ASK & DISCUSS INDEX

13 years, 6 months ago - Neil Oseman

Hi Chris

I recently raised UKP 2,000 for a short film using Crowdfunder. I wrote a series
of blog posts when it was over evaluating how it went, what worked and what
didn't. http://neiloseman.com/?p=1651

Good luck!

13 years, 6 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin

Crowd-sourcing has worked in the past, however only for a scattering of
projects here and there, generally for people with a lot of social network
'friends' to hassle, and a track record of actually delivering. SP is a terrible
place to promote your requests for money - have a look through the newsletter
and see just how many people are after free/cheap services and you will see
the place is hardly awash with cash. Talent, enthusiasm, vision, etc., maybe -
but not buckets of cash!

There are so many hats out that you have to fight and promote like crazy to get
seen. A part of that is offering things in return for a donation - remember the
cost to you of offering a DVD means that you commit to finish the film and
create a DVD menu, and burn a bunch of discs and post them, potentially
around the world. That erodes the value of the $10-20 you can barter for it
quite significantly.

You are committing to make these DVD's and hence committing to finishing the
project if you take the money - what if the project gets 2 $10 donations? Will
you abandon it? Or take the $20 on an eventual promise?

As the crowdsource sites have a LOT of projects on them, they put the popular
ones on the front pages, and less popular towards the back. Getting to the
front is your best chance to be seen, but to do that you need to be part-
financed already. And if you put your own money through the site (to appear
part-financed) they take a slice. The number of success stories is massively
outweighed by failures.

However, it does occasionally happen if you have everything in place.
Personally, I'd suggest working a second job is a far faster and more efficient
way of getting cash than trying to convince a bunch of strangers in a crowded
marketplace of beggars.

13 years, 6 months ago - Jonathan Williams

Chris,
Kickstarter was set up in a bit of an 'alternative' sort of way; and if you don't reach your target no money changes hands. Doesn't matter though as it's strictly US only.
Obviously Kickstarter was a bit limited as a business model, so a bunch of bankers and other corporate 'suits' set up Indiegogo where it doesn't matter if a project reaches its target or not for them to take their 10% - and for Amazon to take their fees as well.
So how do you do it? Well, as the professional gurus like Peter Broderick have pointed out, crowd-sourcing is part of your marketing strategy. You take all the money that you can get from everyone involved in the project + your family and you break that up into a number of lots which you then 'donate' both anonymously and through people whose names don't appear on anything to do with your film; as with any such exercise you have to prime the pump: people only back winners, not losers. Now you can start spamming your social networks like mad about how 'hot' your project is, how you've already raised 50% of your target in just three days (or whatever). Bu, don't forget, the data seems to show that people have to see a message at least four times before they do anything - so you must keep spamming.
Next you have to take a leaf out of the charities' book - you must develop a relationship with whoever donates: email them with your thanks, then email them again offering to upgrade their 'goodies' if they give you another £25. Do not leave them alone - make them feel that, if they don't give you more, the film won't get made, they won't get a credit, and it was all because they were too mean to give you that extra £50.
With a documentary you are in a better position, especially if it appeals to/is about a large already existing group of people who want to get their message across: pro some religion or other is always a good one.
While we're at it, I have an idea: me and a few mates like fishing and we want to catch some really big carp, but we don't have suitable rods, money for accommodation and food, waterproof clothing, etc. But we are going to video our efforts, so please send us as much money as you can. Ten per cent of everything you give us will be donated to some corporate execs, and five per cent to Amazon/Pay Pal for looking after their business.
Cynical? What me? No way! I'm just giving you, and everyone else looking to help some suits make money out of film-makers, some no-nonsense help on how to do it.

Best of luck

13 years, 6 months ago - zak bentley

I am currently running a crowd funding campaign, here is the link
http://ancient-giants.com/?ignition_product=participate

If you are from the UK you wont be able to use kickstarter unless u know a
US citizen that will let you use their bank account. even then it costs about
9%, and you might not get your money!

Indie GoGo is good, but it isn't as widely recognised and still take 9%, Im not
sure when you get your money, but i know you dont have to reach your goal to
get it, unlike kickstarter.

