Business plans for independent filmmakers and companies
Louise Levison, President of Business President of Business Strategies, is a highly respected financial consultant in the entertainment industry, specializing in creation of film business plans for over 25 years. Her clients have raised money for low-budget films such as The Blair Witch Project, the most profitable independent film in history, and for companies raising as much as $300 million. She is the author of Filmmakers & Financing: Business Plans for Independents currently in its revised and expanded Seventh Edition (Focal Press, 2013). The sixth edition of the book continues to be available in Mandarin from Hindabook.com. She also is editor of the online newsletter The Film Entrepreneur: A Newsletter for the Independent Filmmaker and Investor. Levison is an Instructor in the Extension Program at UCLA. She also has been a Visiting Professor at the Taipei (Taiwan) National University of the Arts, Chapman University (Orange County, CA) and the University of Montana (Missoula). She has presented seminars and/or been on panels at the Sundance Film Festival (including “Financing Your Film: Avoiding the Pitfalls from Business Plan to Distribution” (2010 to 2012) , Los Angeles Film Festival, Film Independent (FIND), Women in Film, Producer’s Guild of America, Galway (Ireland) Film Fleadh, National Association of Broadcasters, Hollywood Black Film Festival, American Black Film Festival, National Association Of Latino Independent Producers, California Lawyers or the Arts, Austin Film Festival, Florida Motion Picture and Television Association, Cincinnati Film Commission, Independent Cinema Expo, California Lawyers for the Arts, Nashville Film Festival, The Learning Annex (New York and Los Angeles) and others.
Prior to working in the entertainment industry, Levison spent ten years in the highly regulated health care industry as Director of Corporate Strategy for both the City Of Hope, where she initiated planning for its five corporations, and Torrance Memorial Medical Center. She began her finance career as a Planning Analyst at the American Iron and Steel Institute in New York and then moved to California to work as an economist at Stanford Research Institute. Levison also has worked as a stockbroker and co-hosted a call-in radio show heard on 100 stations in the United States, Canada and Mexico on the Business Radio Network. She is a member of Film Independent (Los Angeles), Women in Film and the International Documentary Association. Levison has an M.A. in Asian Area Studies from New York University, an M.B.A. in Finance from California State University (Dominguez Hills) and a B.A. from Simmons College (Boston). Born and raised in Cincinnati Ohio, Levison graduated from Walnut Hills High School.
Keywords: Business plans, film consulting, strategic planning
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