Did crowdfunding work for you?

L

LDS

This is mainly question to those who did use it... Did you get funds for your film on any of the crowdfunding websites?

I am planning to make a full lengh of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh_leVyUzqM (<<this I filmed on my own) but would be nice to have funds as I would like to film it in Scotland, in a middle of nowhere... But I am shit with asking people for money, it makes me feel like a sad, poor bagger and I don't want to embarrass myself with funding £0 lol :rolleyes:
 
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If this is your first time trying to crowd fund, have a backup plan if you fail.

When a friend at work asked me if he should crowd fund and he said he would be a first-timer, I recommended that he gets a second job instead and bank the money from the second job to finance his film. That way, he will not end up owing the world money after the film is made.

I tried it and failed. I took out funds from my retirement funds to finance the film as my backup plan.
 
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I've been a part of films which have had great crowdfunding success, and other films which basically flopped on crowdfunding.

You really need to be aggressive with your crowdfunding strategies - simply putting it up, then hoping people will find it and give you money won't work. You need to essentially spam it all over social media, and have an engaging video for people to watch.

You also need to have some clear targets as to what the money will go towards, and also need to follow up with your rewards.
 
I'm actually in the process of crowd-funding an idea. We want to make a mini-web series but, that's easier said than done. We've been doing a tremendous amount of pre-planning (over a year) because we really need to legitimize ourselves and our idea first.

I can't say if our ideas will work, but we think we have a good chance if we're methodically aggressive about it. We don't want to spam it all over the place. We just want to build it within our niche audience, first, and then have it grow outward from there.

I would read as much as you can about Kickstarter techniques and marketing online and plan out every step of the way. Understand what you're product is and why you want to make that product. That last part is key because you don't want to come off as a beggar. Behind every successful campaign, there's a story you can tell about why you want to make a film and although it should be personal, it should largely mean something to others. In other words, you want to make your campaign about them and what they'll get out of it. You want to make this film not because it's good and you like making films but because it'll do _________for the audience.
 
LDS said:
But I am shit with asking people for money, it makes me feel like a sad, poor bagger and I don't want to embarrass myself with funding £0 lol :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Then I'd say crowdfunding isn't for you. It basically requires a ton of outreach - you'll need to be spending every day of your campaign begging anyone you can get in front of for money if you expect your campaign to be successful.

You'll also need to spend a lot of time before the campaign even starts building a potential audience/pool of contributors. Average contributions are typically in the $20-50 range, so for every $1000 you get you'll need 20-50 contributors. Figure to get 1 contribution you'll need to get your campaign in front of at least 100 potentially interested people, so that's 2-5,000 people per $1000 you hope to raise. So before you start you need to work out the size of the audience you need to reach and find those people - then get comfortable with begging those thousands of people for money every day for a month or more...
 
Consider any approach to (or avoidance of) crowd funding as a preview to the results of any future marketing of the end product.

No effort at crowdfunding will likely be mirrored in the same for marketing of the film.
Ineffective crowdfunding will likely be mirrored in ineffective marketing of the film.

So, what is the intention with the final feature length film?
Festivals?
 
rayw said:
Consider any approach to (or avoidance of) crowd funding as a preview to the results of any future marketing of the end product.

No effort at crowdfunding will likely be mirrored in the same for marketing of the film.
Ineffective crowdfunding will likely be mirrored in ineffective marketing of the film.

So, what is the intention with the final feature length film?
Festivals?
Click to expand...

I was thinking more like, you know... Golden Globes... Maybe an Oscar... Or two... :P :D:cool:
 
:) Appreciated.
Please, by all means, bring that comedy to the front of your lens. :yes:

No, seriously: What did you wanna do with the shot and edited final feature length film?
That's a lot of effort, probably more in time-value than what you'd reasonably raise in crowd funding.

At its simplest, figure for every final screen minute that it'll take an hour each for pre-pro, shooting, editing, video editing, and audio editing.

5 hrs/screen minute
X 90 - 110 minutes, final cut
= 450 - 550 hours of your time alone.

How many paychecks is that and what it's value?
 
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