How Do I Successfully Fund a Fan Film

J

JaiseTIGTV

Before you comment something along the lines of: "You should just make an original film," indie films don't generally do very well with general audiences since there's usually nothing about it that they're searching for.

I have a few ideas for feature length films based on famous franchises, but they can't get off of the ground due to the biggest issue for anything anyone wants to make today: I need a budget. It doesn't help that I'm young with nothing on my belt, and my brain doesn't work with anything that doesn't have explosions and people beating the crap out of each other.

How do I successfully crowdfund at least a few ten thousand dollars for a fan film without already having any recognized talent backing the project?
 
how do you easily get tens of thousands of dollars to do something fun?

Let me know when you find out!
 
indietalk said:
http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/5/14181534/star-trek-fan-film-copyright-lawsuit-paramount
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I hadn’t seen this before, but it doesn’t surprise me at all. Who in their right mind would think that this would be acceptable? And how could they have gotten “real” actors to sign on to it? Star Trek is the one franchise that is 100% acceptable for people to make fan films of – Paramount are all for it. But a million dollar feature film, based on their IP? Something that actually competes with their own product? Why would they allow that?

I think Paramount’s guidelines (as can be found here http://www.startrek.com/fan-films) are more than fair. They, as does any copyright holder, are well within their rights to disallow any kind of fan film, so the fact that Paramount actually encourage it is great.

JaiseTIGTV – Most copyright holders aren’t as lenient as Paramount are with Star Trek. Sure, a short fan film that exists on YouTube and doesn’t garner too much press attention will be fine. A feature film, as you state you want to make, likely won’t be allowed. If you were to crowdfund the money, then your production gets shut down, then what? You’d pretty much have to give all that money back. Then, the fees that the crowdfunding platform had already taken would have to come out of your own pocket.

Actually, that makes me wonder... I’ll be very interested in seeing the final outcome of the Axanar case. If they crowdfunded a million dollars, and the platforms took 10%, that’s $100K they’re going to need to find from somewhere. Surely, it’s a bit immoral/unreasonable to offer refunds, minus 10%. Their Kickstarter had 4 backers pledge $10K each! Surely if this all goes to pot, nobody will ever trust these people with their money again?
 
mad_hatter said:
Surely if this all goes to pot, nobody will ever trust these people with their money again?
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Rarely do people donating to crowdfunding expect anything from their
donation other than the perks. They give because they are passionate
about the project or are friends of the filmmaker. It's typically about
support rather than trust with the money.

To answer the question: You successfully fund a fan film but offering
a project fans want to see - more specifically; a project fans will pay
to see made. Not having any recognized talent is a challenge. You need
to drum up fan support based on YOU. Convince fans of the property
that it is YOU who can bring a great film to them.

Get your script written in proper format, do some killer artwork (you're
a visionary director who thinks about the visuals first), post a link to your
short films, put together an accurate line-item budget and hit the fan
sites.
 
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