Can Film Tax Credits work for your film? And more!!

Season 6 of Film Hustlers is HERE! — 🔥 No-fluff, state tax credits, Great tax credit states,  auditing tax credits — and the exact moves to stretch your budget, protect investors, and actually finish your film. For indie filmmakers who want results. Tune in, level up, and make your next project unstoppable. 

Transcript

Mark Roberts 0:00

I'm gonna tell you what. Welcome to season six of Film Hustle.

Davie Dave 0:06

Wow. Season six, it feels like season 60.

Mark Roberts 0:10

You know, it's been uh an interesting ride. So yeah, I'm excited to be back at it uh here in January. Hope everyone had a good new year of the OK. I had the best new year. You did, right? Yeah. You had a good year last year, which was a good one.

Davie Dave 0:24

Yeah, we've been doing a lot of things in uh 25.

Mark Roberts 0:27

Uh if you want to hear more about the 60 minutes or last year, sorry, um, you can check out the last one. We'll talk all about what's happening. Um Teddy's not here today. He's uh I guess it's gotta work. Uh gotta make some money graphics building. Um but here's the thing with this tier. I want to try, I mean, as much as possible, I want to try to talk about things that matter to filmmakers. Yeah. Because you know, at the end of the day, it's becoming very difficult for filmmakers to raise money. Raising money is hard these days. Well, it's hard to come by these days. Well, it's hard to come by because there's you know a lot of Discord and how people are watching films, how people are selling movies, you know, Sundance moves like this the last year that they're gonna be on the mountain, right? They're moving. I forgot where they're moving, it's on or something. I forget. Yeah, I forgot. They're moving somewhere. Park City. Uh no more Park City. And that's uh that's sad in a way, but it's uh, you know, changing the times are changing, dude. Uh back in the day you could make a movie, you could sell it overseas, you could still sort of do that now, but it's not the same as it was. You know, people get streaming, you've got Netflix streaming all over the world. It's not how it worked before. You know, you made a movie and you couldn't see it in India, or you couldn't see it in China, or you couldn't see it in Japan until someone sold it to you. And then once you get it bought, then you show it in China, or you show it in Japan, or whatever. And now you've got streamers that are already in those countries. And yeah, maybe it's a collaboration between the country and Netflix or the country and and uh Paramount, but the truth is that that limits your ability to sort of go sell to an open market, which is what, you know, there's the American film market, there's the Venice film market, there's Cannes, you know, all these places used to be where you go and sell your movie. And I, you know, we've had distributors on the show, you know, that talk about this. You make a movie, you sell it at your markets through distributor, you make some money back. Every year since 1990s, it's been deteriorating. Every time someone goes to a market with your movie, oh, I couldn't sell this, oh, it's really bad out there, no one's buying. And I'm talking about 25, 30 years of that.

Davie Dave 2:47

Yeah.

