IFH 228: How to Deal with Residuals & Paying Back Investors with David Zannoni

Have you ever had to deal with paying out investors, guilds, unions, residuals, and producers from the revenue your film makes? Today's guest is David Zannoni of Fintage House, does just that but on a global scale. David helps you, the producer, ALL the rights for your film globally. 
Now, this is a subject I didn't know I needed to know about. After meeting David at AFM I knew I had to have him on the show to drop some knowledge bombs on the IFH Tribe.
In today’s film industry, it is customary for independent film productions to have a collection account in place. Often film financiers, (international) production companies, sales agents, and lawyers representing any of these parties, require the establishment of a Collection Account before they step on board of, or have their client commit to, a project.
What is exactly a Collection Account? A Collection Account is an account opened in the name of an independent, neutral, trusted third party, the so-called Collection Account Manager or simply the CAM. The CAM receives into the Collection Account the revenues generated by the worldwide exploitation of the film from the distributors on behalf of the beneficiaries of the film.
This is called Collection Account Management. This ensures that each beneficiary of the film will receive its share of the revenues. Beneficiaries include the sales agent, the producers, (institutional) financiers, talent (writers, directors and actors) and equity investors in the film.
A Collection Account is set up in the name of the CAM. The film’s sales agent or worldwide distributor subsequently instructs the local distributors of the film, in each territory and for every media window, to pay into the Collection Account the royalties generated under the distribution agreements.
To make sure distributors actually pay to the Collection Account, the sales agent includes the details of the Collection Account in the distribution agreements, the invoices it sends to the distributors, or by means of sending a notice of assignment to the distributors advising them of the existence of a Collection Account for the film.
The benefits of having a Collection Account in place are amongst others:
Protection of revenues
Avoidance of conflicts between parties of interest
Creating transparency in the accounting side
Outsourcing of the film’s administration
Here's a bit on today's guest.
David Zannoni negotiates agreements for films and television series for Fintage House clients, is involved in business development, maintains relationships with clients specifically in the US, Latin America, and Spain, and represents Fintage at film markets.
On behalf of Fintage House, David has given presentations, workshops and seminars at universities across the globe and at events such as the yearly conference of the National Association of Latino Independent Producers in the US (NALIP), the Winston Baker Film Finance Conferences, the Rio Film Market and the Bogota Audiovisual Market (BAM). David currently resides in Mexico and speaks fluent English, Spanish, Italian and Dutch.
Enjoy my conversation with David Zannoni.

 

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