How To Get Cash Out Of Hollywood

CV
After university Holmes formed comedy duo, The Gruber Brothers. He and partner Stephan Schwartz would perform movies like Star Wars in three minutes without props. After the pair wrote a plausible but entirely tasteless script about the Shuttle disaster (started ten minutes after it exploded) he proceeded with two short film scripts, one of which, The Lake, caught the attention of Roland Joffe at the First Film Foundation. Holmes then made in order: Soft Top Hard Shoulder, Shooting Fish and Waking Ned. While director of the media conglomerate Civilian Content, he produced Dead Babies and The Abduction Club.

First things first...

Getting Prepared
Ideally you want to hit a market with a polished script, a director and key talent in place with most of your finance in place. Markets are the ideal place to secure the last bit of funding where investors can be seduced in all the excitement (see below for more detail on markets). Of course it rarely works out like this. And if you say you've got Jude Law interested, make sure he and his agents have agreed that's the story because investors will call up to check.

Getting Meetings
Write a month before the festival or market. Include a script if necessary, and details of your package  budget, finance already raised, talent attached and a short resumé of your company. Make the covering letter pithy, to the point and witty if you can. Follow that up a week later with an e-mail. And then a few days after that with a phone call. Persistence pays, it often takes two or three hits to get a meeting.

Handy Tips
Do as much research as much as you can about the people you are meeting. Take a mobile phone - meetings can often run late or get cancelled when acquisitions people are chasing a hot film and have to attend screenings at short notice.