The Essential Financial Management Toolbox for Film, Screen and Broadcast (FutureLearn)

Learn more about the financing ‘tools’ that drive screen content creation and creative businesses around the globe.

What topics will you cover?

Finance Speak

- Core accounting principles and the language of financing creative projects.

- 3 key financial statements that all investors live by.

How does money flow around a company?

- ‘The Balancing Act’ of balance sheets.

- Why ‘Cash Flow is King’ and the realm of profit and loss statements.

- ‘Long Live the King’. If you make a profit what can you do with it?

- What are all these taxes?

What is a company?

- Business structures and setting up your own creative endeavour.

- Director, shareholder, board, auditors… what do all these people do?

- Working with capital, liabilities and debt.

- Get out your toolbox and start analysing!

Learning on this course

You can take this self-guided course and learn at your own pace. On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

- Identify the basic financial skills relating to the establishment and ongoing maintenance of a company.

- Discuss the basic financial structures supporting an existing company.

- Identify key financial drivers in companies.

- Investigate basic financial spreadsheets.

- Discuss the financial reasoning behind a business proposal or business plan.

- Improve your financial analysis of your own creative proposals.

Who is the course for?

This course is designed for screen media content creators and business operators who want to better understand the financing of projects.

Whether you are a production accountant, a small business operator, a creative business manager or an emerging producer with a slate of prospective projects, this course will provide you with a better understanding of where to start and how to get your creative project financed.