How to crowdfund?

A

Andrew McCarrick

Carbonite Member
I've tried crowd funding in the past, and it's never worked for me. How does one go about getting the word out about the campaign? My connections on social networking sites max out at about 50 people. Posting on those sites seems to do absolutely nothing.
 
it's hard work. In the middle of one now and it is truly a full time gig -- more than that. I'm online nearly all of my waking hours -- posting written and video updates, writing to bloggers, emailing people with large social media followings, shooting and cutting behind the scenes pieces on casting and rehearsals and more, thanking our contributors and fostering the conversation happening around the movie.

and while I do have a substantial online following in the indie film community, that required three years of writing articles, traveling to festivals, meeting people, making friendships (all stuff i wanted to do anyway) to have the kind of advocates in place for this campaign to be successful. and truly, because of that, people are seemingly compelled to support me, not so much the movie I'm making.

I talk a little more about it in this thread. But like I said, i'm still in the middle of it and there are plenty more lessons to learn.

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?255490-DOWN-AND-DANGEROUS-a-film-by-SABI
 
I think Zak's post is a wakeup call to those people who think "social media marketing" is simply spamming your Facebook friends with a link every day.
 
Gary Huff said:
I think Zak's post is a wakeup call to those people who think "social media marketing" is simply spamming your Facebook friends with a link every day.
Click to expand...

At least it should be. I've donate to a few projects this year (Zak's included) but many have not gotten my $ because they're simply thrown up and shoved in my email and FB box every day from someone who hasn't done the kind of work that Zak and others have done to present a serious project that you can feel good getting behind.

-M
 
Hi! Zak posted on Twitter today about this thread and asked for some responses.

We're proud supporters of Zak and his Kickstarter campaign.

We're also in the middle of our own campaign which recently made the front page of indiewire (and that story has some take-aways that might help you.)

We agree with all of what Zak wrote above. For us, the crowd-funding campaign really began long before we thought of doing one...we started funding other Kickstarter campaigns we believed in and watching what they did right...and wrong. We've also been trying to contribute to the community for a while with our blog and tweets. Once we launched the campaign, we immediately started trying to give back even more to the community, including free Kickstarter graphics (which Zak is actually using in his Kickstarter campaign.)

In the end, we think the best way to "ask" is to give first. It's hard to walk in cold to a community and ask for support. Even if you take all of the advice in these blog posts, you still need to have real people to help get the campaign going.

Also, having a plan of attack is important. There's a curve to almost all Kickstarter campaigns: start fast, stall in the middle, build up big in the end.

Knowing this, we planned to hit everyone we knew hard during the first week, planned to reach out to new communities during the middle section, and to return to those we know while continuing hitting new communities during the last ten days of the campaign.

How's it working? We raised $20,000 in 48 hours, hit our goal of $37,000 in 5 days, and now, with 33 days to go, we're "stalled" at almost $47,000. We're in that "middle phase" where we need to be discovered by new communities. So the theory seems to be working as planned.

Another thing we tried is backer only content. Anyone who pledges at least $1 gets access to extra videos. Not sure how many people it converted, but it's certainly been a nice extra for those who are backers.

If there's one thing we learned, there's no sleeping, no resting, no taking it easy during the campaign. So get your five hour energy ready, and plan to provide as much value as you possibly can to others during your campaign.

Best,
Joke and Biagio
 
Joke and Biagio had one of the KS campaigns that I kept mentioning when talking about Crowdfunding. A serious success.

It's also an interesting approach that your team was also finished with the material, and, you're basically selling copies outright at this point.

I like this approach as well. How much do you think that affected your success?
 
Kholi,
We think it had a lot to do with the campaign's success so far. It actually comes back to how we broke into the business in the first place...we always said, "Why should anyone take a chance on us if we're not willing to take a chance on ourselves." Once we started editing in earnest, we thought about doing Kickstarter campaign, but we really believed in the film enough to finish it ourselves. We felt that saying to people, "We believed in this enough to make it, please prove us right by bringing it to a theater near you" was powerful. We weren't asking them to believe in us blindly -- we went, won some awards, collected real people testimonials, and and once we were invited to qualify for an Academy Award, decided we had enough "proof" to say, "Really, we honestly believe you'll be part of something special by pledging to this campaign." And since we could promise DVDs as one of the rewards, we hoped many people would jump on at the $50 or above level. So far, they have. Thanks for the follow up question, and for telling people to check out out, Kholi -- really means a lot!
 
Excellent response.

Everyone should definitely take a moment to look at what your team has done. If there's an example out there of how the playing field is changing, this is one of the prime.
 
Thanks so much for this thread guys. I have a project that has been burning in me for a couple years and is so dear to my heart, but is just a dream without the money to complete it. I am appreciative to those whom have done it and can glean some insight from. I love the fact that some of you as I call them "old timers" to dvxuser are always willing to share advice and experience such as Zak does. It means a lot to those of us that are willing to listen. I will be starting a campain soon and look forward to seeing how yours turns out. Once again thank You.
 
It's threads like this with great input from great people that really make DVXuser awesome!

I am seriously considering trying out a crowdfunding strategy for my next project.
This could seriously be a way to circumvent the pressure of investor courting!

Thanks for taking the time to share your experiences here folks, thou rocketh!
 
Stop me if this is a bad idea. I have a client who did a camera review and posted it to vimeo. I like it. You might like it. I want him to do another and I am seeing what his threshold is monetarily to do one. $300 - $500 hopefully. I was thinking about doing it on Kickstarter. Here is the review he did. http://vimeo.com/27228637
I think the world might pay for more. :)
 
We did a talk/panel on Crowdfunding and Big Concepts on Small Budgets at the Columbia Gorge International Film Festival this past weekend. Although the crowd was small, there was a lot of interest. We definitely got through to at least three people that attended, which was great.

We'll be doing more of them around at different festivals and such. For me, there's no longer much value in telling people how to make a movie: it's not that elusive anymore. Get a script, find a cheap DSLR, find someone to do audio... make a movie. Well, to a degree, anyway.

I'm more interested in talking about how the internet and digital has changed the landscape the most (more-so than gear), how to utilize that, and how to get your audience to green light your project.
 
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