Thanks for all the input,
I have registered my work with the WGC.
I am the sole producer of this project, all money is coming out of me. Yes this will be used for internal marketing.
The independent director isn't investing any money in this. He offered to film it for me for free. He'll be helping me shop it around, he has called a few people up to get his own research done on how to get a tv pilot/trailer in the right hands. He's done film/music videos in the past. I met him through acting school, my teacher (actor/producer) introduced us to him. I originally sent her my script and she told me to send it to him to get an idea on how much it would cost to produce a pilot or trailer.
Nothing has been done officially yet (aside from script registering).
I just wasn't sure if this was normally how things can be done. I haven't pitched/sold a show before. I will be getting in contact with my teacher today (when she wakes up) to discuss this matter.
Something else you should probably understand before moving forward.
If you're going to be a producer -- then you don't just need to spend money on stuff. You actually need a business entity.
You need a company. And you may now be saying to yourself -- oh, that's way premature. I'm just doing this little thing now. I'll wait until something happens and *then* I'll do all that business stuff.
The trouble is -- you really can't. If you're going to go out and *do business* as a producer. Buy things, hire things, try to *sell* something -- you have to do it as a business.
Who, or what, is it, that's going to go out and try to sell this pilot? You, private person? No. It's going to be a business entity of some kind.
A business entity that has some legal existence, that's registered under Canadian law, that has a tax code number -- that, and I shiver to use this word -- files tax returns (I presume Canada has business taxes).
Because *that* is what it means to be a producer that goes out and tries to sell a pilot. They need to know that they are in business with someone who can do business. And that means you have to actually *have* a business.
That is -- an actual company.
What you have to realize is that I'm just a screenwriter and *I* have a company. I am incorporated. It's called a loan-out company. When I write a screenplay, a studio, or whoever pays my company and my company, consisting of my wife and I "loan out" my services to write the screenplay.
This may sound needlessly complicated but dividing up my "self" from my business protects my assets and allows me to do things in terms of pensions, taxes, etc., that I couldn't do if I was simply writing and putting the money in my private bank account.
It also means that we have to pay people to keep our corporate books, we've got to have an account pay our corporate taxes quarterly. It is, in every respect, a real business.
And you're talking about a business that, ultimately, if you're successful, will be producing a television show -- an exceptionally complicated enterprise employing hundreds of people and involving literally many millions of dollars.
So you have to, at the very least, lay the groundwork, in a business sense, for being able to do that.
You have to have a company.
NMS