ASK & DISCUSS INDEX

10 years, 1 month ago - Lee 'Wozy' Warren

Where is your fan base? THE BIGGEST KEY QUESTION for crowd funding...

One key thing that Bonholt did before his campaign was to spend £15k on making the short version of the feature. He also had experience of making music videos and corporate films. He had experience. He'd proved that he could manage a budget and built (most probably) a following with the work he did, including the short version of the feature.

Looking at your Kickstarter, it sounds like you're going to give the patrons the choices of what happens in the story. They are going to be the writers. If you've ever worked in a writing team on a project, you'll know that making decisions on just a few points can be tough. Not always, but the more people involved in creative decisions, the harder it gets to achieve agreement.

For my 2c worth, I applaud your dream of rocking back to the 80s/90s and reviving the good ol' days of action movies, but I think your aim is a little short. Sorry!

I know that you were asking a slightly different question, but any crowd funding campaign will come down to a single element - people! Where are they coming from? Everything else is secondary and superfluous if the first isn't in place.

My advice - write a short 10 minute action script (or get someone to write you one), save some money or beg/borrow etc and make it as a producer. Show you can do that and start to build interest in your ability to bring product to market that people want. Now the ball will be rolling in your favour.

Happy to have a look at any script you have or specific advice on shorts etc.

Good luck.

Wozy

10 years ago - Lee 'Wozy' Warren

@Matthew - you may gain more value if you were to contribute more when posting questions about stuff you have questions on...

10 years ago - Jendra Jarnagin

There was a FANTASTIC article in Moviemaker magazine that was a case study on a very successful Kickstarter campaign and what it took to achieve. Of course this was a social issue documentary (that I shot) so your mileage may vary, but its a great article that is worth reading and sharing.

http://www.moviemaker.com/archives/articles/trailblazer-tuesday-crowdfunder-special-how-equal-means-equal-made-158-on-kickstarter/

10 years, 1 month ago - Lee 'Wozy' Warren

btw - an excellent panel discussion on the subject here at Stage32 - https://www.stage32.com/blog/Crowdsourcing-and-Crowdfunding-Your-Indie-Film

10 years ago - Dan Selakovich

And while doing what Wozy advises, build your audience. Starting small on a film, also means starting small on blogs, twitter, etc. The internet is still a place that people come for information. Make your filmmaking blog advice, mistakes you'll avoid next time, equipment you're using, pre-production events like casting, etc. A step-by-step guide on how you're doing your short can become a place where others wanting to do a film of their own come to learn. And from that, you're building an audience for fund raising on the next bigger thing.

10 years, 1 month ago - Marlom Tander

I see parallels between this and my old school rave promoter days. (All legal, all health and safety).

The trick is to get people to part with money for some thing they can't see, hear or touch. They have to go on faith that it will be worth it.

To make it work (and you're losing money until you gate 50%) is all about knowing exactly how to reach the opinion formers.

Our model was simple - involve as many people as possible as support DJ's and Dancers. So that's 50. They bring 100 of their close mates, who bring 5-10 people each, and buzz and walk up fills your 2000 capacity venue.

Yes we had posters and flyers, but they weren't to sell the event, just jog people into commiting to something they knew they wanted to do.

Could you get it wrong? Friends of ours (bigger scale than us, very successful in their home town) went out of area to try and break into a new city - Leeds. Result - 20 tickets sold. Out of 2000+. Bye bye 10 grand.

They didn't know enough of the key people in Leeds to make it work, and adverts never sold a rave.

It's not about what you do. It's about knowing what to do to reach the people who really want to see your movie, but first, for your million dollar budget, you need to know that there are X tens of thousands of such people out there to reach, so that Y thousands will pony up.

IMO, for a movie, that's a big ask. Maybe doable with a big star on board, or a niche star that might open. (E.g. star skateboarder taking action lead with fantastic sports camera guy, skater community might love it).

It's also worth noting why we quit the raves. The music moved away from the stuff we loved, and we knew that we could only run events that were the events we wished we could go to. As soon as we realised we'd need to second guess the audience, we walked. Because the penalty for failure would be brutal.

I'd go to KS ONLY for projects I loved, and ONLY if I thought the X and Y added up. I'd never try and pander to the X and Y by jigging the project their way, because other people, better on the wavelength, will win that game.

10 years ago - Matthew Prince

Apologies, had a lot going on. I like to read the opinions and gain ideas. From people's opinions, it seems I have a lot to achieve before even considering crowdfunding. I'll have to focus on real world financing...

10 years ago - Lee 'Wozy' Warren

Write something simple but engaging. Get a couple people together. Shoot it. Small but steady steps leads to bigger steps leads to moving up the ladder.

Wozy