Adrian Ward, 42
Senior vice president of the entertainment, sports and media department National Bank of California, West Los Angeles
Residence: Los Angeles
Education: B.A., political science, UCLA
Years in Industry: 20
Notable Films Financed: “The Tempest,” “Mother’s Day”
What are your responsibilities? We are mainly focused on providing production financing for independent films and television production.
Slates or single films? Mostly individual films. The slate concept has declined in recent years. As an economic model it’s a little harder to get your head around a number of films all working on their own.
How do you evaluate potential deals? It really boils down to what the producer can bring to the table in terms of collateral. The starting point for us is lending against presales of the film, so individual territorial rights. That can be as much as 50 percent of a budget or it can be as low as 10 percent. We’ve done loans that are under $1 million and we’ve done loans that are several million dollars.
Who are your clients? Generally, a producer will create a single-purpose entity for each project and that entity holds all the distribution rights, the copyright, and we will lend to that entity.
What types of films do you tend to finance? We kind of follow what the market dictates. Over the last few years, horror movies have obviously been very popular and that’s been reflected in presales and the commercial side of it, so we’ve done a number of those. That’s changing now and there’s a move toward family movies, and back into more direct action-type genres.
Ever read scripts? We will read scripts and we will have our own input on the creative side of it, but that’s not really a big part of our decision because that’s more of an investor’s outlook.
How has the economic downturn affected your business? It’s been hit very severely, the independent business. A lot of the foreign presales have been tougher to get, and the ones they do get are generally smaller than they used to be.
What attracted you to this business? I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. I went to the career center at UCLA and there were 100 job offerings that were paying minimum wage and there was one that was twice minimum wage, and that happened to be working for Lew Horwitz, who at that time was the real pioneer of bank financing for independent movies. He taught me basically everything I know.
Ever been on the red carpet? I travel to most of the film markets. You can go to the premieres and screenings and hang out in the lounges and stuff, but that doesn’t get much accomplished in terms of why the bank is sending me over there. It is actually a lot of work. You hit the ground, jet lag or no jet lag, and you’re having meetings every 30 or 45 minutes solidly for four or five days, or in the case of Cannes it’s probably a little bit longer. When I was younger I burned the candle at both ends – worked during the day and partied all night. That hasn’t been happening for a long time.
What’s your favorite movie? “Life of Brian” is one of my favorites – that’s the British humor coming out there. In more modern times, I would say “The Matrix” series. But I don’t really see many movies, partly because I’m just so busy. It’s kind of ironic that that’s not a big part of what I do.
