[rant continues]
Ok, two more things.
Number one, this $2 million budget. It's a nice round number that is about the hollywood minimum that a small movie should cost to make. But has he really done a full line-item budget? If so, is $2 million really the number he got? When I look at crodfunding campaigns I expect to know where the money is going, should we not hold Mr. Braff to the same standards, just because he's famous? This is an exact quote, from the FAQ
Where does my money go?
Should we achieve our goal, all of your pledges will be collected and deposited into a bank account that my producers and I have set up for the sole purpose of funding the film.
In
anyone else's campaign this would raise a serious red flag for me.
Not only that, I would bet, given how ambitious the project is, that his line-item budget (assuming he has done his due diligence) came up significantly higher than $2 million, but $2 million
sounds about right to the average person and has been chosen, marketing wise, as a smart number to get people to donate in the first place. Given the success of Veronica Mars and given how fast he's raising money, he'll surely surpass that. Again, bully for him. But we deserve to know what that money actually is going to go for (not just "Hey guys, more money means a cooler movie!" I don't put up with that from indie filmmakers, so why should he be any different.)
Lastly, and most importantly IMHO, is a general gripe about this new trend in general. Kevin Smith did an AMA recently and he mentioned that he briefly consided crowdfunding Clerks III, and why he chose not to:
As for funding the flick - we nearly Kickstarted the budget back in November (talked about at great length here:
http://smodcast.com/episodes/giant-sized-annual-1-clerks-iii-audience-0/ ). But now I'm feeling like that's not fair to real indie filmmakers who need the help. Unlike back when I made CLERKS in '91, I've GOT access to money now - so I should use that money and not suck any loot out of the crowd-funding marketplace that might otherwise go to some first-timer who can really use it. So if I can get away with it, I'm gonna try to pay for CLERKS III myself. As much as I love the crowd-funding model (and almost did it myself in early 2009 with RedStateGreen.com), that's an advancement in indie film that belongs to the next generation of artists. I started on my own dime, and if I'm allowed, I should finish on my own dime.
I happen to agree with this. It's not so much that these folks shouldn't be allowed to do it. But what I foresee happening is too many people with resources (and this includes the big studios,) see this platform as a cash cow. A way to get the fans to pay for the product twice (to fund and to buy tickets/dvds, etc) at little to no risk for the producers. What happens when someone or some company can afford to put thousands of dollars and dozens of staffers into creating and promoting a campaign is that it drowns out the voices of those for whom this platform was created, aka the people who really need it. If you don't think that Harvey Weinstein has his best minds working on how to tap into crowdfunding then you're fooling yourself.
Remember when Sundance used to actually be for indie films? Now it's for indie films with multi-million-dollar budgets, huge names and with 'indie' studios behind them that are little more than thinly veiled fronts for WB, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, etc. So then folks created other fests for real low-budget indies (SXSW, Slamdance, the various big-city 'X International Film Festival'). And those got to usurped by the studios' pictures again. This is what I'm afraid is going to happen with crowdfunding. Unfortunately, though, I think we're all powerless to stop it.