Mark Roberts 2:47

So clearly the markets start to slow down, and you're not able to make as much money as an indie. And you know, before you, I don't know, you remember, I don't know how many people listening remember, but there was Blockbuster. Love Blockbuster. Right? You go pick your DVD, you go show it, you know, watch it at home. I used to copy all the DVDs. Right. I used to like uh pirate them. Yeah, it was the bootleg them all. Um they had Hollywood Video, loved Hollywood Video, right? And then you had all the other mom and pop places where you picked up your DVDs. Now, what was interesting for us as filmmakers is that if I made an indie movie and I put a name in it, you know, someone reasonable. Let's say you put like uh, you know, a Mario Lopez or you put uh Frank Zaggerino. No one knows who that is. Um Cynthia Rothrock. Oh my god. You know? Uh if you put it Mark DeCoscas, you know, these guys are you know action stars that are behind the scenes now, you don't really know about them, but they were stars overseas. So if you had those guys in your movie, you could sell your movie to like, you know, Benelux or you could sell it to Germany, you know, and make $75,000, $50,000. You know, each one of those countries paid a lot for those names and you don't even know who they are. But here in the States, you can go make a deal with Blockbuster for, let's say, an exclusive for your action film. You they give you a million dollars, they give you $700,000, they give you $500,000, whatever that amount was. It used to go up to $2 million for an exclusive. Like if you have you know Bruce Willis in your movie for a couple of a couple scenes, it became worth something. But now, like and I came from the indie world. I spent probably 20 years of my career in indie filmmaking where I would raise the money, make the movie, and then go sell the movie. Um so it's a hard market now. I wouldn't even know how to maneuver it. Like, you know, if I go out now and I raise two million dollars, I don't even know where to sell that anymore, right? Because Netflix is making, gosh, I don't even I don't even want to guess, but Netflix is making the most movies out of anybody. Right. So if they're making their own movies, yeah, their own movies, originals, if they're making rom-coms and Christmas and they're making action films and they're making all, you know, they're doing stand-up, you know, specials, they're doing it all, right? They're doing documentaries, they're doing live events, boxing, right? Yeah, free solo guy um climbing a building in Taipei. You know, all those things equal to if you go to Netflix to sell your indie, they're like, I'll give you 20 grand for it, I'll give you maybe 50 grand for it. And we're only gonna show it in Indonesia. Yeah, or we're only gonna show it in like, you know, the US or whatever, even though they're worldwide, right? Yeah, and then they license stuff here and there. But like, for instance, they licensed um Holiday in Santa Fe from us, uh not from us, but from Lifetime. You know, Mario and you and I and all of us went and made that movie for Lifetime, and then Lifetime licensed it to Netflix, and then Netflix put it up. Now, my understanding is that Netflix only showed that in the United States. Got it. It did not show all over the world, still did well, but um, but you know, again, Netflix is focusing on their original work, on the stuff that they do. So you have to have something very, very special with a very, very reliable big name star to really sell them something. So yeah, the indie world's complicated. So, what I want to focus on this year is giving people shows so that they can figure out how to, if you're making a million-dollar movie or a $500,000 movie, uh there are states, a lot of states in the United States, even overseas, but mainly the United States and Canada, that focus on giving uh filmmakers tax credits.

Davie Dave 6:37

Right.

Mark Roberts 6:38

There's different types of tax credits. Make an example from A to Z. I'll give you an example. If you go to a place like New Mexico, the minimum spend to do a movie there is $500,000 to be able to earn the tax credit. To be able to earn the tax credit. So you have to spend at least $500,000 to qualify for their tax credit. So assuming you go there with your $500,000 that you raised, uh, and you're able to uh accumulate 30% uh in tax incentives, right? And the way it works is you get about 20 to 25 percent just for shooting in the state. Uh so you can be anywhere. But if you go shoot in like Taos, then what happens is they give you an extra five to ten percent because you're shooting in a community that doesn't usually have film in it. So all of a sudden they're like, Oh, you're bringing your money here, we're gonna give you 40% tax credit, which is the top level. Uh in Buffalo, you can get 50%, you know, uh if you do your posts there too. Oh wow. So that's a that's a big number, but assuming it's 30, 40 percent, you got five hundred thousand dollars. Now you're looking at potentially getting back $150,000. So you add that $150 to your $500,000, or you make your movie for $500,000 and you give back the investor the tax credit. Got it. Right. So that's the only way to guarantee, or that's one of the only ways to guarantee that your investor is gonna actually see some money back.

Davie Dave 8:04

Right away. Is it right away or is it um no?

