Bringing ’90s fundraising skills to a Kickstarter campaign
A guest post from director Leslie Harris. I asked Leslie to participate in this series because to me she represents what the older generation of film directors is facing. The way things are being done now is VERY different to the early and mid ’90s when film financing and large distribution deals were plentiful. A time when her Sundance winning film had a full and celebrated release on the Miramax label. New developments like social media, digital self distribution, and the idea that a creator has to gather an audience and build a personal brand have left some of the older generation shaking their heads. Leslie is diving right in and running a Kickstarter campaign for a new film and I applaud her willingness to experiment and adapt her previous experience to this new world of film finance and distribution.
Even though I have made a feature film before, the Sundance Special Jury Prize winner Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. released by Miramax in 1993, no matter how many films you have made, most filmmakers will tell you making another feature is like starting over from scratch.
When my film was released in the 90’s, it was a boom for independent film financing and distribution and somewhat a Renaissance for the indie African-American filmmakers too. Unfortunately, the boom was mainly for the young, hot, male directors not women. Black women both in front of and behind the camera, well… we were practically non-existent except for a few of us.
Fast forward to today, sure there are more Black actresses working, but not in all genres and the recent controversy about the lack of Black Women on Saturday Night Live exemplifies what we’re facing. The numbers are even more embarrassingly low for Black women behind the camera. There’s a lot of work to do to make a change and that’s why I came to crowdfunding. I think crowdfunding works best for filmmakers who have been ignored by traditional film financing sources and have something passionate to say. Projects that artists can take straight to the audience and encourage their support rather than to studios and investors purely looking at the bottom line. My new film, I Love Cinema, is a satirical comedy about sex, race and politics in a ‘so-called’ post-racial world. The story is about Professor Layla Laneaux, sophisticated, educated and African-American. Layla is obsessed with cinema both in the classroom and the bedroom, but the Professor’s film fantasy world is shattered by racial controversy and a media circus all seemingly out to get her.
The same skills that I learned in the go-go 90’s of indie film are still useful to me today. My experience applying and receiving grants from National Endowment for the Arts, American Film Institute and New York State Council on the Arts is helpful because I had to convince people in a concise way that my story is viable and worth funding. Back then, I put together a reel and wrote the grant application. I also approached people like filmmaker Michael Moore and author Terry McMillan, who both supported Just Another Girl on the I.R.T with a check. Now my reel is a pitch video and my written application is the text on my Kickstarter page. In a way, I have already run a sort of Kickstarter, but now I need to reach many more people about my film idea and need to use all of the new tools available to me.
Social media and the internet are basically the heart of a crowdfunding effort…Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. I have learned the value of having a great team of people to help with social media, though I found my team mid-way through my campaign…a mistake! You’ll make mistakes, but doing crowdfunding is relatively new so it is a learning process. I was so happy to find committed young people, especially women, who were internet savvy and happy to volunteer. Search around, it may take a bit of time to find the right person, but there is someone out there to help. My interns are learning new skills that will help them in their careers in film because I think crowdfunding sites for moviemakers is the wave of the future for financing. I couldn’t do this campaign alone. I have learned having your film on a crowdfunding site is similar to making a really small indie film…you have to have a team.
And ya gotta be passionate and tenacious because crowdfunding is a lot of work! I’ve gotten very little sleep, about four hours a night. But my sleep deprivation didn’t just occur during the 30-Days while my project has been live. I’ve been preparing for this campaign for months prior to the launch. First, I did my research about crowdfunding wherever I could find information from blogs, advice from other filmmakers who have done crowdfunding and even You Tube videos to see what worked and what didn’t. I didn’t want to copy what someone else was doing because, in my opinion, every project is unique and your video has to reflect your particular film. I looked at production techniques and editing transitions. For example, it’s effective to use dissolves for this format if you have a one camera set up when one person is talking directly to the potential backers. If you’re not experienced in front of the camera, and most filmmakers aren’t…it’s going to be hard not to flub a line and I flubbed a lot of ‘em! Remember, there are limitations. You can’t use copyrighted material or music in your video unless it is cleared and you have to have permission to use it. So be really creative. Keep your video short 2-3 minutes unless the subject and tone calls for something longer. For example a documentary fundraising video might be 5 minutes or longer because you have a lot of material and it may take a bit longer for the story to unfold with a doc.
