Slated Blog

Scott Macauley reviews Slated

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 08:55:00 -0700

Scott Macauley, one of the most tracked individuals on Slated, wrote an extensive review on Slated after speaking to us. Scott, who holds a series of titles that include producer, executive, writer, editor and journalist, and co-president of Forensic Films, with credits including “Raising Victor Vargas,” “Gummo,” “The Chateau” and “Idlewild", is the editor-in-chief of Filmmaker Magazine.

Scott wrote:

Slated has a simple, clean interface that will be familiar to anyone with a social network account. Two existing members must vouch for new users. According to the site’s FAQ, Slated is aimed at “eligible individual and institutional investors both new to, and experienced in, film investing; experienced producers and directors with proven track records; and industry professionals such as sales agents, distributors, talent agents and notable talent.” Prospective investors must prove “financial sophistication” and accredited status.

After creating a profile, Slated members have the option of tracking both films and other people. New developments or announcements about those people and films appear in a user’s activity stream. For more direct communication, like LinkedIn one must request an introduction to another user through a mutual connection. Projects can be searched through tags that progressively filter by genre, budget, country of origin, language or stage of production. [Slated Chairman, Stephan Paternot], says even more tags are coming. “We’ve asked [our users] to give us the tags they are most interested in, and soon you’ll be able to search with them too. And if you are an accredited investor, you can compare financials on films. You can easily do ‘apples to apples’ comparison.”

Uploaded projects must be approved and, for fiction features, have budgets of at least $500,000. They must also be packaged with “known” or “bankable” actors, be partially financed, or have a sales agent or other notable elements attached. These requirements are intended to establish Slated as “a platinum service,” says Paternot. We’re seeking the best-quality independent filmmakers and want to see some transactions occur before we decide to go further down the long tail [by opening up the service to a broader user base].”

Appealing to established producers is the “granularity” that Paternot says is built into Slated’s privacy settings. “The filmmaker has the control,” he states. Actor attachments can be revealed confidentially to select other users, as can financiers. Updates can be streamed to your Facebook or LinkedIn communities or remain private on Slated.

Among others, Slated has so far attracted producer Lawrence Bender (Inglourious Basterds), IM Global’s David Jourdan and actress/director Shannyn Sossamon to its community. (I also joined Slated and can attest to the site’s promise and ease of use.) Director Marina Zenovich is currently [listed] on Slated for Roman Polanski: Odd Man Out, a sequel to her Emmy Award-winning Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. She says, “As a working parent, who is either in the edit room or at school functions, it’s another way to meet people. It’s a lot like Facebook. If it wasn’t pleasing, and if it was complicated, I wouldn’t be as positive about it. But it feels like it’s becoming something. I think in the end, we will get something from it.”

In its current 1.0 phase, Slated, says Paternot, “is focusing on its most valuable component, the network.” Accordingly, “all deals happen offline,” and users should vet Slated financiers just as they’d vet anyone else. The next version will expand Slated’s range of [financial] services.

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How Slated Remakes Indie Film Finance

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 16:25:00 -0700

David Zax from Fast Company spoke with us to talk about crowd investors, walled gardens, and black swans. Here's the edited interview.

FAST COMPANY: What’s Slated?

DUNCAN CORK: We’re aggregating investors from around the world and introducing them to a highly vetted marketplace of films seeking finance. We’re targeting a global investor network, similar to AngelList.

So it’s not like Kickstarter or IndieGoGo?

DC: Kickstarter is a donation platform first and foremost, as is IndieGoGo. We’re about aggregating equity investors looking to participate in the profits of the films.

STEPHAN PATERNOT: I’m a backer of IndieGoGo. Often when approached by first-time filmmakers, I refer them to IndieGoGo. If a seasoned filmmaker comes to me, someone with at least one successfully released feature who's trying to raise closer to 1-15 million dollars, then I tell them to come on to Slated. Slated is a much more exclusive community.

You launched at Sundance. In the run-up to your launch, you winnowed some 2,000 film project submissions to a small list of a few dozen.

