production is more finding solid scripts/talent and making a movie

distribution is more finding solid movies and fests, buying them, and getting them to audiences.

both involve high levels of both business/legal and creative judgment.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2952841&forum_id=2#28469868)

That summer prior to my 1L year, we holed up in a small cabin in the remote Deep South that was on property my father owned and worked for about 10 weeks from about 9 in the morning to 3 pm. We would then drive into town to workout and eat and then go back to the cabin where we had no TV and no internet to listen to music, drink, smoke cigs and write until we passed out and did it again the next day. It was an unbelievable experience for both of us, but we were dampened by our ignorance of the business side.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2952841&forum_id=2#28470914)

now that i have some cheese, my perspective it: just make the freaking film. There are al sorts of TTT filmakers getting noticed just because they get shit out there. as the old adage goes: writers write. Well, filmmakers are often prevented from filmmaking because it costs alot. I have some money now and wanna take ONE | LAST | SHOT.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2952841&forum_id=2#28470934)

We entered it into Project Greenlight and several of the other competitions, where it always reviewed well. One of the judges from the Final Draft Big Break contest liked it a lot and said she would try to shop it a little bit for us, but nothing ever came of it.

One thing I did learn from being in Project Greenlight and having access to hundreds of unproduced spec scrips to read, was that there are a lot of good scrips out there.

All about the $$ and being able to package the product.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2952841&forum_id=2#28471009)

part of me feel the credited approach would be to start small, produce really tight short films for ~10-15k, go to film festivals, get a following etc., then try to raise like 500k for a feature (this is kinda what happend with whiplash).

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2952841&forum_id=2#28471311)

http://www.xoxohth.com/thread.php?forum_id=2&thread_id=1911613&PHPSESSID=2456a4825919d7fa08ac53914431cc8b

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2952841&forum_id=2#28471523)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2952841&forum_id=2#28469871)

http://www.xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2950211&mc=3&forum_id=2

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2952841&forum_id=2#28470104)

i don't know why you think you could start this for $200,000. you have to own the inventory you're selling so your buyers are getting clean title encumbered only by YOUR security interest in the collateral. no one is going to buy a car from you knowing it can get repo'd in the middle of the night because YOU fucked up and didn't pay your bills.

since you want to deal in nice cars, you can afford an inventory of what? 5-6 vehicles assuming you can rent your physical operating space cheap and month-to-month? you need to be able to get a sizable line of unsecured credit, or credit backed by other personal assets of yours (your house, your car, etc). either way, you're putting more at risk than $200,000. that's not to say you couldn't make such a business succeed, but i think you need more money and a better understanding of how the business works.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2952841&forum_id=2#28470823)

I also though that there are now plenty of subprime auto lenders.... so that I don't have to handle financing...

Any pointers to getting this better understanding?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2952841&forum_id=2#28470931)

1) all i was saying was that in general as far as secured transactions go, you will never get someone to loan you money backed by collateral in the form of inventory who will ALSO subordinate their lien to your lien vis a vis the end purchaser. if you finance your inventory fleet, you need to pay off YOUR encumbrance at the point of sale so your customer takes subject only to YOUR security interest in the vehicle. this requires you to either own the asset outright from the start, pay off the lien with cash as you move forward, or do the financing externally so that wells fargo cuts YOU a check for the vehicle and owns the stream of future payments from the customer. more on this later.

2) there are only a few ways to make money if you're in the business of selling cars, financing and selling the car itself being the two biggest. making money off the car itself is a razor thin margin/high volume business. local tv ad big tooth/fake tan guy with an inflatable gorilla on his toyota lot (and his honda lot, GMC lot, porsche lot, lexus lot, etc.) can make good money netting $200 every time he sells a new prius, as long as he's selling thousands upon thousands every year, often to prime and super prime customers whose credit scores all start with 7 or 8. yeah, he gets a small taste if the customer takes out a 1.8% loan with the in house finance arm (GMAC, ford motor credit, etc.) and a smaller taste still the buyer goes with external financing like BoA or wells fargo, but that world is closed to you if your capital is $300k plus whatever unsecured credit you can get.

so you have to make your money elsewhere. buy here/pay here bad credit/no credit/no problem is your best bet, but that means making your money on the financing. even though many of your customers are horrible credit risks, at 28.5% APR, you don't need them to make 48 consecutive payments to start making good money. they can pay (mostly) on time for 9 months, then stop paying, and at 12 months you go repo the car. as long as you got a decent down payment, that plus the payment stream, plus the firesale price you get selling the repo at auction puts you in the black. if you outsource the financing, some bank gets to live large on the hog with 30% interest that, risk adjusted, is more like 19%, and you're left trying to make money at $200 a pop for each transaction.

in the end, it's simple economics. markets are not perfectly efficient but they are pretty efficient. auto sales, auto leasing, auto finance ... this is an industry/market that is about as mature as it gets. you can make 5% from your capital just buying the S&P with very little risk. if you want to make 30% or 40% or more off your capital in a mature industry, you must take on risk. if it were otherwise and you could just do make 40% off your capital by putting together $300k and doing "floor plan financing," then EVERYONE would do that until the number of new entrants eats the arbitrage premium and there is a return to market equilibrium.

you can also make a premium by "disrupting" a mature market. here, you're arguably getting paid for your insight rather than "only" taking on volatility, although start ups are also risky, albeit in a somewhat different sense of the term. but, while it doesn't take much capital to revolutionize an immature market (if you've got the skills, you can start facebook or google for a few grand) but disrupting a mature market is often capital-intensive--you'll need backers.

just to give you some idea, look at some recent articles on Vroom!, an auto industry disrupter that has no showrooms and almost no advertising costs, and only sells used cars over the internet. they've raised about $75 million in two 2015 series, plus whatever they got in earlier angel rounds. their fleet is only 500 to 600 and they own every vehicle they sell outright. they price their vehicles (slightly) below market and their pitch is to make money by cutting out all the overhead associated with brick and mortor auto sales (rent, utilities, advertising, salesman commissions, hail damage write downs, etc.). obviously, given the gap between their capital raised and size of inventory, there's still a decent chunk of overhead in their business model.

dollar for dollar, your overhead will be much, much higher. best case scenario, you can run all the overhead on short term unsecured credit, which will allow you to buy five or six $50,000 cars and try to build day-by-day to eight cars, 10 cars, 12 cars etc. that's unlikely to work, but not impossible if you're really driven. but it'll be a grind. is that really better than getting $150,000-200,000 in salary for some office job? for some people who really want to be their own boss, it is better. but they're a rare breed. it's not a place for tourists suffering from a minor case of corporate ennui.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2952841&forum_id=2#28474874)