I hate it!

It angers me to no end.

It made me question a number of things in regard to any potential filmmaking career I might have down the line.

And eventually I look at crowd funding as a thing that isn’t designed for what I want to do with movie making.

Previously when I talked about money and crowd funding I spoke about how and why I thought our initial campaign failed. Also I spoke about how I thought our secondary campaign to secure post production funds would succeed due to a number of advantages we had gained once we were passed the filming stage.

Well none of those advantages seemed to gain us much in terms of additional funds streaming in during the second campaign. In many ways those assumed advantages led me into fits of frustration as the campaign played out.

A quick recap of the theoretical advantages. First and foremost we had a representative product in the form of a full trailer for the film. It was still a little rough around the edges, which was maybe 20% intentional and 80% due to not having post work done (the reason for the campaign). It showed that there was a complete film, which only needed finishing touches to have it ready for release. I got great feedback on the trailer from all quarters (more on this later). A second advantage was reach. Simply put between the time of the first campaign and the secondary one we had grown our social media following and general outreach many time over. We knew folks were interested in if not outright enthusiastic about the movie. Further we had the experience of the the first go round. We had more and varied points to engage people and a cleaner vision of how to roll out the campaign.

Virtually none of it seemed to matter. If it weren’t for a couple large singular contributors and a bunch of double dippers (folk who supported both campaigns) we would have made about half what the initial campaign did.

The single metric that pissed me off the most was the day we launched the trailer. We had planned most of the campaign around that day. It was a few days into the campaign and we knew we would get some decent traffic from it. The first few days were as expected; friends, family and such, individuals you know will support you in such endeavors. And all of them and everyone we could were ready to promote the trailer. We also set up paid ads to direct people to the trailer and campaign page.

Now then, the trailer could only be viewed on the campaign site. So Facebook and Twitter and every other thing we had directed people there. It was 3 clicks; 1 to get to the campaign page, 1 to watch the trailer, and then 1 on the contribute button. The obvious thinking was that if the trailer were placed right on Facebook or accessible anywhere else people would watch it and never reach the campaign page. We had analytics going so I could see the traffic. On trailer release day we had close to 1100 views. A few of those were people watching it twice, but the site showed slightly over 1000 unique visitors. At that point we had maybe a dozen contributors, so conservatively we ad 900 people come to the campaign page and watch the trailer who potentially would contribute. A fair number liked the social media posts that led them to the trailer also. And yet only one person contributed on that day (an individual who was a friend and most likely would have contributed anyway).

The ‘crowd’ liked what we showed them, some took the time to communicate their enjoyment or eagerness to see the movie, but virtually none could be enticed to simply pre-order the film in some form. I had people see me in real life say they thought the trailer was really good and then ask how they could buy it. I sort of wanted to yell at them, but didn’t, that they simply needed to click the button next to the trailer.

We proceeded on and promoted the campaign in various ways, but with very little return. We had many likes and comments and such, but very few backers I wasn’t already certain of. In hindsight I see the lack of support due to two factors. One is the track record. Even with the trailer folks were wary of the project. Unwilling to fork over $15 to give it a shot because I wasn’t a proven/know commodity. The second factor is audience. I spent a great deal of time focusing on the ‘local’ angle. Trying to get the Mid-Missouri community to take an interest in the project. They did that, but the understanding of and use of the crowd funding platform was lacking. Many folks I talked to later never actually looked at the perks part of the campaign. The campaign page just seemed like a website for the film. Everything said ‘coming soon’ so they weren’t expecting to purchase it then and there. The trailer was the end of the experience at that moment.

I went into the second campaign confident and came out disheartened. It didn’t change my view of the movie I was making, essentially all feedback was good. The disheartening part was all in the effort and planning of the campaign itself. And the lack of return despite good feedback.

Running another campaign for any future project seems unlikely. I can put efforts into raising funds into other avenues that seem to show better results. Slightly more risk for all involved, but cleaner and a little more challenging.