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Rating: 
Summary: This is a must have for any and all independent filmmakers!!
Review: I found the book to be perfect in describing how to set up an independent film company. The Sample Business Plan for a Fictional Company (in the Appendix) is written in plain english which made it easy to see how one could put together their own thorough business plan. I definetely enjoyed the book and am working on my business plan for my independent film company as I type this.
Rating:
Summary: This is a must have for any and all independent filmmakers!!
Review: I found the book to be perfect in describing how to set up an independent film company. The Sample Business Plan for a Fictional Company (in the Appendix) is written in plain english which made it easy to see how one could put together their own thorough business plan. I definetely enjoyed the book and am working on my business plan for my independent film company as I type this.
Rating: 
Summary: EXCELLENT REFERENCE FOR SERIOUS FUNDRAISERS
Review: I was excited to receive this book and the CD-ROM with business plan templates - until I actually tried to the use the CD-ROM in my computer. If you're a Mac user - like many filmmakers - it only works with Classic, i.e. OS 9.2 or lower. If you're on a newer Mac running OS10.2, it may not have Classic on it. I spoke to tech support rep at the publisher Elsevier who ran through a well rehearsed litany of excuses: "every Mac has OS 9 on it... Blame it on Mac. They made OSX before they did due diligence on the [publishing] industry... It takes four years to develop a program... We have 10,000 titles." Now I'll have to find an OS9 disc and load it on, bit of a hassle.
Rating: 
Summary: Mac Users: CD-Rom is OS9/Classic only!
Review: I was excited to receive this book and the CD-ROM with business plan templates - until I actually tried to the use the CD-ROM in my computer. If you're a Mac user - like many filmmakers - it only works with Classic, i.e. OS 9.2 or lower. If you're on a newer Mac running OS10.2, it may not have Classic on it. I spoke to tech support rep at the publisher Elsevier who ran through a well rehearsed litany of excuses: "every Mac has OS 9 on it... Blame it on Mac. They made OSX before they did due diligence on the [publishing] industry... It takes four years to develop a program... We have 10,000 titles." Now I'll have to find an OS9 disc and load it on, bit of a hassle.
Rating:
Summary: EXCELLENT REFERENCE FOR SERIOUS FUNDRAISERS
Review: Louise does a very good job of showing us how to prepare a business plan to attract equity investor financing for feature films. Period. It was the #1 resource we used when developing our biz plan for our first film.There're several drawbacks, though: 1. the sample business plan lacked the punch and energy and passion that truly is needed for a great biz plan. Since the sample was purely fictitous, I can see how she would've spent less time editing it for those traits. 2. Her methods of estimating box-office grosses as a means of comparison to our projected grosses were highly inaccurate. Suffice it to say that feature-film performance at the box office does not follow a normal or bell-curve distribution. They're highly skewed and follow a Pareto distribution, which I'm going into here. One can estimate potential box office by estimating the Pareto distro, then examining the value-at-risk analysis. It's worth it to learn how, because when savvy investors read it, they'll be extremely impressed, not to mention very well informed of your potential for success. 3. The sections about the film industry were too dry and boring. We did our utmost to make ours read like a cool popular magazine article about the biz, thereby drawing in potential investors. Other than these critical drawbacks, Louise does great work in showing us how to develop the plan, from start to finish. It's really up to us how well the final product is. You must spend a lot of time editing and rewriting and editing and rewriting to get it just right. When you see our film, check out the end credits for a Special Thank You to Louise Levison, one very talented and cool lady. By the way, she also has a great web site that has useful background information. She will freelay answer your questions via email. A very giving woman! Thanks, Louise!
Rating:
Summary: CD-ROM is useless for current Mac Users!
Review: Unfortunately, the CD will not work with most Apple computers bought after June 2003. That's too bad because a big selling point is that the book includes the CDROM. If you have an older computer that still boots into classic mode then you will be ok. After horrible customer support from the publisher, it was concluded that I should just return the book.
Despite the CD fiasco, the information in the book is great so I will keep it as part of my growing library on Filmmaking. It would be nice if the author (Louise Levison) made the documents available for download at a website rather than dealing with out of date CD's
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