Oh, Kickstarter...

Started a Kickstarter project a while ago to help finish a film of mine that is already half shot. I need to raise money because it takes place in an art gallery and I need to pay for the rental and also for the catering of my crew and production design.

It's tanking hard. Trying to figure out new ideas to get people to pledge. Any recommendations? I've been thinking of putting up a new reward to add a DVD of a director's cut and an invitation to the gallery at $20. :huh:

If anything, I just need to spread the word more.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/685817126/its-a-joke
 
I'm not sure whether you're being intentionally disingenuous (I elect to suppose not) but this really isn't tanking hard. Bear in mind that 90% of campaigns that reach 20% of their funding with a week to go, will go on to reach their goal. You're well on track for that so don't stress out too much.

Gallery invite might be interesting although it only has a local appeal. That might, however, be the easiest place for you to find funders, so that seems like a decent idea. I'm less keen on the Director's Cut DVD one because I don't think people are too interested in that sort of thing and it might come across as a little vain.

I've said it a number of times but rewards are not particularly important to film crowd-funding campaigns. What you need to work on is a.) building an audience, b.) getting your contribution-per-funder higher and c.) making sure that other people, in addition to you, are talking about, and engaging with, your project.

Best of luck! I've been there recently and it'll be a pretty exhilarating week :)
 
Thanks Nick, that is reassuring. I myself didn't really like the idea of a director's cut, but it was suggested to me by my actor, so I thought I'd at least mention the idea to a few people and see how they react.

One thing that makes me nervous about it not working is most of the people who have pledged are my family. There is one single person who pledged who found my film through the Staff Picks, but otherwise it has been word of mouth through my family tree. As grateful as I am to have this beautiful support from them, it also makes me wonder... where is everyone?

I have been very proactive about spreading the word and getting my friends to spread the word as well, trying to get them to understand that (those working on it) it's as much as their film as it is mine.
 
With my campaign, most of the significant money was raised through family and friends of family. I imagine that most campaigns have a similar story. Of the $7,620 we raised, I'd say that, at the very least, $4000 came from my family and people associated with them (and me).

That said, because we got the word out on Twitter and Facebook, blogs, forums...etc, and made ourselves easy to contact for anyone interested in the project we did get people turning up and contributing. I started email correspondence with one guy who, ultimately, ended up giving $2,000 to the campaign. Others from Twitter gave a bunch of money, because I was always talking about the project and making sure that people knew what was going on and that we were serious about making the movie.

I made this crowdfunding report which might be interesting/helpful for you to read.
 
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