Mark Roberts 8:08

There's a couple things. Yeah, there's a different states do different rules, different states give you also qualify you differently, and this is something you gotta look, you really gotta look carefully at. So if you go to, and I'll give you an example because the last three movies we made, one of them was in New York, Buffalo. Buffalo. The other one was in Nashville, Tennessee, and then the other one was Chicago, right? Right, Illinois. Right. Long Grove, to be exact. So each one of those pretty much gives you about the same tax credit, right? They give you about 30%. Buffalo gave us 40% because we shot in Erie County, which is an underused town. Um was that where the school was? Actually, everything we shot was in Erie County. Oh, okay, got it. So, like uh the fire department, all that stuff, Erie County. So 40% for that. Had we done our post-production there, it would have been 50%. It's a me, it's an amazing amount of money, right? So each budget that we had was the exact same amount of money. Right. Okay, so these three states Illinois, Tennessee, New York, same budgets. One of them paid out 375,000, one of them paid out 280,000, and one of them's gonna pay out like 780,000. Okay, so those are varying numbers, right? So the thing to understand as a filmmaker is if you pick one of these states to go to, not all tax credits are equal. Right, right. And the reason they're not is because a place like New York is gonna allow you to take a tax credit on producers, all the actors, even if they're not from that town, right? Because some of the incentives, the idea is we want you to bring your money, we want you to come, and then we want you to hire everyone that lives in that town. Got it. And as a result of that, we will give you money for your movie. Well, it had to adapt. These states had to sort of do something that brought people, right? So now if I go to Buffalo, New York, there's an amazing film commission there. So if you're a filmmaker and you want to figure out how many, uh, how much money you're gonna get for your movie, whatever the amount is, as long as it's about above $500,000, you call the film commission, right? There's a guy named Tim Clark at the Buffalo Film Commission. It's called the Niagara Film Commission in Buffalo. You talk to him, tell him what you're doing. He will actually help you find locations, find crew, um, connect you with the film with the film tax incentive program that you have to apply, you know, so you have to look at the website and figure out what the application day is. Now, it's really important to know that even though these things exist, they do have rules, right? They have like dates that you have to sign up, dates that you have to uh qualify, um, you have to start at a certain time to qualify for that year. Uh, some of them you have to file a tax return in that state. So for instance, we had to file a tax return in Tennessee. Right. I had to I have to file a tax return in New York. Now, even though your company's in California or Nevada or wherever, once you get your tax credit figured out, which you work with like a tax accountant, and then they hook you up with uh with uh an audit of your movie and all of its receipts. Yeah. So you have to keep very close look on that and make sure you have an accountant that's understands tax credit uh uh stuff so that when you do your movie and you're passing along all of the payroll and all the things you pay for and the things that qualify, they go to an auditor. That auditor then makes sure all the things are correct, and then they go to the state, and then the state sort of picks certain pieces of it and says, like, hey, can you show me this receipt, or can you show me where you pay this guy or can you show me Davy Dave's license so that I understand where he that that the information matches? Gotcha. So once they check all that out, then you file a tax return, even if you're from California or even if you're from Nevada, wherever you're from, you file a New York tax return. Now that tax return is gonna be zero, right? There's zero uh at the end of it, except for the amount of the tax credit. So if you're getting back, let's say you spent a million dollars and you're getting back three hundred thousand dollars, it's a good chunk of money. You file a tax return, it says three hundred thousand dollar tax credit, you get that back. Now you can either use it for the film to finish, or again, you can offer it back to your investor. All of a sudden, he's not whole, but he's got thirty percent right of his money back, and he's got 70 cent 70 percent to to recoup. So that's not bad. Yeah, you get back a little bit. Um, but the tax credits are really, really important and great thing. You know, some states will give it to you, I think, if you even if you only spend 300,000.

Davie Dave 13:01

Let me ask you this since um those movies that we've shot out of state, say we wanted to do one in California. You know, what what is the difference between the shooting here in California tax credit-wise versus where we've been shooting?

Mark Roberts 13:15

Well, it's the same thing. Like the California tax credit is 30 to 35 percent, which seems like a lot. And they're trying, like let's just say they're trying. The problem is that 35 percent here in California versus 35 in New York, it has to do with what they're allowing. So my fees, the actors' fees, the director's fees, um, some of the heads of department fees are not qualifying amounts here in California. So, whereas you pick up for a I don't know, for a two and a half million dollar movie, you pick up over $750,000 in Buffalo, that same movie will get you back $280,000 in California. But having said that, it's all free money, right? I mean, it's all money that will help you make your movie. If your movie is set in California and you can't go to Buffalo, then you're good. You know, you shoot your movie here, you pick up the couple hundred thousand dollars, you give that back to your investor, or you use it for promotion, whatever, you know. Um, unfortunately, you know, films go over or whatever, but but this is the key in a lot of ways to making movies because now yeah, we're talking about indies, right? But let's say you're not an indie. Let's say you're you're a producer that um that has some level of track record and you go to work for Lifetime, or you go to work for Tubi, or you go to work to make a movie for Netflix, or you go, God, we can name a bunch of, you know, any of the streamers, any of the networks. Now, they're hiring you to do the movie, and they're gonna give you the money to cover the tax credit that's gonna be added to your budget. So, in other words, if the tax credit is 400,000 ours, the the the uh streamer or the network's gonna give you that four hundred thousand dollars in advance. When you get that money in a year, you just give it back to them. Got it. Right? So it becomes a really nice tool to get you the job as a producer, right? You're producing, you go to these networks, you're like, you're the tax credit. I'm gonna shoot this movie in Buffalo, we're gonna spend, I don't know, four million dollars, I'm gonna get you back a million, and I'm gonna give it right back to you. Just give me the money to make the movie, and I'll give you back a million, and we'll make a great movie for you. So it's a tool that we use to get networks to feel comfortable making a movie, um, save some money on their bottom line. If they're spending, you know, a lot of these companies are spending $40 million on uh on movies every year. $40 million to make, let's say, 20 movies or 15 movies, right? So each movie's costing anywhere between 1.5 and $4 or $5 million, um the tax credit makes a big, big difference to these networks. Yeah. Because if that $40 million did I say $40? Yes. Yeah, okay. If that $40 million is able to recoup, let's say 20% across the board, so now you're talking about $8 million that's gonna come back to the network from that $40. So now they're they've invested $32 million in movies. Maybe a network decides, oh, I'm gonna make three more movies because I know I've got eight million dollars coming back, or they're gonna take it and move it to the bottom line and be like, hey, so if you're a producer out there and you're thinking, like, how do I make myself more attractive? Yeah, these tax credits are gonna make a big difference, you know, not only to investors, because you know, God knows you can't promise investors money back, but this is one way to you know to say, you give me this money, and when that tax credit comes back, I'm gonna give it back to you.

