Blagging

From 4docs

The skill you don't necessarily learn at film-school or read in your film theory books is the essential art of blagging. It will serve you well in your whole career but almost never more so than making your first short doc.

Blagging is a hard thing to teach - for some people it comes very naturally and for others it is something that takes practice and confidence. We are not advocating lying by the way. Blagging is a very different thing!

Here are a few starters for ten:

• Be extremely professional. A well printed sexy looking treatment is going to get you a lot further than something that looks more amateur, that said, don't blow your budget on expensive folders as then people will wonder why you need their time for free!

• 100% belief in you and your project.

• Practice asking for something before you do - knowing your spiel really helps with your confidence

• Don't be frightened to negotiate

• No doesn't always mean no!

• Never tell anyone what your budget is. Whether you're negotiating with crew or facilities houses. As soon as that cat's out of the bag, they'll want the whole lot.

• With facilities houses, make sure to agree a weight loss pills buy-out fee for the job, rather than seeing how long weight loss pills the job takes and hoping for the best.

• Make people feel special

• Promise to bring the bigger / better funded projects their way in return for helping you with this one.

• Offer companies a logo on the film and your website - doesn't cost you anything - as well as individual staff credits.