DC: The initial blast we sent out had about 2,500 submissions. From there, we picked out a few gems and directed them through the application process. Then it became a hand-holding experience. They were also informing us as to how the product needed to be made for it to fit well within the regular film financing industry. It’s a tough nut to crack, and no one has done it yet. There are some very large and real privacy concerns surrounding film finance.

SP: Unlike other Internet business models, where it’s the more, the merrier, in film, it’s the rightpeople, the merrier. It’s not a question of, “If you build it, they will come.” You have to keep up a bit of a walled garden, to allow confidentiality over cast attachments and who the investors are.

Aren't you guys connecting people who would be rubbing shoulders at Sundance or Tribeca anyway? What's the value added?

SP: I’ve been a film producer about eight years now, and even the most established independent film producers say it’s a miracle getting any movie made. That always stumped me. I don’t think it should be a miracle for a film to get made. But it is. It’s a very inefficient industry. People are constantly navigating from project to project; they constantly need to find talent, and talent is busy or drops out; they need to chase after financing. You can be Darren Aronofsky making Black Swan, a film that wins awards, but it took 12 years to put that film together. Everybody is saying we need a new solution to communicate and get things financed more easily.

Last week, President Obama signed into law the JOBS Act, which changes the rules around online investing. How does this affect Slated?

DC: Crowd investing has just been legalized through the JOBS Act. The limit on how many investors you can have in a project before you need to become a registered security has risen four times, from 500 to 2,000. Also with the JOBS Act, some rules around general solicitations are falling away. President Obama signed it last Thursday, and now it’s up to the SEC to write the actual law. They have up to 270 days to figure that out.

So a film can have 2,000 investors now? I imagine that might please some filmmakers, since it would diffuse power among investors and perhaps give filmmakers more creative control.

DC: The larger the investor, the more involved they may be in the decision-making process, which can be frustrating. It’s an age-old conversation between the creative people and the business people. With the most creative people who have achieved large amounts of success in the past, investors would not want to get too involved in the creative process. But with a filmmaker with less of a proven track record, investors might feel they could take that opportunity to exercise their own creative ideas. I think crowd-funding is going to continue that debate. The crowd out there will also have an opinion, as an aggregate. They’re going to potentially influence filmmakers through blogging, through social media. Having one investor with some creative influence is one thing; having 10,000, each with their opinion, is something else. I don’t know if this is going to solve the problem that the creative person feels with the investor, or whether it’s just going to unearth a bunch of other frustrations.

That’s what technology is for: to unearth new frustrations.

SP: There’s a joke in the film industry, that all too often, one wealthy patron is writing a check for a film that might have no audience. A lot of filmmakers are saying, “We need to engage with the audience earlier on, so we know if there’s really an audience for this.” This is the beginning of that process.

To read the article on FastCompany's site click here.

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Slated Raises $2M To Bring The AngelList Approach To the Film Industry

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 16:24:00 -0700

Slated, a site that connects independent film producers with investors, has raised $2 million in a Series B round of funding.

The site first launched at the Sundance film festival this year, and it sounds like the idea is catching on with independent film veterans — the company says producers such as Jeffrey Kusama-Hinte (The Kids Are All Right, Thirteen, Laurel Canyon), Lesley Chilcott (Waiting For Superman, An Inconvenient Truth), Lawrence Bender (Pulp Fiction, Good Will Hunting, An Inconvenient Truth, Inglourious Basterds) have already signed up. Before the launch, more than 2,000 films applied to be listed, and 44 have been approved so far.

When it comes to new financing models for creativity, a lot of the excitement nowadays revolves around Kickstarter, where people can donate to projects (including films) in exchange for credit, early access, and other rewards. However, Slated co-founder and chairman Stephan Paternot (who founded production company PalmStar Entertainment and seed investor Actarus Funds, as well as co-founding theGlobe.com, one of the legendary late-90s IPOs) is emphatic about the differences between the two models.

Paternot says Slated is closer to AngelList than Kickstarter. It’s about debt and equity financing, not donations. And it’s meant to be an exclusive community — investors have to be accredited, and you need the recommendations of at least two members to join. The films listed in Slated usually have budgets in the $1 million to $15 million range, and some have already enlisted stars like William H. Macy, Katie Holmes, and Benedict Cumberbatch.

