Independent Producing

On Monday October 4th, La Grande Orange in Santa Monica hosts Windy City West, a private party for those from Chicago working in the entertainment industry. It is a hot ticket item and I'm told a crowd expected to top 400. Expect to see all the top Chicagoans walking the red carpet.Chicago is a tight-nit community with everyone knowing at least someone who is somebody in the buisness by at least one degree of seperation. It's a great group of people to be a part of and as with most tribes, is very loyal to their own.

Film Closings was featured this week in a Chicago Tribune article as well as in Screen juxtaposing what others in the state were saying and rallying for when it came to the IL film incentive. This post gives a broader understanding to our view on the credit climate overall. As well as a Pop Quiz.

With 20 producers credited, The Kids Are Alright is poised to be this year's annual Academy Award controversy over who gets the Oscar.

Variety and Digital Media Wire held their Future of Film Summit -- this year's agenda: Dealmaking in the Age of Digital Cinema...but only if it's in 3D.

Section §181 expires at the end of 2011. If you grandfather it correctly, then your film or series (up to 44 episodes!) will remain eligible for the benefits indefinitely.

I'm heading to the Toronto International Film Festival, which kicks-off this week and marks the one-year anniversary of the credit crunch and market collapse that left the streets of last year's festival strewn with the bodies of dead deals.

It may surprise Chicagoans to hear, but Movie Studios don’t care about the Illinois tax incentive. In general, the only studio films that come to Illinois are those that have already established themselves with the "Cheaper than New York to film" Chicago look, like 'The Dark Knight', or those films that actually need Chicago, ‘Public Enemies’...

The mantra for surviving 2011 and 2012 will be to swing for singles and doubles, not for fences. If you really know what your doing, then it's a great time to enter the film market. But if you don't...

Indie producers are on a relentless quest to find the elusive "final 20%" of their budgets. They've raised the equity, made the presales, maxed the gap, and still they come up 20% short. Even with a whopping 40% cash rebate! So why then are they still stumbling around trying to fill that final 20% of their budgets?! Because producers can't get out of their own way.

Good news for AFM! Foreign buyers are coming to the market with increased buying-power thanks to major rebounding from Euro, Yen, Canadian & Australian dollars.