Film glossary

First Position

First position describes the party with the highest priority claim, whether a lender that recoups first or a rights holder whose interest ranks ahead of others.

In financing, a first position lender is repaid before others in the recoupment waterfall, which lowers its risk and usually its cost. In rights, a first position claim ranks ahead of later interests in the same material.

Position determines both risk and price. A party in first position generally accepts a lower return in exchange for being paid first, while parties further back accept more risk for potentially more upside.

Go deeper

Film Financing guideFilm financing is the work of assembling the money to make a film from several sources at once. Most budgets combine equity, debt and gap loans, pre-sales, tax incentives, and soft money into a capital stack, organized around a written finance plan and a clean data room that a financier can review quickly.

Related terms

Keep reading the glossary

Recoupment WaterfallThe recoupment waterfall is the agreed order in which each source of capital is paid back from the revenue a film generates.Chain of TitleChain of title is the documented, unbroken record of who owns the rights to a film and everything in it, from the underlying material through the finished picture.Cross-CollateralizationCross-collateralization is a deal structure in which the revenue and costs of multiple territories, titles, or windows are pooled so that shortfalls in one are offset by surpluses in another.Hard MoneyHard money is film capital that must be repaid on commercial terms, such as equity and interest-bearing debt.

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This definition is educational and does not provide financial, legal, or tax advice. Consult your own licensed advisors before acting. FILM.FUND is a software and workflow platform, not a broker-dealer. It never handles money, never holds securities, never takes a percentage of any raise or sale, and never predicts returns.