In other words, this is about finding new sources of capital for the existing indie film market, something that Paternot says is complementary to the crowdfunding model of Kickstarter and Indiegogo. In fact, he’s also an Indiegogo investor, and that’s where he points first-time filmmakers or people working on something more experimental.

The new funding comes from Paternot, SecondMarket founder and CEO Barry Silbert, Logitech founder Daniel Borel, and other. Given its model, it’s probably not surprising that Slated found some of its investors on AngelList.

To read the article on TechCrunch click here.

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A night at the Oscars...and Slated is on Bloomberg once again.

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 08:42:00 -0800

Stephan Paternot, co-founder of Slated, talks about plans for our online film investment venture and speaks with Stephanie Ruhle on Bloomberg: "There's a massive increase in demand for specialized content, and a complete lack of capital going in to it. The Oscars is just a reminder, that with the 60 nominations they've garnered, people want those films. They're winning awards, but they just need more money to make those films."

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Great Op-Ed piece featured in FilmNewsBriefs

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 14:01:00 -0800

We love FilmNewsBriefs, and were excited to read about us in this morning's newsletter. Read on:

FNB EDITORIAL ...The Future Might Just Be Slated February 13, 2012

We’ve been hearing a lot about Kickstarter lo, these past couple years, and have always found it an interesting diversion for smaller projects and flights of fancy. Not to diminish the site, it clearly does a lot of good for people, but it’s always struck us as a bit limited, with a defined ceiling for the size of the projects the site is designed to help. We thought there was room for something bigger, but we never actually got around to doing anything about it. Luckily, a couple guys named Stephan Paternot and Duncan Cork did, and the result is the terrific Slated.

The very purpose of the site is to match accredited investors with developing projects, allowing people to monitor the progress of casting and hiring, maintain buzz, it’s … it’s … intoxicating, really.

Seriously, creating a site where filmmakers, distributors, investors and sales agents can interact with each other and track projects in an online environment protected and vetted by the community’s own members? Genius. On top of that (and, truthfully, the best part for us, as we are noted snobs), it’s kind of an exclusive club. You have to be approved by two existing members to get in. Again, seriously. It’s like being a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, only without the bombast and boring ceremony.

All kidding aside, what took everyone so long? This site is exactly what the internet was made for, as far as the entertainment industry is concerned. It’s eHarmony, J-Date and Match all rolled into one, but instead of trying to score a mate, you can score a sweet deal for your project (or, on the other side, score a sweet project to deal. It really does work both ways!). Already signed up are reps of IM Global, WME, Participant Media, Weinstein Co, FilmDistrict, as well as high profile indie producers like Jeffrey Kusama-Hinte, Lesley Chilcott, MaryJane Skalski and Rene Bastian. Fairly elite company.

One of the reasons why we’ve never really investigated Kickstarter is because it always felt too small. Getting a few bucks apiece from a couple hundred people was great in theory, but didn’t necessarily serve the purposes of anything on which we might have been working. But this? Even Chairman and co-founder Paternot admits, “all our investors are accredited investors, about 50 percent of our investor community represent institutions, distributors and sales companies.” That’s some serious juice right there, and most definitely the kind aimed at bigger fish.

It’s amazing, really, that some of the best ideas are the ones you look at and say, “How come no one thought of this sooner?” This is one of those times.

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Slated officially launches pioneering online film financing platform during Sundance '12

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 09:57:00 -0800

Slated, a next generation marketplace which aims to increase efficiency, transparency and capital flow for the independent film industry, just successfully completed a two month private beta period with its first customers, signing on some of today’s most prolific film producers such as Jeffrey Kusama-Hinte (The Kids Are All Right, Thirteen, Laurel Canyon), Lesley Chilcott (Waiting For Superman, An Inconvenient Truth), MaryJane Skalski (Win Win, The Visitor, The Station Agent) and Rene Bastian (Transamerica, A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints).

Chilcott said of Slated: “Every once in awhile an idea comes along that when you first hear about it, you find it hard to believe that it hasn't been done before, it just makes that much sense. Slated brings crowd funding to a new level. By actively trying to connect established filmmakers with serious investors that would normally not meet one another, entire new financing models are going to emerge. When I joined Slated last month, I immediately received emails from individuals tracking my next documentary film, "Privacy.””

