ASK & DISCUSS INDEX

2 years, 7 months ago - James McCann

Hi Amber,
The following are just my thoughts, from a marketing POV primarily, but also from an executive producer's. If any of it helps, that's great. If you don't agree with any of it, that's fine, too.

As 'distasteful' as it might be to some people, if you want the average person to invest in your film, you're going to need someone famous involved.
Even if they're not very-famous right now, if it's a face that someone recognises from a soap, it will help. Relying on good filmmaking isn't enough, sadly.
If you can get a celebrity involved, and you're offering Exec Prod as a reward, people will be more-likely to want the ego-stroke of saying they produced a film that starred that funny guy from Emmerdale/the hot psycho from Coronation Street, etc.

Each of the people you have listed on the page as crew need to record a 30-second clip, introducing the film, who they are, and why this film NEEDS to be made. People rarely will invest in a 'project,' but will they take a punt on the People behind the project. Let me see and hear and meet and know the people behind this piece of work.
As a follow-on to this, set-up social medias (for this, Insta, Tik-Tok, and YouTube are great) and up-date once every four days or so, even if it's just a up-date of how much you raised/how close to the goal you are. Let people think this is going to be super-successful and it's their loss if they miss out.

45% of your budget is going on actors. If you're in Uni, I'd save a ton of money by putting up an ad in the performing arts/drama class and ask them for actors. Tell them there's no pay, but you'll pay them well, they'll get footage for a showreel, and they'll get an IMDb credit out of it.

With the rewards, try and offer non-materialistic things. It doesn't cost you any money to have someone on set with you watching how a film gets made.

Contact any charities/organisations that are connected to your subject matter. When my group made an addiction short, we had NHS staff on-board as technical advisors to ensure we got it all correct. That carries a lot of weight/legitimacy to help get you noticed (festival judges want to look good by voting for your film, you need to give them every reason to believe that they will by doing so).

I'm guessing you all involved have some experience with the subject matter, but make sure that whatever you have mentioned in the script can be verified. When you're dealing with this type of subject matter, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) is invaluable. They'll have all the rates, split into different categories.

What is the final goal of this film? Are you making it just to be a Uni project, or is this to launch careers? If it's to launch careers, as in getting your names out there via festivals, I'd allocate a lot more to festival entry (as at the moment you're spending the same amount on catering as you are for festivals). Are you then going to shop this short around to bigger companies in the hopes of getting it picked-up as a continuing drama or getting is funded as a feature?

Another great way is post on industry sites asking for advice ;) Good way of getting insider-people to see your project page.

I hope some of this was helpful, and I'm certain you'll reach the goal.
James

2 years, 7 months ago - Mark Hammett

Hi Amber,

I've recently had some success with a crowdfunder, so thought I'd share my thoughts.

Firstly, I think your campaign looks great and I'd be very surprised if you didn't meet your target. There's enough there visually to show people how the film will look and there's enough description of the themes, etc. for people to know what kind of thing they're supporting.

Personally, I would add a little more about who you all are and how this film will serve your career direction/ambition and how much it means to you. I might have missed something, but if it's a student film then maybe a few lines about how this film will serve as your final piece for graduation, or how you have all just graduated and this was a subject that you all feel very close to... basically, anything you can do to make it feel like a really personal project that means something is really going to help. And anything you can do to tell people about yourselves and the journey you're on will really help. It's tempting when compiling these things to imagine that the people reading it will be your friends and family, so you don't need to say much in the way of introduction or say much about your personal journey... but I think it's very much worth imagining that the reader is someone you don't know and someone who doesn't yet know about you and your filmmaking journey. People will buy into something much more if they feel like they know the individuals involved and understand the journey they're on.

Also, I think it's worth saying something about the fact that it's an all female cast with a majority female crew. That's definitely an angle that should be promoted. I think people are more likely to get behind something that they feel has an ethical stance of sorts. It's not often you see a group of young girls making a film centred around the female experience and this is therefore a bit unique. Btw, sorry if I'm making any assumptions here.

Lastly, I would maybe add something that suggests that this world is something that you have first hand experience in. How you all partied together at college or whatever, and some of the unsettling things you saw on the club scene maybe? It would just add a little authenticity, or at least remove the risk that this is some preachy, anti-drugs film made by naive, inexperienced do-gooders.

Lastly, something that really helped with mine, was spreading out the amount of times it appeared on social media. I asked friends to share it, but I also asked a lot of people to NOT share it UNTIL I gave them the green light. This meant that it did't just pop-up and then disappear again in the space of a few days. I kept cropping up over the course of the campaign. This really helped keep it in peoples' minds. I was on socials pretty much every evening for the whole of my campaign. I did bits for local papers, I did local radio slots, I put signs up in local pubs, leaflets in local cafes, etc.

It seems like you've probably done plenty of looking around at other people's crowdfunders, but it's always worth checking out the successful ones and also the ones that failed, so you can see what they did wrong. I spent ages watching other crowdfunders and making notes about what I thought worked before I did mine. Here's a link to mine...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/straightoutofcompton/straight-out-of-compton-short-film

Anyway, hope that helps, best of luck.