Seed grant

Money given to a filmmaker before production, on the strength of a proposal, by a committee that chose it over other proposals. It is not an investment and it is not a loan, and it usually does not cover the film, which is why grant films are also the films most likely to be finished on deferred fees.

The form matters more than the amount. A seed grant is discretionary by design, because somebody has to choose, and that puts the question of who is inside the room at the centre of Philippine film financing. It replaced a studio system in which the money came with a distribution obligation attached, and it replaced, later, the one incentive in the country that paid on an assessed grade rather than on a selection. Grants are worth having and they are not neutral, and both facts are load-bearing in Level 3.

Source: Cinemalaya, established 2005 by the Cinemalaya Foundation with the Cultural Center of the Philippines and Econolink Investments, with seed grants starting at ₱500,000 per film, rising to ₱1,000,000 in 2019 and reaching a record ₱2,000,000 each in 2023. Cinema One Originals ran from 2005 to its final edition in 2019. QCinema, created 2013 by the Quezon City Film Development Foundation, awarded three seed grants of ₱800,000 in its first edition. Full detail and citations in section 9 of the Cinema research map.

First used in: 3.6 · Cannes without a country watching