How times have changed! Thirty years ago when I started Raindance you needed about a million to make a film. You shot on film, paid lab and editing costs. When finished you were almost certain to get a movie theatre run followed by a home video release.
To get your film financed you would spend weeks creating a business plan. When you had an investor, invariably they would check to see who your accountant was. And your accountant was usually a specialised film accountant trained and skilled at making sense of film dollars and cents.
The reality all those decades ago was the accountant and attendant book-keeper would sort through boxes of receipts, invoices and cheque stubs. The resulting data would be entered into paper ledgers, checked and double checked. Once the books were balanced the investor would be able to see the results.
Should an investor query the results and want a closer look, they would be delivered all the receipts and invoices and left to fend for themselves in a messy and expensive process.
The impact of digitisation
Computers and digital spreadsheets got rid of the paper ledgers at the very end of the process, but not at the front end. There was still the hundreds of pieces of paper each detailing a transaction that needed to be saved and filed. In the UK these bits of paper, the so-called ‘records’ need to be stored for seven years.
As scanning became part of the industry, receipts could be scanned and stored on a hard drive. And of course, since the mid 20-teens, invoices are rendered on email and stored electronically.
Which all sounds like a really simple system.
Instead, it has become worse.
The trouble with digitisation of financial records.
It ain’t as easy as it seems.
In the old days if you wanted to see what and why and how you paid someone, you’d have to pull out a book, go to the item, see the corresponding invoice stored in a separate book. But at least you could see it.
With digital books you bounce into and out of spreadsheets at all hours of the day and night and on an array of different devices. Everything from your phone to your desktop computer will allow you access. Assuming you remember the passwords! And what if your colleague hasn’t updated the spreadsheet?
The financial accounting challenge of filmmaking
Filmmakers make a budget. Depending on the size of the budget, this could run to hundreds of pages detailing every proposed and anticipated expenditure.
- sample budget image
Here’s the challenge:
The above-the-line elements are fairly simple, and easily locked in. An actor agree their price, and they get paid. But what of the art department? With so many moving parts, from locations (and associated fees) to sets, props and wardrobe. Using traditional accounting systems it is painfully difficult to know exactly where one is. and virtually impossible to know what the actual expenses are in real time.
What of the runner sent to collect a prop who has to wait an hour with the taxi meter running? It almost impossible to foresee an expense like this. And it’s important to know that this element has overshot its budget.
The challenge of managing a festival budget
Raindance has 14 different budget lines. Programming, publicity, hospitality and cinema hire are just a few. If any line item goes over budget, it threatens to leave the festival in a painful overdraft. Keeping track of the film dollars and cents is a priority.
Enter Soldo
Soldo is a spend management platform that has revolutionised how we at Raindance manage our budgets.
Simply put, you create a wallet into which you deposit your cash. Within your wallet you create accounts for each employee or head of department. for example, at Raindance, the brilliant Manolo mages the hospitality account for visiting filmmakers. This includes hotels and travel tickets from all over the world.
Each expense is paid by him using a dedicated prepaid card connected to the main wallet. From my point-of-view, having agreed the hospitality budget and transferring this to the Soldo wallet and Manolo’s card, I can see exactly where we are by checking the dashboard in real time.
How Soldo manages the reams and reams of paper
Visit the Raindance office today and you will see boxes and boxes of receipts from festivals gone by. For the feature film Deadly Virtues, directed by Ate de Jong, I have a huge box filled with all the petty cash receipts – all carefully tabulated and painstakingly entered into a spreadsheet. It’s painful to look at.
The Raindance Film Festival 2021 is a very different proposal. Each time Manolo paid for an expense, he quickly uploaded the invoice to the back-end of the seamless Soldo App’s back-end. And on the last day of the festival, he clicked send, and each penny was sent to our book-keeper ready to reconciliation with the bank and VAT return.
It’s saved us hundreds of hours. And David, the indefatigable festival producer, or I, can find out at a click who bought what and for whom.
Soldo and Your Film Dollars and Cents
If you want to manages your expenses, Soldo makes perfect senses. If you trust the various heads of department on your shoot, or production company with the ability to make purchase decisions, Soldo is for you. And if you want to have real-time access to company or department spend, please use Soldo, as we do.
Check out the Soldo website here. If you have any other questions, please email me directly. This is how much I believe in Soldo. It has helped Raindance keep track of the film dollars and cents.
Are you ready for SOLDO?
If you want to use SOLDO, you can Join SOLDO Here. You will help support Raindance who will get a small referral fee for your business.
Did you know?
- Raindance members save 20% on filmmaking courses?
You can join online >HERE< and access freebies and discounts immediately - Our courses are FREE for our HND, top-up BA and postgraduate/MA/ students
- You can book a free 1-1 consultation about our full-time filmmaking degree courses HERE
- The Raindance Guarantee: If any filmmaking course fails to meet your expectations, let us know at the break and we will make a full, 100% no-questions-asked refund
- We don’t teach ‘filmmaking’ at Raindance. At Raindance we make filmmakers
Photo Credit: Bertie Watson
I founded Raindance Film Festival in 1993 because the British film industry was closed, polite, and congratulating itself while shutting new filmmakers out.
I co-founded the British Independent Film Awards in 1998 because British indie film deserved more than a shrug, a pat on the head, and a Tuesday night screening.
Raindance didn’t start as a brand. It started as a rebellion: film training without gatekeepers, a festival without permission, and a community built by filmmakers who weren’t waiting to be invited in.
Later, we took it global: Toronto, Vancouver, New York, LA, Berlin, and Brussels, because independent film doesn’t belong to one city, one class, or one accent.
I’ve produced 700+ short films and seven features, including Deadly Virtues (2014) and ALICE, which won the SXSW Grand Jury Prize (2019) not because someone “discovered” us, but because the work earned its place.
I’ve written three books used by filmmakers worldwide because too many courses taught compliance instead of survival.
In 2009, I was awarded a PhD for services to film education, ironic, given that most of my career has been about tearing down the rules that education insisted you follow.
I don’t believe in waiting for permission.I believe in making work, building systems, and forcing the industry to catch up.
Specialties: Independent Film (the real kind) · Producing · Writing · Film Education · Festivals · Breaking Broken Systems
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