Let’s be honest reaching your goal is tough. My advice is to be ultra conservative in determining your goal. Mine is set for $35,000. The style and tone of your pitch video also depends on whether you’re asking for funds in pre-production, production or post. Are you trying to get something new off of the ground or something almost finished into the world?
Remember you have to offer perks and that means you have to produce them and deliver them in a timely manner (don’t forget postage costs!) and make your backers happy. Offer great rewards that are really interesting and valuable, but don’t cost much to produce. For example, I am offering a Production Journal as one of my rewards that will detail my experiences on set during production. It is something I would probably be writing anyway. How much will it cost you to make a T-Shirt? How many do you plan to sell? How much is shipping to India? I had to use my 9th Grade math skills a lot while deciding what rewards I would offer.
Yes, raising funds this way is a tremendous amount of work. While I’ve launched, there is still a lot more to do during the campaign. Update! Update and Update! I keep my page current with photos, links, video and press…Indiewire’s Shadow and Act did a great piece on our film. This experience for me has been exciting. It’s new. Implementing the social media, creating a video that is spread around the world is very cool! I’m a storyteller. The crowd-funding process is all about telling a story. Ask yourself…why does my film deserve funding? Put yourself in the role of a backer.
Who knows if I’m going to make my goal…so take what I have written with a grain of salt, it’s just one experience. For me, it’s been rewarding already. I’ve reconnected with many friends and colleagues. Actress, Jennifer Williams, and my production team have been wonderful in making the video. I couldn’t have done this without my Editor, Jack Haigis. My producer, Erwin Wilson has been at my side all the way. Great people who supported the project… and that’s gold! I’ve met and worked with great women who are savvy in social media. I know I am doing my best. I can always sleep after December 8th the last day of my campaign. So wish me luck and stop by my Kickstarter page. I could really use your support!
Sheri Candler November 29th, 2013
Posted In: crowdfunding, Uncategorized
Tags: African American, crowdfunding, Erwin Wilson, film director, filmmaker, I Love Cinema, independent film, Jack Haigis, Jennifer Williams, Just Another Girl on the I.R.T., Leslie Harris, Miramax, Shadow and Act, Sundance
3 lessons in crowdfunding the UK short film Patient 39
A guest post from Lizzie Crouch. Back in December 2012, Writer/Director Dan Clifton sat down with producer Roland Holmes and co-producer Lizzie Crouch to talk about how they might approach a crowdfunding campaign for Dan’s short film, Patient 39. In this article, Lizzie explores the lessons learned from their ultimately successful campaign, raising over $8000 for the film on Indiegogo. Also included are excerpts from the diary Dan kept while fundraising.
Lesson #1 It’s not just about the campaign; it’s about the community
From Dan’s diary:
The first thing is to discuss what to do with the short fundraising appeal film I’ve made… My appeal is under 2 mins and involves me dressing in pyjamas and making a slight fool of myself (a good thing, apparently), although hopefully the tone is appropriately sincere. Thankfully my producers like it.
There’s lot of great advice online about how to build a good crowd funding campaign. Don’t underestimate how long it takes to do thorough research, but don’t be overwhelmed by it either. There is no set way of doing the perfect crowd-funding campaign, each one is unique, so the real trick is working out what’s right for you.
The most important thing is to figure out the target audience for your campaign. For the Patient 39 Indiegogo campaign we identified a number of audiences who might be interested in supporting us, but given the film’s scientific themes, it was a group we called ‘science-y culture-vultures’ – those interested in the crossover between science and art – that we thought had most untapped potential.
Still from Patient 39
Despite this, we knew that other groups would play a part and ultimately become the film’s audience, so we were careful to include a broad range of content about the film to build a larger online community. The content at the heart of the campaign was aimed at short film fans and science culture-vultures, but careful curation of online content allowed a diverse range of audiences to engage with us.
