It’s always tough finding the money to film your movie, even
the 20,000 bucks you need to make that micro-budget feature. A lot of
filmmakers work crappy jobs, sell their bodies for medical experiments or beg
their friends and family members for money.
Now, thanks to the Internet, many filmmakers are using a
relatively new fundraising tool called “crowd-funding.” At sites such as Kickstarter.com
and IndieGoGo.com, filmmakers and other artists post pitches for their projects,
with a list of benefits that donors receive at various price or donation
points. For moviemakers, one critical element of their pitch page is a video
trailer.
Filmmakers can still ask their family and friends for money,
but with something like a Kickstarter page, they’re able to put a new spin on
an old sell. According to Chloe Collins, executive director of Birmingham’s
Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival, “Independent filmmakers have always used
their friends and family as a means to get some of their funding, and I think
this is a more organized, possibly more efficient way.”
According to Rebecca Pugh, Sidewalk development and
communication manager, filmmakers are using social media aggressively. “Just
watching my filmmaker friends [use] Twitter, it helps promote their film,” she
says. “It creates a little mini-buzz around the new projects.”
Collins and Pugh have become familiar with Kickstarter and
other crowd-funding methods due to the numerous Sidewalk alums who are using
them. Two of the alums are writer and director Paul Osborne, whose documentary Official
Rejection was shown at Sidewalk in 2009, and producer Ash Christian, who has
presented two films at the SHOUT Gay & Lesbian Film Festival.
Osborne is using Kickstarter to raise money to make the
suspense drama Favor. Christian just completed two successful Kickstarter
campaigns. One was for Continental, a documentary about the legendary Continental
Baths in New York, a legendary 1960s destination for gay men. He is making it with
director Malcolm Ingram. He is producing a feature, Nate & Margaret, with
actor, writer and director Nathan Adloff, who appeared in the award-winning
feature Blackmail Boys at SHOUT 2010. According to Christian, “Kickstarter was
a huge part of this movie [Nate & Margaret] being able to happen.”
Both Kickstarter vets say that you have a lot of work ahead
if you want the campaign to succeed. “I did a ton of research before launching
the campaign,” Osborne says. “It’s a humbling and sometimes emotionally brutal arts
culture experience. But in the end, you end up feeling really connected to the
social base that supports you and your team.”
According to Osborne, many people launch campaigns but don’t
follow through. “You have to be online pushing your project several times a
day. You have to be clever, find new ways of getting your message out there,
set mini-goals. You need to engage people with the evolving story of the
campaign.”
“It’s all about getting the word out and it seems to work when
you email people personally vs. mass
emails,” Christian says. Filmmakers using a crowd-funding site offer perks to
donors, and that requires some thought to properly frame the offer. “I sit down
with the director and figure out what we can offer that won’t cost us too much
that people will really enjoy,” Christian says.
Osborne says an effective strategy is to give people
recognition and access to movie- making. “Most people aren’t necessarily
motivated by the rewards themselves; they tend to just want to help the
project,” he says. “Rewards we found work best, at least at the lower levels,
are ones that pass on appreciation or recognition, like a special thanks credit
listed on IMDB. It’s something that allows the backers to become part of the
movie in some way. That’s a powerful thing.”
One other tip: Don’t depend solely on crowdfunding. Both
Christian and Osborne are seeking other, private investors. “The Kickstarter
money is maybe enough to get the movie shot, but we’ll need another good chunk
of change for post,” Osborne says, referring to Favor.
Collins, a veteran of fundraising efforts at Sidewalk, a
non-profit, is upbeat about crowd-funding’s effectiveness, but wonders if—like
all techniques for extracting money from people—it will fall out of favor. “I
think one reason this works is it still feels new,” she says. “People haven’t
yet been overwhelmed by those kinds of asks, and I think at some point, people
will just say ‘No, [not] that again.’ They’ll really have to be connected to
the project, or the filmmaker, I think, in a more meaningful way than the novelty
of, ‘Hey, give me $5 and get a high five from the producer,’ or whatever the
little benefit is.”
Whatever fundraising effort is in vogue, there will probably
be filmmakers like Osborne who find any
way possible to tell their stories—even a dark story like Favor, about a guy
who enlists an old friend to help him hide a body.
“I did worry it might be too dark—there are narrative turns in this thing that are big risks,” Osborne says. “But the good news about making something on such a tiny budget is you have the freedom to take those risks. And no one ever made anything great by playing it safe.”
Jesse Chambers is a contributing writer for The Birmingham Weekly and B-Metro magazine. Send your comments to jesse@bhamweekly.com or editor@bhamweekly.com .
Follow Paul Osborne at
twitter.com/paulmakesmovies. Learn more about Ash Christian at www.craniumentertainment.com .
Learn more about Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival, which is scheduled for
August 26-28, at www.sidewalkfest.com
.
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