Kusama-Hinte said of Slated: "Slated is the most inspired innovation in independent film financing that I have seen in years. It is clearly built upon a profound knowledge of finance, filmmaking, and social networking and provides investors and filmmakers the perfect marketplace in which to bring capital to film production. It is more than a website or a company, it is the first shot of a coming independent film revolution!”

Already listed on the site, are notable new projects such as TRUST ME (William H Macy, Felicity Huffman), THE WAY, WAY BACK (Sam Rockwell, AnnaSophia Robb), THE MOURNING PORTRAIT (Melissa Leo, Wenthworth Miller), Sally Potter’s BOMB (Elle Fanning, Alessandro Nivola), Marina Zenovich’s ROMAN POLANSKI: ODD MAN OUT and Amy Redford’s PHOENIX (Liv Tyler, Benedict Cumberbatch).

Slated, which exclusively caters to seasoned filmmakers, and award-winning break-out directors, received over 2000 feature film submissions for the private beta, of which 30 were approved, and has signed on accredited investors, including some well known executive producers, production companies, sales companies and distributor, with a combined capital interest of over $100,000,000.

Conceptualized and built to facilitate exclusive access and interactivity between top filmmakers who are looking to introduce their film projects to sophisticated investors, Slated has begun to prove its ability to create a trusted community of industry veterans where producers and production companies can benefit from an exclusive and organized private investment network. Investors and distributors can find the films by tracking those they’re interested in uploaded from validated sources, and a vetted marketplace allows newer investors to begin building relationships with trusted industry leaders and filmmakers.

To maintain strict controls over the quality of the community Slated incorporates a “social proof” mechanism that requires any new applicant to be approved by two existing members they already know. This ensures that the community has a sense of control and responsibility for maintaining a high standard of quality.

Slated’s co-founder and Chairman Stephan Paternot said: “The acute economic downturn has resulted in a severe shortage of investment capital across all industry sectors, including film, making financing independent films increasingly challenging. To a limited extent online “crowd-funding” has begun filling the void for micro budget projects, using donations from fans, however, we decided from the get go to be an equity investment platform only, catering to established filmmakers and financiers looking to raise tens of millions for their films. As such all our investors are accredited investors, about 50% of our investor community represent institutions, distributors and sales companies.”

Slated’s co-founder and CEO Duncan Cork said: “Through Slated’s range of initiatives being developed in its first years of operations and in partnership with the industry, we know that we can strengthen the chances for high-end film material to be more efficiently financed and produced. Slated is about building a sustainable community of trusted film financiers and filmmakers by being the ideal blend of community, commerce and convenience. We supplement existing fundraising efforts by aggregating and educating a ‘new’ investor, and increase fundraising efficiencies through standardization and transparency. This will expand reach beyond what any individual is capable of doing by being on the phone, attending festivals and knocking on the same doors.”

Developed over the course of the last year, Slated has been privately financed by a number of notable technology investors including Barry Silbert, Founder and CEO of SecondMarket, Daniel Borel, Founder of Logitech, and by Stephan Paternot, General Partner of the Actarus Funds (and co-founder of theglobe.com).

Functions available for filmmakers and investors

List projects for a growing network of high net worth investors interested in financing film.
Facilitate introductions in order to raise capital from accredited investors, film funds and distributors.
Maintain the buzz and promote momentum for a growing community of distributors, sales agents, talent agents and other industry professionals.
Track members of the community to get alerts on cast and crew attachments and to be the first to know when they’re raising funds for their next films.
Use a tagging system to get films in front of the right investors allowing investors to manage their own deal flow.
Update existing investors on your project's progress to demonstrate momentum and generate more interest from the investment community.