Lesson #2 Building an online community is committing to a long-term relationship
From Dan’s diary:
The evidence from successful campaigns suggests that what people value above all is not material goodies, but a chance to feel involved as part of the team. After much debate we came up with a list of perks that range from Exec Producer credits at the top of the range, to visits to the set and crew T shirts for more modest-level investors.
As Dan identified in his diary, building a community is about making people feel like they are a part of something – and different audiences will respond to different things. Those who want to donate to the campaign may like thoughtful perks while others may simply want to engage with diverse, inspiring content related to the film or to filmmaking.
In recognition of this we set up a website and social media channels to disseminate articles, carefully balancing new content with our call for donations. Spanning science articles on consciousness and the history of medicine, we built our community around themes that would appeal to them; connected with online ‘influencers’ and key contacts; and kept our campaign fresh by updating the video and making announcements about team members that joined us.
But building an online community is like committing to a long-term relationship. Although most people understand who they’re trying to connect with, many don’t realize the amount of work that goes into maintaining it. Never assume a campaign will run itself – sometimes when we weren’t quite as on top of things are we could have been, we saw the consequences.
From Dan’s diary:
What I am learning is that you definitely have to feed the beast. What I mean by that is even though it seems foolish in some ways, like shouting without hearing an echo back, all the content and tweeting etc. does make a difference in reaching potential supporters. I’ve been away for five days on a shoot and consequently not able to be as proactive as I’d have liked, and sure enough we’ve had a noticeable lull in donations.
All this can be hard work, but a well-built community will reward you at every step of the filmmaking process. Don’t assume though that because you’ve finished the film, the community ceases to be – we are still communicating with ours as we build up to an online release in the future!
Lesson #3 Getting to know your community is humbling (and anxiety-inducing)
When you build an online community, you get to know your audience in a whole new way; you learn their names, where they’re from, etc. This is useful not only when it comes to later stages (marketing and distribution), but also for future projects. But it is also a responsibility that you have to carry on your shoulders!
From Dan’s diary:
Four days to go and we have reached our target, a $500 donation late last night lifting us over the line! I feel amazed and humbled by the whole experience. To feel people’s generosity and support in such an immediate way is something I hadn’t expected, but it is wonderful although I feel a great sense of responsibility too. In the last few days we’ve managed to reach out to funders beyond our immediate circle of family and friends, and it’s great to think that our efforts to widen our base of supporter and followers has had some measure of success.
I believe that our campaign was successful to due the hard work of the team to build and maintain an engaged online community, and we are very grateful for the support we received during our campaign.
To find out more about Patient 39 please visit our website, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter @Patient39film.
Sheri Candler November 27th, 2013
Posted In: crowdfunding, SHORT FILMS
Tags: crowdfunding, Dan Clifton, fundraising, independent film, indiegogo, Lizzie Crouch, Patient 39, Roland Holmes, short film, The Film Collaborative
Crowdfunding in Canada
A guest post from Richard Bishop of Empty Cup Media based in Oshawa, Ontario. Crowdfunding via Kickstarter has only been available in Canada since September 9, 2013. I asked Richard to share what his team learned in being one of the first projects on the platform and some of his comments on their success seem to defy conventional advice. Further proof that there is NO blueprint for success.
As a small company foraying into the independent film making industry for the first time, we based part of our film fundraising strategy around running a successful crowdfunding campaign. We first heard about the idea while attending a few Hot Docs workshops over the past two years. After committing to the idea, we did our due diligence – reading books, articles and blogs about other projects’ successes and failures- and we opted to go with Kickstarter as our platform as it had launched in Canada only a month earlier. We thought it would be possible to cash in on some of the general media press surrounding their launch.
When we launched the campaign, we had already completed the production of Heal Myself and we planned on using the crowdfunding money to cover post-production costs. We set a fundraising target of $25,000. We knew that this was a large number and success would require dedication and hard work. Throughout the production of the film, we had continually built an e-mail contact list for all participants as well as developed a solid social media following on Facebook. In our minds, we initially looked at it as a mathematical equation – with connections to over 2,500 people we only needed each of them to donate $10 and we’d be done! Well, we quickly found out that this notion was unrealistic.
