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Meet Matthew Helderman of BondIt Media Capital/Buffalo 8

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Matthew Helderman.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Matthew. So, let’s start at the beginning, and we can move on from there.
I grew up in Connecticut and was fanatically in love with all things media: making films, starting bands and obsessively consuming content.

On the east coast, I was never given an inside view to the entertainment business but approached it from a perspective of loving filmmakers, film history and eventually film studies in college.

During my junior year of college I came across a filmmaker in New York who had shot a feature for $30K and sold it for over $1M to IFC; it was an early example of digital filmmaking explosion and a light went off that I should take the opportunity to write, direct and produce a feature film.

So, between my junior and senior year of college I wrote a script, created a filming schedule, formed Buffalo 8 Productions (with the intention of simply using the entity for the project), and was introduced to my future business partner Luke Taylor by my then girlfriend (now wife) to help co-produce the film.

We spent the summer shooting the film with the intention of delivering and selling it to a company in LA. Our intentions came to fruition, but not nearly with the financial outcome we had hoped; again a tremendous learning lesson in to the business side of entertainment at a very early age.

Nonetheless, the Buffalo 8 banner was born. After moving to LA upon graduation, Luke and I continued to work on low budget pictures for film festivals, traveling to Sundance, Cannes, SXSW, Tribeca, and the America Film Market beginning to meet the various players throughout the industry. It was at these events that we met sales and distribution representatives (the film buyers) and began learning about the film financing structure.

This was the spark that ignited what has since become BondIt Media Capital, a film, television, and media financing company. Over the next few years, our work premiered at the Sundance Film Festival (with the film As You Are winning the Special Jury Award), South by Southwest (with the film Jack Goes Home selling to eOne), and the Berlin Film Festival (with the film Little Men – which was selected by New York Times as a top ten best film out of Sundance).

Being at the best festivals in the world really helped to put us on the map, influencing strategic partnerships with a talent management company, two post-production studios, and interest from Netflix who we’ve since been strengthening our relationship with.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
No, certainly not. During our early stages of Buffalo 8, Luke and I had effectively been tasked with putting together a film that to that point would have been the largest we put together. It was about a million-dollar project, and it was coming from a single financier, so you can imagine one individual is effectively writing a check for that entire project. Up until then, we had produced two other films for that individual group of investors, and everything had gone smoothly. We naturally felt comfortable doing a third one.

We were 21 and 23-years-old who hired on a full crew (which means we had 20-30 people on payroll), scouted 25-35 different locations, secured a strong cast, and we’re feeling very ambitious about the film. We trusted so intensely that the financier was going to come through.

Well underway into production, we eventually had 45-50 people on weekly payroll. We made a mistake, in retrospect, of putting every one of them under our company liability, meaning, each crew member was effectively under the Buffalo 8 LLC rather than an independent LLC created for that particular film. We had tangible week-over-week goals that we were meeting, and some of those goals meant putting down very large deposits – deposits for locations, deposits for equipment, deposits for talent, and deposits for payroll. Money was going out the door.

Come time for the production meeting, where the heads of every single department sat together in a room and discuss the plan going forward, the financier had flown out from the east coast to sit in on the meeting. The financier calls me aside and says flat out, “The money’s not coming. We need to shut this down.” We were left holding the bag, now $250,000-350,000 in the hole, both devastated and worried about the production team coming after us and our company. Long-story-short, we learned we were clearly not as diversified as we could have been.

We were singularly focused on producing. Therefore, when the entire revenue stream we counted on blew up in smoke, we did not have additional sources of revenue to mitigate the damage and control our expectations. Buffalo 8 and BondIt Media Capital have been providing creative, producing, marketing, management, post-production, distribution, and financing services since this difficult experience.

So, as you know, we’re impressed with BondIt Media Capital/Buffalo 8 – tell our readers more, for example, what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
The lessons of the above taught us to diversify. Buffalo 8 now operates at nearly any stage of a film or television process: offering development assistance all the way up to digital aggregation and distribution consulting/guidance. We come from the producing world, so we understand the convenience filmmakers, creators, and producers alike, experience when they come to us as a “one-stop shop.”

Further, BondIt offers media financing solutions that many producers were previously not able to find a reliable source to partner with. From the initial kernel of the concept (lending on SAG, DGA and IATSE deposits) to tax credits, pre-sales, negative pick-ups, and bridge lending – we can today offer financing from the earliest stages through the corporate capital to media businesses.

In short, we are passionate about supporting storytellers and creatives in their pursuit to reach screens around the world. We share in the success of our mission, filmmakers and content creators included, that together we are doing something big. We are enabling independent storytelling and bringing content to audiences around the world. We are facilitating the exchange of new perspectives, valuable experiences, and exciting entertainment during the most game-changing time in media history.

So, what’s next? Any big plans?
Buffalo 8 will continue to provide world-class service to media creators while also emphasizing original content production with innovative partners.

BondIt Media Capital will continue to grow as the go-to financing solution for media creators across the board.

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Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.

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