178 Filmmakers and Financing your readers are not film sophisticates, you should explain what constitutes a presale agreement, a negative pickup, or whatever form of financing you will pursue. Be prepared to answer investors' questions. They may ask you about the forms of financing that you have not included. You should be conversant enough with the pros and cons of various strategies to explain your choices intelligently. As mentioned earlier, it is unproductive to include financing methods that you do not plan to use. If you plan to use a limited partnership, for example, the business plan will be part of the offering; other- wise, there is no reason to discuss this form of financing. To do so would be to create a red herring for investors, confusing them with a nonexistent choice. Along the same lines, you should be careful about consider- ing options that may no longer exist. What Canada or Australia is doing in 2006 may not be relevant in 2008 or later. Financing pat- terns, like everything else in our culture, can be in or out of vogue from year to year. It is important to keep current with the busi- ness climate through the trades and other sources while writing your plan. filmmakerS Share their inveStor exPerienceS I asked a group of filmmakers and fundraisers to relate their experiences when raising money from equity investors. The participants included Joslyn Barnes, co-founder of Louverture Films with Danny Glover; Joel Eisenberg and Tim Owens, EMO Films; Patricia Payne, NoHo Films International; April Wade, Woman On Top Productions; and Jay Spain, producer, Moving Midway. LL: What are the top questions that investors asked? Joslyn: Who's in the film from a talent standpoint? How are you going to get my money back and when? More recently we've been getting sophisticated questions about soft monies, tax incentives, and various gap and super gap lending frameworks. Investors are quite savvy that their equity participation is a hard thing to find at this time, and therefore equity financing is becoming more expensive.