Davie Dave 17:03

If they want that kind of deal.

Mark Roberts 17:05

Yeah. Yeah. You do the tax credit and you say, I'm gonna add this to the movie. So instead of you giving me one million dollars, give me $700,000, and I'll use the tax credit to finish the movie in post. I wanted to talk about extremesic.com because last week or the week before, I did that example, and I think I used two instruments instead of one, so I want to do it this week, and I want you guys to listen carefully. How the instruments, the instrumentation on this first piece is gonna be full, and then and I'm gonna try to narrow this down to one instrument on the second song because I really want you guys to hear this automation that they have because it's pretty amazing. And I'm sure other companies do it, but I think they do it extremely well.

Rod Rinks 17:58

Um, so okay, so here's the extreme, extreme, extreme, extremely well.

Mark Roberts 18:04

Alright, so listen to this. So the seventh piece now is with only one instrument that is automated right in their system, you can make it fit your scene. Same song. Really cool.

Rod Rinks 18:48

That was really dope, bro. You got a knack for this music, then people were asking about the music in Beautiful Darkness and how great it was. Yeah, and who put that shit together?

Mark Roberts 19:03

We all did.

Rod Rinks 19:05

Here we go. We as a group.

Mark Roberts 19:07

Well, if uh the the thing about music and you need some fuzzuls or what? Hey, you know, you gotta give me some fuzzuls. No, but you know, look, as a producer, it's it's one of the things that I like to do the most, you know. Directors don't always necessarily go with everything I choose. You know, we have music supervisors on movies, yeah, they help with stuff. But I do I know I know myself, and I know that I spend probably more time than anyone else would listening to music and trying to fit the right songs into the scenes. The other thing that's really useful for me, and if you're a producer, you could do this, or a filmmaker, take your movie and put it into iMovie without music.

Davie Dave 19:48

Yeah.

Mark Roberts 19:48

And then when you find songs on extreme music.com, you download them, put them into iMovie, move them around, and put them in the scenes and see if they work. Because otherwise, there's no real way to know for sure, right? You're just listening and then you're thinking of it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I gr actually grab them, I download them, put them in smart movies. Yeah, I move in and I watch it with the music that I pick. That's why I think I'm so effective at doing it, because I actually edit them. Yeah. But not like not like an editor would, but just because uh a producer would as a placeholder and kind of give examples. And then you start to get a feeling of whether or not that's that's the way you want to go, and then a director could say, like, oh, I wasn't thinking that at all. Because it's possible, right? Everyone has different ideas. But um yeah.

Rod Rinks 20:37

Well we kind of I don't know what's in butt, but we have differences on some of the music choices that you were giving in Beautiful Darkness, but we figured it out.

Mark Roberts 20:44

Yeah, extreme music.com, you know, they provide everything you need and they give you automation, they give you gosh, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of different kinds of songs and different um feelings, different uh genres. Yeah. Uh but check them out.