Team Slated

Co-founders: Duncan Cork, Stephan Paternot (General Partner of the Actarus Funds, co-founder of theglobe.com), William Mapother (former board member of SAG, actor on Lost, Another Earth), and Gavan Gravesen (formerly Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen, Hamilton, Deutsche Bank).
Senior team members: Jennifer Anderson (formerly Paramount Pictures, Netflix), Susan Wrubel (formerly Paramount Classics), Mark Chackerian (formerly American Stock Exchange, Reuters).
Advisors: Nelson Cheng (formerly Google, Amazon), Tory Metzger (formerly CAA), John Gibbons (formerly IMDB), Chris Hyams (formerly B-Side).

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Slated Officially Launches at Sundance '12

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 10:43:00 -0800

Read The Hollywood Reporter's exclusive article.

As an addition to this fantastic piece by THR, I'd like to add that this would not have been possible without the collaboration of co-founders William Mapother, Gavan Gravesen and Stephan Paternot, or all the hard work and dedication of Jennifer Anderson, Mark Chackerian, Matt Semanyshyn, Susan Wrubel, Christin Roman and the guys at Type/Code.

We will continue to strive to increase efficiency and capital in independent film. See you online.

Duncan Cork, CEO

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Slated on Bloomberg

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 10:38:00 -0800

Stephan Paternot discusses crowd-funding and crowd-investing with Scarlet Fu on Bloomberg Television's "InsideTrack"...Slated came up too. Click here to watch the interview.

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Hollywood 2.0: Film Finance Meets Crowdfunding

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 15:42:00 -0800

By Stephan Paternot

You may be familiar with the term crowdsourcing, which refers to an organization or individual reaching out to a community through social media tools for help in solving a problem collaboratively. Now, there is crowdfunding, a practice that works in a similar way to connect donors and investors with a cause or project. Thanks to the rise of online investment marketplaces, it’s never been easier for great ideas to meet capital.

Companies such as AngelList have enabled angel investors or seed capital funds worldwide to find and invest in the newest and hottest Internet startups, an asset class traditionally reserved for well-connected institutions and venture capital firms.

Equally transformative are companies such as IndieGoGo and Kickstarter that have made it easier than ever for family, friends and fans to donate to any project. Today, countless asset classes are tradable online, allowing big and small players to invest and trade seamlessly and efficiently.

One particularly large asset class on the brink of an investment model upgrade is film.

The film industry is alive and well. In 2009, according to Screen Digest, more than $22 billion was invested in film production financing for 5,360 films worldwide, with a near- record box office total of $29.4 billion. As India and China build thousands of multiplexes and add hundreds of millions of users to online video streaming, there’s no slowdown in sight for filmed content consumption and for the additional billions in production capital necessary to create and distribute it.

Unfortunately, Hollywood remains inefficient, insular and opaque, always acting as an agent between investors and the projects that need their capital and collecting its “fees” on the backs of investors. Combine this gatekeeper mentality with the closed communication silos of the agencies and studios, and the results are massive inefficiencies across all levels of the industry, especially in the movement of capital.

Crowdfunding may be the 21st century method for film investment and will become the business model for new companies such as Slated, an online funding platform that connects a global network of investors with filmmakers offering investment opportunities.

Initially, Slated will serve as a film tracking and introduction network between investors and filmmakers. Much like technology investing through AngelList, investors using Slated will be able to invest directly in individual films in the form of debt or equity, and can expect the same type of returns, ranging from 1.1 to 1.25 times for debt, and the potential of 10 times returns for the luckier equity investors who find hit films.

These types of “open” marketplaces will also provide a greater degree of financial transparency, making it easier for investors to compare deals and value their return potential appropriately. Another benefit of connecting investors to each other through a marketplace will be their ability to trade out of a position through a secondary market.

Stephan Paternot is co-founder of Slated and co-founder and Chairman of PalmStar Entertainment, a film production company specializing in literary adaptations and true stories.

(Barry E. Silbert, the CEO of the parent company of SecondMarket Ecosystem LLC, Alchemy’s publisher, is an investor in Slated Inc.)

Originally published on Alchemy.

http://alchemy.secondmarket.com/offtheexchange/hollywood-2-0-film-finance-meets-crowdfunding/

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Slated's chairman on CNBC

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:15:00 -0700

Stephan Paternot, Slated's chairman was recently featured on CNBC speaking about his experience with a billion dollar IPO, online investment markets, and of course...Slated.

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