ASK & DISCUSS INDEX

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

I'd say that Mick's response is spot on. You'll never get to a large budget if you can't manage a small budget. For one, you'll never get a bond. It's the route that many took. Shooting shorts for a grand, then five, then ten is good practice. You're in and out within a week (normally). It's not just about raising it, but also showing how and when you'll spend it and with whom. Once you can show that you can manage a budget responsibly, there will always be people willing to risk giving you more (if your project also holds up to scrutiny).

Yes, this can take some time to do - probably a few years at the least. But what is the alternative? If you want to produce yourself, then there probably isn't any. OR - you could pitch the project to an established producer and have them raise the finance to produce it without you in the team.

Producing is a craft like any other - you have to work long and hard at it, starting small and building up. Unless your dad/mom was a high flying above the liner or you have a wealthy family, it's not going to happen over night.

Wozy

10 years, 1 month ago - John Lubran

To be fair Mathew was asking for advice, even if his question revealed a very common sort of naivety regarding film production. Fortunately he came to the right place and the general learnedness of the responses will have brought Mathew down to earth with a bump. It does seem to be something of the nature of youth to aim so very high without actually having any practical knowledge. The excruciating numbers of youth led projects that plan to make action, zombie and other banalities reveal just how prevalent these aspirations are. Do listen up children; in a world where the big studios invest tens and hundreds of millions in these genres do you really believe that your low budget beginner project is realistic or that anyone will take it seriously? The best chances for low budgets are subtle and witty scripts with contemporary and easy to use locations and well crafted performances on both sides of the camera. Less is very often more.

On the crowd funding issue though. Projects that are essentially egocentric art things are almost never going to be of interest unless some very special elements are on offer, such as big names etc,.

One has to ask oneself why complete strangers would want to support a project? The chance of a DVD and T-shirt? Rarer than hens teeth, the chance of making money? No it has to appeal to some altruistic aspiration where the outcomes have a tangible benefit. Consider for example the great many independent organisations campaigning about and supporting all sorts of issues who raise hundreds of millions annually from millions of supporters. One can extrapolate all sorts of possibilities from that.

10 years, 1 month ago - Michael Trott

Holywood makes action movies because they sell in non-English speaking countries. They have the budget to make them and a bunch of 'action' actors known around the world.
The Usual Suspects was made on a relatively tiny budget but it is driven by the script and the memorable bits and what keeps it running are Spacey talking to camera.
Why would you want to make an action movie?
If you can make a low budget character driven story with a great story like Christopher Nolam did with Memento you can earn your big budget for those big budget action movies. If you really must. To my mind Nolan will never better Memento.
As a small time Exec producer, despite making it clear that I want a charcter driven two/three location script with no car chases or shootouts people still send me scripts involving snipers, large crowd screens and so on.
Sorry if this sounds patronising but as a film 'patron' it's hard to avoid. I would say that if you have never made a fimm or had one of your scripts made into a film then you stand no chance of raising £1m. Start small, put £1000 into making a short. Then try raising £10k, then £50k, then £100k. This will help yopu understand what the costs involved are. And if you want to sell a script keep in mind the cost of making every scene.
Good luck
Mick

10 years, 1 month ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin

Similar conclusion, but from a slightly different angle...

Fighting = stunts = risk = mitigation = time = expensive!

£1M is enough to make a movie for sure, but a fairly tame one. Now if you can make a tame £1M movie and sell it for £1.5M, you'll have no problems looking for £5M for a bigger, better film (or so the theory goes, reality is it still sucks trying to raise money!) - and you can fill that with stunts and fun stuff!

10 years, 1 month ago - Marlom Tander

When was the last time you, or anyone you know, paid anything at all for a made for TV (leetle tiiiny screeeen) action movie?

How much will cost to find and convert 100K people who will? 10K, 50K? (If you don't know, then you now do know that for you, the plan is unfeasible).

Is there anything else that might be a better way of spending that money?

I think if you have the stake money to risk either do the rounds and ask for a proper budget, (but even if they like the package, would they let YOU run with it?), or pitch it as a drama/thriller/comedy whatever that can be made with the lower budget and avoids the expectation that comes with the ACTION genre, and is the scale that they will let you run with.

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

Two things - 1) The link didn't work for me 2) without a high profile cast and director and producer aboard, you'll seriously struggle to get 100,000 people.

Crowd funding, at it's best, relies upon an existing fan/client base that you can tap into. Not a script that needs to build a base. What base are you hoping to tap into? It's need to be a little more defined than just people interested in Action Films.

