There is a certain accepted template for raising finance for a feature film in Australia. After around three years of script development, a project is shown to the marketplace to attach local distribution and an international sales agent for cash advances or market¬ing guarantees. These attachments trigger state- and federal-agency funding, and then the Producer Offset (40 per cent of qualifying Australian expenditure) is cash-flowed into the budget through an agency or private film fund. It’s a proven template up to a point, but it’s increasingly difficult to execute. In the current landscape, there is a paucity of Australian distributors and a high demand on limited government investment. Perhaps most crucially, this is a project-by-project financing model, with mostly small operators struggling for overheads and ongoing capital. Veteran director, producer and head of Adelaide Motion Picture Company (AMPCO) Mario Andreacchio, whose films include Napoleon (1995), The Real Macaw (1998) and The Dragon Pearl (2011), is someone who has been looking outside of this template for many years., There is a certain accepted template for raising finance for a feature film in Australia. After around three years of script development, a project is shown to the marketplace to attach local distribution and an international sales agent for cash advances or market ing guarantees. These attachments trigger state- and federal-agency funding, and then the Producer Offset (40 per cent of qualifying Australian expenditure) is cash-flowed into the budget through an agency or private film fund. It's a proven template up to a point, but it's increasingly difficult to execute. In the current landscape, there is a paucity of Australian distributors and a high demand on limited government investment. Perhaps most crucially, this is a project-by-project financing model, with mostly small operators struggling for overheads and ongoing capital. Veteran director, producer and head of Adelaide Motion Picture Company (AMPCO) Mario Andreacchio, whose films include Napoleon (1995), The Real Macaw (1998) and The Dragon Pearl (2011), is someone who has been looking outside of this template for many years.