Begging for money thoughts

What kind of movie are you doing anyway? I've seen litterally hundrends of short and even sometimes feature lenght films that cost almost nothing. I always ask them how they do it and most answers I get is , "you just got to be creative and use all the resources and connections you got". I myself had never had to do any fund raiser of any sort for a film. I'm working on a film soon and with no budget but I already have two cities intrested in helping out for free. Meaning, free locations, use of cops, streets, etc. It's also who you know too. And all this for free. Well, I had to cut some lawns and fix a congressman's computer but hey, I got the hook up!
 
You might also consider just "pre-selling" DVDs for $20 each. You'll be spending some evenings duping disks on your computer but at least your costs should be under $3 each and you can spread the duping labor over a couple of weeks.

You could also market $10 "World Premiere" tickets to everyone you know. There are quite a few public venues that you can get access to for free or close to it ranging from public rooms at libraries, community rooms at banks, recreation department rooms in parks, church halls and fraternal organization halls (I used to run a computer club back in the eighties and we met at all these places for free or close to it). Then you just need to line up a video projector. It's not that hard to do these days because business projectors have gotten cheap and the library can probably supply one with their meeting room. Alternatively a rich relative may have a nice unit that they'll let you (carefully) pick up and reinstall at their house (assuming you know what you're doing). Your screen will be a clean, well-stretched white sheet. Then you just need to pack up and lug the best stereo and speakers you can borrow from your immediate friends. If the venue allows snacks you can pre-make a ton of popcorn for next to nothing and bring it in big plastic bags.

However, the absolute best place (if you can find one) is a large locally owned pizza parlor. Many of these have private rooms for sports teams and kids birthdays. Assuming your crowd will order up some food, the room will be free and best of all they will probably have a video projector or big screen there (you'll need to bring a DVD player/cables and test it out in advance). Even if it's not a fund-raiser, such premieres are a really great for the cast and crew to share the film with all the family and friends.

Unfortunately, I don't have any other fund-raising advice because I did my project the hard way. I worked my day job like crazy and saved money for several years and just wrote the checks myself for everything (rental props, rental video equipment, locations and food mostly). My crew was all-volunteer and I was able to borrow a lot of gear from my fellow crew/friends (two lights here, a tripod there, a dolly from a co-worker, smoke machines from friends). That method takes a lot longer but the upside is that you have a lot of time to think over your script, storyboards, shot lists, and production schedule. Maybe I'm just not creative enough in the fund-raising dept. ;)
 
Thanks everybody for your ideas. I shot the film and now I'm in post. I did raise money - a little over $2000 from coworkers, friends, my employers (where most of it came from) and plus another $1000 from my parents. But of course, the shoot spun out of control and we went WAY over budget. Eesh. I learned a lot making this movie. A lot.

Back to the fundraising part of it, I basically sent the email I posted earlier to a lot of friends, family and coworkers. My family kicked in some, but most of the money came from my employers - who are doing very well for themselves financially. My friends didn't really help at all money wise. I guess the lesson I learned was talk to people who have money to spend. Seems obvious but those doing well financially were much more giving. One of the writers I work for gave me $500. Not bad.

I'll post some screengrabs in the screengrabs section soon so you can see where this money went.
 
we had a fundraiser for a feature film that we just started production on. We got a bar that I work at to let us hold it there. We charged $10 suggested donation at the door, which we kept, got all our friends bands to play for free (helped bring more people out), got some of our friends to dress up in slutty costumes to sell raffle tickets (we had some beer distributors give us stuff, it helped them promote too, like coors light gave us a snowboard, heineken a Karaoke machine, and a bunch of other ****), we had another friend dress up in slutty attire and sell jello shots (we kept all that money too). We promoted like crazy for a month in advance, sending out emails, flyers, all sorts of stuff. It worked out. The bar made crazy money in the register, and we raised a few grand between the door, jello shots, and raffle tickets. It was an awesome party and helped us out big time with the film. It was the best idea we ever had to raise money for a film, $10 from 400 people to get into a fun party is less stressful than money from realtives or other people that you know they'll never see again.
 
My friend and I had a two day showing at a local community college to get people interested and even drew out some that were willing to help out financially.
 
Hey Bill,

how's the project been treating you? glad to see you were able to raise SOME funding. anyway, mostly just saying hi because I notice you live very close to me (near Hollywood & Highland). Not really all that surprising given the nature of the board, but hey... interesting.

What's your background in film? Just jumping into it, or have you been working in the industry already?
 
I shot a Super16mm film for $5000. I paid every cent myself; didn't raise any money. I basically put it on credit cards and then worked two jobs over the next 4 months to pay it off. Sure it was a ***** but it was worth it. I learned so much making that movie it was awesome.

I also know someone who made a Super16mm short and she raised $26,000 (approximately) and did not pay any money out of her own pocket (not even credit cards). She also had a lot of people helping her (including one person dedicated strictly to fundraising). It took a very long time to raise all that money, but she did it. She had a professional website and had attached several SAG actors to the project. I'm curious to see how it does on the festival circuit (I have not seen it yet).

The point is, you can do anything you want but you have to be 100% committed to your film. You have to love it through and through and hit up every possible avenue for funding. Get attached to a non-profit organization (as was mentioned above) and get equipment and insurance grants. Work discounts with Kodak; apply for Panavision camera grants. Advertise local businesses on your website. Don't be vague about the story to potential donors, tell them everything about this film that's exciting. Also, when you send out proposals don't use words like "gonna" or any other kind of internet hybrid words. People want professionalism. Every step along the way counts.
 
Well, I just got out of High School recently and in the last semester I went around asking money from teachers "donate" money for my short film(cost way more than what I got from them). I eventually made a little over three-hundred dollars within like two or three weeks. And I also got one teacher to be my tape sponsor, which in the end saved me like 35$. So even though you probably do not go to high school you could probably go to a college and ask for donations or hell you might even be able to pass as a High Schooler and ask high school teachers :) Hope this helps.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top