We launched the campaign on Oct. 4th and watched the film become 20% funded in the first few days, then the initial flare burned out and stagnation set in. Every day a few people would donate, slowly driving us closer to the goal, but it wasn’t enough to drive us up the popularity matrix on the Kickstarter website. By Oct 30th, 4 days before our campaign ended we had climbed to 62% funded, crunch time set in. It was on that day that things started to accelerate and by the end of the campaign we had reached 106% funded. It was time to celebrate with all those who helped us!
There have been a lot of good posts on this blog already about how to build a campaign to maximize your chances at success, but we thought we’d share some of the things that we learned throughout the process (along with some numerical breakdowns) in hopes that it will help some of our Canadian friends who may be new to the concept of crowdfunding.
Here’s what we learned based on our backer reports and analytics:
-80%+ of our pledges came from people who had direct access to the film either by knowing us personally, liking Heal Myself on Facebook, being on our e-mail list etc;
-Posting update videos on Kickstarter and social media outlets is useful, but time consuming. A more effective use of our time was creating posters, such as these for the same purpose;
-Being featured on the Kickstarter documentary homepage isn’t as helpful as one might think. It did increase traffic and Kickstarter video plays (about a 15% increase), but it didn’t generate much in the way of pledges from people who were not connected to the project in any way (less than 1% of funding);
-Our two most successful award tiers were $100 and $200. The reason for this, we believe, is the rewards we offered at these levels were the most engaging for fans of the film. $100 tier included the special features DVD and $200 tier included the special features DVD and a pair of tickets to a private screening. Backers of our project really gravitated to the idea that they could be part of a physical event – we gave away over 88 tickets in this manner!
-Broad spectrum advertising or marketing had very limited success. We had advertisements on a variety of websites (through our personal connections), went on TV and a radio show, but none of these things brought in significant monetary pledges (less than 5% of our goal).
-Niche marketing was highly successful – we posted online on a variety of blogs and websites that were directly related to the subject matter of our film. Theses avenues brought in a fair amount of pledges (more than 15% of our goal).
-There is no substitute for hard work. We were using social media and e-mail all day every day to contact our personal connections. It was these people who spread the word to their contacts, creating a web of support that reached more people than we could have alone. Relying on your friends and family for help is crucial for projects of the size we undertook.
Although running a successful campaign is great in financial terms, after all you now can go ahead with the next stage of your film project. But the community you’ve built around your film is equally important. We are now in the process of thanking the great people who’ve funded our film and shown interest in our project. We believe that they will be our greatest assets when creating a grassroots campaign of screenings and events once Heal Myself is completed. Finding ways to demonstrate our gratitude and keeping these people informed as the project develops is an ongoing process, something we are continuing to experiment with and learn about. We are open to hearing any suggestions about how to keep our backers engaged going forward. If you have suggestions, please email (info @ emptycupmedia.ca) us.
Best of luck with future campaigns, we hope that some of our experiences can be put to good use!
A quick note to Canadians who are using crowdfunding:
As of early October 2013, the Canadian Government has ruled that all money received through crowdfunding is counted as business revenue. This is the case even if you are an individual raising money for a film without any company ties. This is a big deal as it really alters the amount of money you will receive in the end from your campaign as well as create some more paperwork in order to correctly deal with the tax implications.
The money the crowdfunding source takes as their cut is deductable as business expenses. Also the money that you use to fulfill rewards is deductable. I am not fully sure of all the tax implications and I am sure that this will be an evolving issue as time goes on. These tax rules will certainly inflate the initial fundraising goals for projects making successful projects that much harder to run – especially if you are private sector and don’t have non-profit ties so that you can offer tax receipts for donations!
Empty Cup Media is a video/photo company serving clients in and around the Greater Toronto Area. You may follow the progress of Heal Myself by connecting on Twitter, Facebook or joining their email list.