I am using Ignition Deck ( http://ignitiondeck.com/id/ ), its a wordpress plugin
that works in the same way except you set your own rules. Its great because
you get the money in real time through paypal, it is very easy to set up and
the guys who made it have been so helpful in getting me going and making
sure it is working for me. They even made specific changes to my version so
that it worked better for what i needed. You pay $50 for the plugin then the
only charges are paypal charges that work out at about 3%

Its a far more hands on way of doing it so bare in mind that you will need time
to make sure you can keep on top of it! If you are not overly computer literate
or website savvy it might not be for you.

As for crowd funding in itself, you definitely get out what you put in! I dont
know how much you are going for but anything over £5000 and you need to
see it as a full time job! I left my actual job just to do crowd funding up until
we start shooting!

Set a realistic goal, I had mine set way to high, i have recently brought it down
based on what people have contributed and what i can realistically make the
film for. I originally put the goal of my ideal budget up, but i can do it for
£20000 less and that is 60% less money to raise! If you need a lot, you need
a lot, and that is what you should ask for, or at least break it down, set one
campaign for pre production costs, one for production and one for post costs.

Family and friends are invaluable, they should definitely be your first port of
call, I know or am closely connected to about 80% of the people who have
contributed so far. They are also the people most likely to pass it on at first.
The first thing i did was personally write a message to everyone i knew on
facebook with a link to my project, what shocked me was that the majority of
people who responded were actually people who i wasn't going to bother
sending it to because i didn't think they would be interested! So dont write
anyone off, send it to everyone.

Getting it out to the public, Going public is an absolute mission! I still havent
got it right yet, I got articles out in all of the local papers but it made no impact
on the traffic through the website, people just said oh i saw you in the paper.
You need to get people caring, so my plan is for this market day to set up
something in the trees in town and abseil down to people to hand out flyers, go guerilla, It gets you noticed and its free!

Dont ask people for donations, your not a charity. Ask people to contribute or
participate. People will give money because they believe in you and your
project and want to be a part of it. Let people be a part of it, the beauty of
crowd funding is you can completely keep your artistic vision but you get a
whole load of people with ideas and feedback that you can pick and choose
from which means you get the best possible end result for your target
audience.

Good incentives! Offer decent stuff in return, for example I didnt even notice
until someone said "i was hoping to be able to get a copy of the film but
couldn't afford £100 contribution" that I wasnt even offering people the chance
to see the end product at a fair price! So i changed the incentives so that
anybody that contributes at level 2 or higher gets a free digital download of the
film.

Be flexible, If someone emails and asks for a little extra, if its not going to
break the bank then do it. A couple gave me £50, at that level they chose the
T-shirt, so i offered them a T-shirt each. Dont make that public, because other
people might feel short changed but if its the difference between getting a contribution or not at no real extra cost it would be silly not to!

Think outside the box, When we were £5 off of £3000 I put a status on
Facebook saying the person who got us to £3000 would get the incentive
above their contribution, 3 people sent me £5 which is £15 i might have
missed!

Scratch backs! This is something that just occurred to me, so i havent tried it
but it might make sense?!?! I put my project on SP to no avail, i just realised
that i never read the bulletins about crowd funding because i use them as a
resource not a way to spend money, so, and i will try this myself, I think it
would be a better idea to offer direct incentives to shooters. I have some ideas
and i will write another post to try it out. But as you can see, i have read your
post and given you some advice from my own experience, so it can pay off in
other ways, if only feedback, its one more person that knows about your
project!

To put crowd funding into perspective here is a blog post i wrote about
reaching people http://ancient-giants.com/ancient-giants-and-the-six-degrees-
of-kevin-bacon/

I could keep on going, feel free to ask me any other questions!

Also, get a website up and get a twitter account as well as fb page and keep
them updated!

13 years, 6 months ago - Louise Marie Cooke

Also check out the new monthly film night I'm launching. Our aim is to assist in promoting filmmakers new projects and bring them to a wider audience; we feel that a physical platform for crowdfunding is needed as well as an online platform.

re:Vault will consist of short film screenings of past work followed by a Q&A and pitch by filmmakers of the next project they are desperately trying to get made with blood, sweat and tears, and of course a little help from the public. After this we hope everyone will stick around for some good old fashioned networking so get those business cards out and get ready to start handing out any promotion material you may have. Remember its not just money you need to get your film off the ground but a dedicated crew also.

http://www.revaultfilmden.co.uk

Submissions now open!