Selective funds and extra credit and the performance envelopes for female led teams there's information in each of the guidelines about that but essentially 40 percent of the key creatives positions on the project must be female in order to get these extra points or extra credit in our early stage development program we have a diversity initiative for indigenous peoples and visible minorities and we also have a sector development program which isn't on the website right now but it's something that started last year and eventually will be there which is mentoring initiatives and underrepresented communities and the region's indigenous visible minorities and and there's you know they're still looking at more to come for the future so we are definitely always looking at that awesome thank you and we've got a recent question coming in someone is asking about what ownership or equity either bail fund or CMS will take in the projects that are applying for so I'll quickly answer that for CMS so we take zero ownership but we do that's why it's not called an equity investment it's called a recoupable investment because we will recoup our funding based on on sales but we do not take an ownership position or copyright in your project at all and for bail fund it's neither we don't take ownership and ours is a non recoupable contribution I think that is about all the time we have left for today we do have some more questions so we will try and answer them afterwards thank you again Suzanne and Shelley for taking a time to chat with us today and thank you to the audience for joining us as I'm saying look out for an email with a link to today's session and we'll try and answer the rest of the questions we hope to see you again at another one-stop business workshop session and have a good day Thank You Clara thanks everyone thanks bye you you
2021-02-05 03:52