Rod Rinks 20:59

Because you can really go down a rabbit hole. I did that the other night. Like, and you could just type in like whatever you're feeling, you're whatever, whatever you want, and all the stuff pops up, and then you start listening.

Davie Dave 21:09

Yeah.

Rod Rinks 21:10

And then you keep going.

Mark Roberts 21:11

And within the song, like um if you if you punch in uh let's say drama and it brings up a bunch of dramas, and then you click on a song and it starts to play that song. When you click on the song, it opens up a little a little window.

Rod Rinks 21:24

Yeah.

Mark Roberts 21:25

And at the bottom of that window, there's all these other choices. It's like orchestration or country or you know, or different types of feelings, or drama, or spiritual, and you click on those and it takes you to a whole other level of songs, you know, that that starts to use all of the words that you've punched in. So it's interesting. It's uh it's a great, it's a great system. And again, it's part of the process of making we can't make movies without music, and music really helps your movie be great. So spend some time on extreme music.com, pick songs you like, go to iMovie, put them in there, work with it, and then call uh Russell Manual and buy them. Boom! Although it's a good talking point and a good selling point, there's a lot of homework you gotta do. Like you can't, if you tell an investor, hey, the tax credit is this much, um, and we're gonna do it for the movie. Before you do that, you really gotta pick a state that you want to shoot in. You got to communicate with the film commissioner, you gotta communicate with the state itself about how does the tax credit work, what's the deadline to qualify if I'm shooting in March. Um and once you get all of that information, then you've got to find yourself an accountant. You might already have one, uh, a lawyer, you know, that can paper this in a way that makes sense, that includes the tax credit tax credit that you're promising people. And then you have to make sure you have an auditor there. So your budget needs to include, I don't know, anywhere. If you're in Buffalo, you probably should include about maybe $17,000 or a little bit more for for the accounting.

Davie Dave 23:02

Got it.

Mark Roberts 23:03

Because in Buffalo they know you know it's a big chunk of money. So as a result, you know, the accounting of that and the auditing of your books are are gonna cost about $15,000. Like no matter what, no matter what movie you are. But if you're in Tennessee, the tax credit is gosh, it's it's less than half of that. So they're more like uh, you know, we'll do it for $2,500. So now your budget is a little bit less on the tax credit side, but you're also getting a considerable amount of less uh tax credit. So if the tax credits $700 in New York, you're looking at $250, $220 in uh in Tennessee. That's an amazing difference, you know?

Davie Dave 23:50

Yeah, that's good. I mean, this is uh I know a lot of people don't even think about this, you know. They just want to shoot something and say, Oh, we have a budget for Indy, like um, you know, but now you know, you know, you got there's minimums to meet.

Mark Roberts 24:02

Yeah, you got you well, there's you just check on, you know, just punch in like luckily now we have AI, right? You can punch in, you know, what's the best city or what's the best state uh to get my movies to get the most tax credit for my movie, and it'll give you a top ten list. I mean, me personally, I am a big fan of Buffalo. Buffalo, New York gives an amazing tax credit, you know, and I think that they are the lead, you know, as far as the amount of money that they pay out. Georgia is very, very high. They don't have an annual cap, you know.

Davie Dave 24:36

So as a result, you can go to all well, not all, but a lot of series and movies were filmed there in the world.

Mark Roberts 24:42

Yeah, you gotta go there. So if if there's no cap, that means you well, I mean, look, not a lot, not none of us uh probably no one who listens to the show is making a $40 million movie. But if you are, then you're gonna get a sizable amount of money for your studio back there. But anything below $10 million, New York's a great I I want to Is it all of New York? No, I want to qualify that because it is all of New York. Uh there is a cap and it's $700 million annually.

Davie Dave 25:12

Gotcha.

