Crowdfunding

So I have a view of crowdfunding that is probably a fairly common one. I think it has burned itself out as a place to get front end money for creative endeavors. Essentially Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and even new options like Seed & Spark are of little value to a no-name creative type with nothing to offer upfront, excepting passion. I do still think crowdfunding platforms have a place in Indie film, but that isn’t getting funds for anyone’s first film.

The place where these platforms can be beneficial to filmmakers is as a pre-order storefront basically. Which is exactly what most product based crowdfunding campaigns function as. They have an idea for a new watch or purse or toaster and then create their prototype and show it off on the campaign and then use the money from the campaign to get the item into mass production. Contributors know the product they’re getting, and most folk trust the idea of manufacturing a product, and further they usually grasp the nature of a pre-order with ease (pay now get it in 5 or 6 months).

Now then, you might imagine a film campaign in the same way, but if you’ve never produced a film before you’re wrong. You’re no budget trailer is not a prototype of your film. We made a no budget teaser trailer for our film and it was not a true representation of what we really wanted to do. Not that we didn’t try to make a good teaser, but time and production value are important. A typical trailer made for a crowdfunding campaign is akin to a design sketch of a dress. You don’t send a dress into mass production based on the preliminary design sketch. You physically turn that sketch into something someone can wear and then maybe tweak it a bit and then, if it works, send it into production.

And that working production example is the only real way to get folks to contribute to a campaign. For filmmakers that is a film you’ve already shot, or other content that proves out that you can in fact make a movie. A fair number of people bitched about Zach Braff or established teams like Broken Lizard raking in millions. And I can see the issue with major established players like that draining the crowdfunding pool dry a little, but you can’t fault the contributors giving to those campaigns. They know those producers will deliver. There are also a number of ‘small time’ filmmakers who have built themselves up and are producing a string of films for a loyal audience utilizing platforms like Kickstarter simply as an easy to use storefront for DVD sales.

Which brings me to our film’s initial Indiegogo campaign. I went hard for my desired budget, about $35,000. So the campaign’s goal was $45,000 to cover the perks and the percentage fee the hosting platform would take. Now then, I never figured I’d make my goal, but hoped I’d get halfway there. We made about $2,500, nowhere close to what I was hoping for. I thought I did what I was supposed to do. I thought I had a decent pitch video, we created the teaser trailer, and I was trying to keep the social media presence up without being annoying. None of it really mattered, I had no track record. Nor any way to prove that I could follow through and produce the movie I was pitching. Pretty much everyone who wound up contributing knew me or another member of the team personally. I wound up gathering the majority of the production budget through a different way (which I’ll detail in a couple weeks in Money Part 2).  The lessons learned on the initial campaign informed how we planned our post production/finishing funds campaign.

Our post campaign has a number of advantages to the initial one out of the gate. For one the post production budget is much less than the full shooting budget; so folks looking at it might feel better about helping us reach a more attainable goal. Secondly the film is shot and we can create a trailer that represents the film in about all aspects, a true prototype as it were. Essentially we just need funds to assemble the pieces and clean it up for release. Everything is more tangible, and pre-ordering the DVD is much more in line with pre-ordering any other physical product. And they can potentially get some other extra goodies, like a movie poster and such.

The last thing that helps with the secondary campaign is the social media exposure the film making process itself created. I think the day our initial campaign ended we had roughly 50 people following our Facebook page (where most of our outreach was happening), a couple days after we finished principle photography on the movie it was ten times that. Folks became interested when they actually saw us doing something. And that is how you raise interest and in turn raise capitol for about any endeavor that needs financial support. If folks see you working and see your passion they can then feel confident you’re going to do what you say with the money they want to give you.

And so if you’ve made films before it is easier to use crowdfunding to finance your next project. If you haven’t made anything to show off, well you really ought to rethink how you fund that first project.