Funding Your Vision Through Incentives | Presented by Wrapbook Payroll
About this Advisor Studio
In Advisor Studio sessions, Sundance Collab Advisors share field experiences and insights into their specific areas of craft, including writing, directing and producing for TV and film.
Finding money for independent films can be daunting, and in today’s challenging independent film landscape, finding and using production incentives is a key strategy to help you reach your financial goal.
In this 60-minute Advisor Studio for fiction filmmakers, we walk you through the business of U.S. tax incentives; from the types of incentives that are available to tips on how to find the best match for your project. This informational session with an expert in the field will leave you feeling empowered as you approach this process.
Topics include:
- Types of incentives: tax credits, rebates, grants
- Understanding why these incentives exist, the financial benefits and how they work
- Different rules for different formats (feature narrative film, documentary, television)
- Finding the right location and incentive for your project
- The questions to ask
- Working with film commissions
- How the decisions impact your project, from start to finish
- What to expect on accounting, timeline, and hidden fees and mistakes to avoid
- Communicating with investors about incentives
This Sundance Collab Advisor Studio is presented by Wrapbook Payroll, the film industry's only on-demand payroll and production accounting platform. With Wrapbook, productions can pay their crew with a click and generate cost reports in real time—all without waiting on a paymaster. With smart onboarding, a built-in compliance dashboard, and a team of union experts on call, Wrapbook is payroll built for independents. Click here to learn more about Wrapbook Payroll.
Presented By
Advisor StudioTeam
Ryan Broussard
Ryan Broussard, Wrapbook’s VP of Sales and Production Incentives, has worked with productions of all sizes—from the largest studio features to the smallest independent projects—to help them optimize their production-incentive strategies and make the most of their budgets.
Broussard’s career in production payroll began sixteen years ago. In that time, he’s worked at payroll companies like Entertainment Partners, where he served as Senior Account Specialist; CAPS, where he served as Tax Incentive Manager; and Media Services, where he served as Vice President of Sales and Production Incentives. He has worked on production incentives from nearly every possible angle, developing innovative reporting measures to facilitate faster audits, advising countless productions on state tax incentives, and even helping some states and local jurisdictions design their incentive programs.
Broussard combines his industry-leading expertise with an emphasis on client service. He has helped clients budget their projects to ensure production incentives are applied correctly, and he has worked directly with clients’ financial institutions to help productions secure financing using incentives. He maintains active relationships with every major film office.
As a well-regarded industry expert, Broussard has hosted numerous online tutorials, webinars, and educational videos, and he has served as both guest and host numerous panels and events for leading industry festivals like SXSW, AFM, NPACT, and more.
Katherine Street
Moderator | Digital Course & Event Producer
Katherine "Kat" Street is an LA-based award-winning filmmaker and Philadelphia native. A cinephile at heart, she writes female-driven stories with complex (oftentimes damaged) main characters, centered around self-discovery, self-love, and belonging.
She has written numerous short-form projects, including original shorts, pilots, and features. She wrote and directed the dramatic short film “Cycles,” which received festival recognition in both acting and best romantic short. She also created her award-winning flagship web series "The New Adult,” which is currently streaming on Kweli TV.
Kat is a Stowe Story Lab SAGIndie Fellow and a participant in the BlackMagic Collective Emerging Filmmakers Initiative. In 2021, she founded the Black Film Challenge, a project that showcases filmmakers of African descent and the movies they create.
She earned her BFA from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts with a concentration in Cinematography and has literary representation with Yak Yak Mgmt.