Striving for £1m from any group, whether private or government or crowd etc, then you'll need to show experience at a realistic level. If I was investing, I'd be asking what have you produced previously at a level around the 500k - 750k mark?

Who is in your film? Who is directing? Are you producing, the writer or someone else?

Best

Wozy

10 years, 1 month ago - Matthew Prince

Thanks for the responses! I'm overwhelmed! I would like to say that the campaign is in beta mode so it was never launched. I just wanted to get people's interest. I will set up a new discussion to discuss Kickstarter/Indiegogo and UK filmmaking in general.

10 years, 1 month ago - Hank Starrs

All great comments above. Is 1 million feasible? No. Never. Not in a million years. Just take a look at Kickstarter. A documentary might make, at most £400,00 with a fabulously high profile subject such as Spock/Nimoy. This is rare though.

A feasible and realistic target for a drama on KS? "The Canyons" Was written by Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho) and directed by Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver, American Gigolo) and starred Lindsay Lohan (Herbie Fully Loaded). They made around £100,000. Those people are all high profile.

Lets say you do amazingly well with your action movie campaign which includes no high profile participants (or maybe one if you're lucky) and you make £100,000.

Out of this, 20% VAT, 10% Kickstarter fees (this includes hidden costs, such as payment processing fees plus VAT on payment processing fees) At least 10% to produce and deliver your rewards. That leaves £60,000. If you can make and complete your action movie for £60K then you'll be fine.

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

A quick flit through Kickstarter and I can see that the vast majority of films seeking funding are below $50k. The one notable exception is "For the Love of Spock" - A Documentary Film, which has $469,333 pledged so far from ONLY 6,511 people. And this is from a massive fan base who are averaging at $72 per pledge. BUT this is short of it's target of $600k with only 6 days to go.

My point is not to be negative but to highlight that even successful brands find it difficult to raise the funds from a large and active fan base.

Plan, plan, plan and get your fan base in place before your campaign.

Wozy

10 years, 1 month ago - Dan Selakovich

I agree with everything Wozy said. Plus I'll add: an action film for a million? I'll tell you this right now; I've fixed a few action films, and they are a huge time suck. A simple fight scene can take 2 or 3 days. And the reason the directors were fired off the films I replaced them on is because they didn't get enough set-ups for the action to cut together well.

Yes, a million is enough to do an action film, just not enough to do it well.

10 years, 1 month ago - Guy Henderson

Continuing the theme of advice, I would draw comparisons with the games industry which of course involves far more money than films.

Kickstarter games work well when they appeal to nostalgia, to a group who want to see a remake. They seem to involve a small group (4?) of dedicated and very experienced game makers with great CVs in the type of game they are going to make and crucially already have some game to show - proof of concept. Indeed Kickstarter could well be called Kickfinisher! Despite all that, they only get typically £1-3 million, and they are the very best of their profession. What no-one tries to do is make a multi-player online game like Star Wars the Old Republic which is rumoured to have cost £200 million. Kickstarters will ask for about $20-30 for a finished product that could have up to 100-200 hrs of gameplay. The parallels are obvious and a little scarey. But here's a success story:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/description

You have to be careful of over-promising or under-delivering. I believe in starting a lot smaller than the above: small, niche with a clear fan base is and proof of concept is, I believe, the way to go. And something you personally are prepared to do for free and will take over your life for at least 2-3 years. Also consider the concept of micro-transaction (also a games and music concept), i.e. asking for a very small amount (just 1$) but from a lot of people from a clever social networking campaign, e.g.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/the-bards-tale-iv

If you must go action then a typical example might be a light sabre duel?:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faQO57Iwlo0

The problem is how much would you have paid to see that?

But this, if it wins competitions etc. could lead on to other things… as the above guys want to do.

However, if you're working on low budgets then I think you should focus on what low budget does best, whatever you consider that to be. Play to its strengths. I, for one, say you can't beat a good story, camera-guy and actors, but then I'm biased!

Indeed, just to blow my own trumpet, I was involved with a very talented director who had a concept and just wanted to shoot – no sound, a wind-up camera, him, his assistant and me, excellent editing (and a very cool song too!). It's got over 115,000 hits on youtube.

Phew! Wrote more than I intended. Hope that's useful.

10 years, 1 month ago - Alex Blogg

An interesting discussion.

Remember too that kickstarter take 5% of the fee, and any reward teirs with physical products eat into the total cash you have to make the film. Be it through t-shirt/poster printing or postage.

Your probably looking at £930,000 after all that.