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SCOTT DUPONT: Scott duPont here, Film Producing 101. Welcome back to Expert Village and our
next topic here, I'm going to be short and sweet on this because it's very, very important,
"Proper disclosures to potential investor." This is both written disclosure or disclosures
and verbal disclosures. Now your lawyer or your entertainment attorney that you're working
with or you have available to you, they'll help you put it together. It's usually just
a very short paragraphs sometimes one page and it basically goes something like this.
"Investing in a feature film is a very unique type of investment. There are many risks associated
with this type of industry that are not necessarily associated with other kind of industries like
real estate, banking etc, etc." So they know that there's some risks and they could potentially
lose their money. And I'm not going to go into the exact verbiage of that because you
really need to have a lawyer help you with that and certainly review that one page. Now
the second thing I really, really want to stress, when you meet with an investor, sometimes
you can actually meet investors--I have some investors on some of these projects I've done,
like this movie "The Bros." which Lionsgate ended up picking up. Some of those investors
that invested there were family, close friends. I just picked up to the phone, I send them
a business plan, and we did a lot of this stuff over the phone like "Okay, Bob, you
want to invest. Then let me just tell you one more time that there is a risk" and when
I'm meeting investors face to face when they actually sign over that check, I just remind
them that there is a risk and I never ever want to take money that if I don't--I have
a pretty good track record. And I'm looking for some wood here, I got a pencil. So far
everyone on my projects has gotten distribution and has gotten money back to investors, but
what I want to say here is you gotta look people right in the eye and make sure that
you're not approaching a little old lady where if she invests $5,000 or $10,000 and your
movie does not get distribution, God forbid and it's a risky business, but that really
is going to hurt her lifestyle. You never ever want to put anyone in that position.
So just give that proper and fair disclosure when you're talking to potential investors.
And you'll keep everything so much happier down the road. On behalf of Expert Village,
we'll be right back. Stay tuned because we've got some really juicy stuff coming up.