Sheri Candler November 26th, 2013
Posted In: crowdfunding
Tags: Canada, crowdfunding, documentary, Empty Cup Media, Heal Myself, Hot Docs, independent film, Kickstarter, niche marketing, Richard Bishop, Sheri Candler, The Film Collaborative
Crowdfunding: Asking the Hard Questions
Today’s guest post is from Seed&Spark’s CMO, Erica Anderson. Seed and Spark is selective crowdfunding platform. Before Seed&Spark will approve a project for the platform, all components for a successful campaign need to be assembled: a strong team; the seed of a great film; and a compelling purpose behind your proposed film.
One of the hardest things to remember when you’re thinking about taking a film from idea to execution is that raising money is not, in fact, the hardest part of filmmaking, though it may be the most uncomfortable. The most difficult task is getting anyone to see it when it’s finished. It’s not only difficult, it can be really expensive. Studios spend 1-10x production budgets on marketing. Indie filmmakers don’t stand a chance in that environment (although, marketing should ALWAYS factor into your budgets). Enter crowdfunding: a way to raise money while marketing your film.
In this light, Seed&Spark would like filmmakers to start viewing crowdfunding not as a necessary evil (or a mark of a film that simply can’t get financing otherwise), but as a key tool to engage their audiences in the filmmaking process and to grow a devoted fan base. The fact that you also get to raise a chunk of change is important, but it’s the short game. (A devoted fan base will make raising equity So. Much. Easier.) The long game is your career and making sure there are people who want to pay to watch your films for as long as you can make them. That means building in to your preproduction an audience-engagement campaign. Every film is different, and there are as many ways to engage your audience as there are filmmakers. That said, we have identified some guidelines and critical questions every filmmaker should consider if they want to crowdfund (With us, and with anyone else.).
Crowdfunding is not an exact science or a paint by numbers affair, but the wheel does not need to be invented with every campaign. Lists are really helpful. Below is a list of criteria that we look for in project submissions that would like to crowdfund with Seed&Spark. These “guidelines” are largely based on the potential for a filmmaker and project to foster a supportive and engaged audience. We work with all our filmmakers to make sure they’re maximally set up for success – a tactic that has led to a 70% crowdfunding success rate (compared to less than 40% on other platforms).
Pitch video:Your pitch video should either make us fall in love with you or give us a great sense of what the finished film will be like. The best pitch videos will do both. Because this is a campaign for a film, the video has to be great and should exemplify your filmmaking abilities and techniques. Remember, people will invest in you andyour storytelling talent, rather than in a “concept.” You have to demonstrate you’re a good editor: people stop watching pitch videos at 90 seconds.
Story: The story of your project is why YOU need to make THIS film NOW. Film and filmmakers are naturally suited to building their audience using Who are YOU? What is THIS project? And WHY does it need to be made? Give me an arc! Give me Drama! Make me care as much as you do! We ask you to tell us about this project. It should be personal. What are you offering to the community such that they should want to get involved with you?
Audience: The easiest way to start telling this story is to think: who is the actual audience for this film? Where do they hang out online? (So I know where to share the campaign?) What speaks to them? If you’re saying to yourself “Well, it’s men between the ages of 18-25,” you’re doing it wrong. Do you have a sense of who your audience really is? What kinds of music, events, things do they like? This is important not just for your pitch video, but also building your wishlist and incentives. They need to be personal and interesting to your crowd.
Team: The scope and budget of the film can be aspirational, but should match your experience, abilities, and stage in the process. If you’re raising $500,000 for a big period drama, you and your team should reflect that capacity. (Also, don’t run a crowdfunding campaign by yourself. Just don’t do that to yourself.)
Outreach: Take a look at your current social media and personal reach. If 6% of those people give $20 bucks, do you reach your goal? No? Then you have to formulate a plan to reach beyond that circle. Regardless of where you are in the filmmaking process, are you already engaging with your potential audience? Examine what gets people excited when you post. Do more of that. Do you have a social media presence on as many outlets as possible? Have you organized your contact lists on email, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr, Reddit etc? Or do you know your audience spends most of their time on just one of these platforms? Focus your efforts on what works, and don’t waste time on what doesn’t. That means you’ll have to run some tests along the way.
