Joana Smith from DNA Films Explains How Her Company Funds Films

Two films that are making headlines at the moment are Ex Machina (2015, dir. Alex Garland), which had its UK release this January, and Far From the Madding Crowd (2014, dir. Thomas Vinterberg) released this month.

Both films were produced by DNA Films, one of the UK’s biggest and most prolific independent production companies. In mid February I had the pleasure to talk to Joanne Smith who runs DNA’s business affairs.

As always my first question was “how do you finance your productions?” Jo’s answer was that “we operate slightly different from a wholly independent producer. What we like to do, is be close to the distributer, because you can engage with them from the get go (…) and also then you can access a better distribution model.”

In order to understand what exactly she means by this, we need to look at DNA’s history. In 1999 DNA was one of three successful applicants to a one-off lottery funded scheme that brought them £29m with the condition, that the money could only be spent on production costs. By bringing in co-producers and utilising the tax credit system this initial fund stretched to an impressive £115m worth of money that DNA was able to spend on production.

In 2003 DNA embarked on an official and exclusive partnership with Fox Searchlight Pictures, while the Britt Peter Rice was President of Production. DNA came on board as an independent producer, kicking off the successful relationship with the horror genre hit 28 Days Later (2002, dir. Danny Boyle). They went on to make a total of 9 films with the US studio, sharing the production costs (max. $15m in total, as per Searchlight’s house rules) 50/50 and benefiting from the studio’s vast distribution network. This partnership in essence made DNA a semi-independent producer, but had major benefits for the company. As Jo puts it: “If you can access that (distribution power), it can become very lucrative. Whereas with the independent model, where you are selling territories for a price, it becomes more sporadic in its distribution, it’s less connected.” On the other hand, by working with indies, the studio cuts the financial risk for itself in half. Should the film flop, they only lose half of the total cost of production while the other 50% percent are covered by the co-production partner, DNA.

But the partnership with Fox Searchlight Pictures wasn’t just beneficial for DNA in financial terms. DNA also learnt a great deal form the Americans. “We can't be arrogant here and not try to understand how they (the Americans) work, how they understand the business. It far exceeds our understanding. So having a partner that says ‘you raise the bar, you raise the bar and you raise the bar again’ – that rigor was always really important to us, both in our deal-making and our deal-making with talent.”

The exclusive partnership with Fox Searchlight ended in 2008, but DNA has maintained a close and healthy relationship. So now they are free to pursue projects either with different major distributers, such as Ex Machina, distributed by Universal, or continue their partnership with Searchlight, as is the case with Far from the Madding Crowd.