Mark Roberts 25:13

Right. And the minimum to qualify is $250,000. So if you're making $250,000 and you go to New York, you can do it. Wow. But yeah, the the the credit qualifies anywhere in New York. Now, if you shoot an eerie like we did in Buffalo, now you're looking at, you know, 30, 40% for shooting an Erie. The cost of living is a lot lower in Buffalo. You don't have the same cost of production there. You don't have, you know, this you could just make it work. Right. Right, you know, and it's funny because I recently found out that you know, part of getting the extra 10%, you have to shoot in a studio for one day. So let's say your your shoot is 10 days, 10 to 15 days, right? Or 10 to 20 days, whatever you want. Uh, if you shoot one day in a studio, you get the extra 10%. Well, that's a big deal, right? So, I mean, there's a lot of there's a lot of things that you bet that you benefit from from going to a smaller town where they don't shoot as many movies because then the cost of things are less. You know, even I think even our locations were reasonable on Spark. You know, we had like um the fire department helping us out left and right, you know. They wanted us to shoot there, you know. You you you want towns that want you shooting there. Um, so just to run just to run this down, you know, you've got New York, you've got Louisiana. Louisiana, okay. You got New Mexico, California's making a play, but I would double check. You know, they actually have an annual cap of 330 million, right? Um like I mentioned, others have like 700 million. Um there's no cap in Illinois. You know, minimum minimum requirement for a project, 30 minutes or longer, and $100,000. In uh Illinois? In Illinois, right? So that's beautiful because you got Chicago there, you got, you know, it's a very, very long big state. Nevada gives you a little money, not a ton, but you know, if that's where you're gonna be shooting, they can, you know, you can pick up uh is uh it it's probably like a hundred thousand is probably like the least. I mean, I think there's some states that allow you to do fifty thousand, but at the end of the day, look, if you're spending fifty thousand and getting back twenty percent, what's that? Ten thousand dollars? I mean, maybe, yeah. I mean, if you're doing something small, then it matters, just check it out. You know, call yeah, call the place where you want to shoot. Colorado has a great uh film com film uh tax credit. Productions must hire at least 50% local cast and crew, right? So you can bring 50% of your crew, but you have to do 50% there.

Davie Dave 27:52

At least.

Mark Roberts 27:53

At least yeah. You got Kentucky that has a great tax credit, and that's what we do, right? Minimum spend 125,000. What do we do?

Davie Dave 28:01

We hire 50%.

Mark Roberts 28:02

Yeah, well, I think we might have more, right? We hire the majority of our crew, like we bring our DP, we bring our AD, we bring um our costume designer, we bring uh our line producer, we bring our producers, we bring you guys, um, and that's it. And then the other, how many is that? That's maybe 10? Right. The 10 of us go there, and then the other 35 crew members are hired from that town and that state. That's why they do these tax credits because all those people get to make money, then they pay that money into the local economy and it boosts up the economy. So don't think they're not just giving you money for no reason, they're doing it because the more you guys shoot there, the more money their uh people make, the more they spend that on, you know, they spend that in their state.

Davie Dave 28:51

Economics. Film economics.