A plan for success: Have you thought through how to successfully complete your project and get it to an audience? Your distribution plan could range from “We’re planning to apply to top festivals and get picked up by Magnolia Pictures” to “We’re going to pursue direct-to-audience distribution as soon as the project is complete.” Frankly, since option #1 happens for 0.01% of films, you should probably have a really comprehensive, thoughtful backup distribution plan that involves just as much work as the crowdfunding campaign. Don’t assume you can jump right in to your next project after this one premieres at festivals. 99.9% of the time, you are also responsible for getting that film to market. That is also a plan for success.
Time: Do you have time to run a campaign? Contrary to popular belief, if you just build it, they will NOT come, no matter what platform you use to crowdfund. You will have to capture your audience and then keep engaging them – long after the campaign and film are finished. A crowdfunding campaign should be thought of as time added on to pre- or post- production, not as something that can be run in tandem. In order to maximize the utility of crowdfunding, you’ll want to build in time once or twice a week for your entire career to engage with the folks who have chosen to support you.
While this list is not exhaustive (though possibly exhausting for some), it’s a very good start. These are questions I pose to every filmmaker who is interested in our platform. Submitting a campaign is a process and we don’t expect all of these criteria to be met before accepting a project. However, we find these criteria and questions essential not just to successful campaigns, but successful filmmaking. As our inspiring CEO and my dear friend Emily Best said so eloquently, “Great crowdfunding is the efficient frontier between belief in your idea and the desperation to get it made. If you’re willing to put in the work to make a campaign successful, you’re on your way to a lifetime of truly independent moviemaking.”
Sheri Candler November 25th, 2013
Posted In: crowdfunding
Tags: audience building, crowdfunding, Emily Best, Erica Anderson, fundraising, guidelines, independent film, Seed&Spark, Sheri Candler, The Film Collaborative
From Kickstarter to Indiegogo–a tale of two different campaigns
Today’s guest blogger, Jan Selby, is in the midst of running her second crowdfunding campaign. Taking the lessons she learned from prior fundraising on Kickstarter, she is using Indiegogo this time. Find out why the switch?
Crowdfunding is not for the faint of heart. It requires months of planning, hard work, and follow-up. It’s worth it if you are prepared and motivated. I’ve launched two campaigns for feature-length documentary films and found them to be powerful strategic tools to help build a community and raise money.
Sheri asked me to summarize what I’ve learned through one successful Kickstarter campaign and a second Indiegogo campaign (currently in progress). I’ve tried to pack as much as I could in this post to share what I’ve learned. I’m not an expert, but I hope my experiences will be helpful to you as you embark on your own crowd-funding journey.
My first bit of advice is to create a team who will work with you for 6 months – 3 months before you launch, then during and after your campaign. I’m a detail-oriented planner by nature. If you’re not, find someone who is and make him/her part of your team. It’s important to avoid launching your campaign until you are fully prepared. Do all you can to be ready before you launch because you’ll be incredibly busy during your campaign.
How long should your campaign be? Most campaigns do best in the first and last week. As one friend told me, “The longer your campaign, the longer your time of suffering in the middle!” I like having a week or so to spread the word about the campaign before the 30-day countdown begins. I also plan to use the first few days to work out the kinks that are inevitable, no matter how hard you planned ahead.
Campaign 1: Kickstarter
My first campaign raised $21,112 to complete my first feature documentary, 9 Pieces of Peace (working title). You can check out the campaign home page at the URL www.9piecesfilm.com/fund. Notice this URL is not the one we were assigned by Kickstarter. Create your own URL that is easy to remember and that you can use after your campaign ends. Research how to redirect your new URL to the Kickstarter URL and then you can choose what to do with it after the campaign ends. I’ve kept it directed to our Kickstarter page, but you could also redirect it to a “Donate” page on your film website.