Mark Roberts 28:54

Yeah, film economics. It's a it's a it's a great thing that the government does for us, you know? And it makes it easier to do your movies, you know. I mean, you the thing about it is that you have to start figuring out how to do it without the sale. Because the sale is so elusive these days. Like, I don't know that I talk to a lot of filmmakers that are like, oh, I made this movie and I sold it and made all my money back. I don't know if I've I don't know if anyone has said that in a long time. Right. So, how do we make that work? Tax credit is gonna help you make it at least stomachable. You know, if you're super smart and good with numbers and you're one of those kinds of producers, you can take a state that gives you 50% and get back 50% for your investor. So if you spend a million dollars and let's say it's not really 50, right? Because you lose something here and there, let's say it's 40. If you do a million dollars, you give back an investor forty, four hundred thousand dollars. Right. That's that's a big chunk of money. There's companies that you can go to that will tell you where your movie will get the most tax credit. Depending on what depending on what film it is. True. You know, if if if you have to shoot your film in the mountains, if you have to shoot your film in Nevada, you know, then maybe there's programs that you don't know about that they help you out with. Um, so anyway, I want to mention some of these companies. There's greenslate, greenslate.com, uh film tax incentive management, so they can help you manage it. Now, clearly you have to pay them. I mean, in addition to filing a tax return for your tax credits, there's also ones where you get the tax credit certificate. Let's say it's, I don't know, $125,000. Uh-huh. Those tax credits can be bought. So if you have $125,000 in a certificate from a state, because some of them give you a certificate, you don't have to file a tax return. Oh, nice. Then you turn around and sell those, sell that certificate to an investor that the state helps you out with or the lawyer helps you out with something. Oh, you can do that. Yeah, they'll pay 92 cents on the dollar. Oh, wow. Right. So you just give them your certificate, they pay you 92 cents, and you end up instead of 125, you end up at like uh 118. Fine. Fine, who cares, right? As long as I get it. Um, but this company, greenslate.com, will help you maneuver your way through that, sell it for you, you know, because they know entertainment partners, they'll do your payroll as well as do your tax credits or help you with the tax credits. Because what they do in payroll is going to be necessary to get your tax credit. They're not a bad uh company to check out. Uh, Monarch Private Capital, Fallbrook, uh, Film Finance. Um and again, the film commissions are super important to this whole thing. But you know, if you go online and you look up like the best film tax credit company, uh, you find someone there, you email them and say, like, hey, I'm making a movie for a million dollars, I'm looking for the best tax credit, and some help filing for it, and and some help organizing how I'm supposed to be organized so that when I'm done, I'm not in a three, four-month nightmare trying to get all my receipts together. And that's a real thing, you know. You gotta you have to have whoever you're partnered with has to be really helping with that because otherwise you get lost, you know, and then you've got to go back and track everyone down. And when you have them there on the spot, I know it's important, you know, I know you're making a movie and it's all crazy and all that, but the truth is that if you're there and they're already doing it, just make sure that there's someone walking around going, like, hey, David Dave, remember you bought that thing for the camera? Where's the receipt at? Right. Let me see it. Okay, where's the you know, card you use to pay for it? All of that has to go into some sort of drop box so that when it gets checked out, because these states don't just give you money, right? Right? They they're gonna audit it. They're gonna audit it and they're gonna make sure that you're not lying. Right. And um, and then and then after that you get back your money. So uh I hope this helped because tax credits are a real thing, they're real money, they're good ways to uh increase your value for your investors too. That's right, increase your value for investors, and it's a great pitch. Hey, we're gonna go make this movie. They'll ask you, how are you planning on paying me back? And you'd be like, Well, 30% is gonna come from tax credits, and the other 70%, you know, you could start breaking it down. We're gonna go to Film Hub, we're gonna go to these other websites, we're gonna go to these distributors. All of a sudden, you have like five or six different ways to sell the movie and make your money back, you know. Tubi's gonna go directly in your pocket. Um, we got a couple of distributors gonna get us on uh on um prime video, and we're gonna get on, you know, maybe Netflix, there's a deal. You know, I sold the documentary for more than I made it for to Netflix. So it's possible, it just depends on the subject matter. But when it comes to investors, you know, knowing that they're gonna get 30 or 40 percent, maybe even 50 if you're super smart. Um 50% back is a serious promise. It's a serious promise, right? So if you want to be creative, you got to get into the finance part. You know, you have to sell the finance part, it's not just creative work. It's you know, you have to be an accountant, you have to be a producer that kind of handles all this stuff, especially if you're Indian. Yeah. So I think uh look, if you guys have questions, if you guys want more specifics from us, go to the IG, film hustlers, um, at film hustlers, yeah, and uh ask questions, and I'll promise you I'll return. I'll tell you guys what what I do and who I use and all that stuff, what the what what uh payroll companies we use, um, you know, what we needed to do. You know, I needed to file my company in these different states. You know, I have uh I have an LLC here in California, but I needed to file those to get the tax credit. I need to file in the state that I'm working in. So there's lots of rules. I can even refer you to a lawyer, you know, lawyers are very important to sort of work out, you know, and accountants too, by the way, have a great accountant. Numerous accounts, actually. Numerous accounts. But uh yeah, if you need anything, uh go to the at uh film hustlers um IG and uh send a question and I'll answer it. But uh but yeah, man, I think uh I think our plan this year with Film Hustlers is to help a filmmaker uh see new possibilities, new ways of uh getting money and promising their investors money. XtremeMusic.com for all your music needs. Thank you, Russ. Thanks Xtreme Music for being a real partner of the show. We appreciate it. And I hope that the tax credit conversation is gonna help you move forward to do whatever project you're doing. It doesn't have to be a film, it could be a commercial, it could be a short, it could be anything in media. Just check with the estates, check with the film commissions, check with the film tax offices, and they will help you. There, they want you to go do your movies there. So thanks for joining us on Film Hustlers and uh beginning the sixth season with uh some exciting news about how you can make your films. All right, we'll see you next time. That's right.