There are three core elements of a crowdfunding campaign home page. Before you launch, you will need:
1. A pitch video/film trailer
Having both a pitch and film trailer is important if you can swing it. It’s great if the production quality can reflect your capabilities and your vision for the film, but don’t obsess over it if it can’t. Be creative and speak from the heart. Mine weren’t as good as the film will be, but they worked. Consider combining them as I ended up doing in my second campaign.
2. Well-designed rewards
Take the time to research what others have done. Carefully calculate the direct and indirect costs to deliver each reward (including the fees you will pay to the platform and the credit card processor), including shipping and your time. Add 3 to 6 months to when you think you can deliver the reward because everything takes longer than you expect. You can’t change the reward description once someone has given at that level, so be sure to add all the details. Leave room to add new levels. Be thoughtful about the language you use and be consistent. For our Kickstarter campaign, we chose to use the words “backer” and “supporter” plus “rewards” and “pledges”. (For my second campaign on Indiegogo, we are using “donors” and “perks,” but it’s a very different film and campaign.)
3. Well-written text.
Write text that tells your story, builds trust, and motivates the reader to want to be part of the community that makes your film happen. Use subheads to break up the text and add images/graphics to make it more interesting. Remember that MANY people have no idea about how crowdfunding works, so write text for an audience that doesn’t understand it. You can change the text of your page during the campaign, but not once it’s over, so be sure you are happy with the way it looks at the end of your campaign.
Once you have your home page content defined, you might think you are ready to launch. Not yet. Here’s a partial list of what I recommend you and your team do before you launch your campaign.
Network Build up your community of followers on all your social media channels (if you don’t have them, get them), build an email list, network with organizations whose members would want your film to be made, and create a media list to use during the campaign. Meet with anyone who might be interested before and during the campaign.
Develop content and plan promotions Develop your page content, design an e-blast/e-newsletter template, design and print postcards, design a flyer that you and others can post, define your social media messaging calendar and graphics/clips/quotes/images (we used Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+), create a graphic that tracks your fundraising progress and plan to use it to update your Facebook cover image daily, define your online advertising campaign strategy (we created and analyzed Facebook and Google ads), define thank-you surprises for supporter updates, and define incentives that you’ll use to entice prospective supporters (our Kickstarter page highlights the last one we did at the top of it).
Get lots of sleep.
Once you launch your campaign, your priority will be communication. Kickstarter (and other platforms) are designed for social media users. Yet, to maximize your chances of success, you need to reach beyond these boundaries.
I sent private Facebook messages to hundreds of people and this worked incredibly well. I also sent hundreds of email messages out to friends who don’t use Facebook and had never heard of Kickstarter. Each message briefly explained the campaign, the status of it, and a request to either contribute or spread the word. Our team distributed thousands of postcards that directed people to our Kickstarter page and emphasized the purpose of the film and the “all or nothing” aspect of the campaign to create a sense of urgency (which was real!). I set up coffee/lunch/drink meetings with friends, turning them into evangelists and sending them off with stacks of postcards.
Remember to continually thank your growing list of supporters! Most platforms make it easy to send out updates. Your supporters want to hear from you. They are also your best advocates. They are invested in your campaign in more ways than one. If you can keep them energized, they will continue to share it.
Communication is time consuming, whether it is online, by phone, or in person. Your team can help in many ways. Together, your goal is to expand your reach as far as possible to people who will care about your project. You never know where your money will come from. Sure, there will be low hanging fruit, but I was shocked when my largest contribution came in on THE LAST DAY from someone whom I hadn’t seen for a year, but who had been following the campaign the whole time, unbeknownst to me.
Overall, our Kickstarter 9 Pieces of Peace campaign was a resounding success, but I must admit, it was very stressful. It was hard for me to sleep or relax for the entire 39 days (and 936 hours). I kept thinking: How would I forgive myself if I didn’t reach my goal because I hadn’t worked hard enough? (Yes. Very type A. Can’t help it. Born that way.) Was I happy with the results? Definitely! The moment I saw online that I had reached my goal, I unexpectedly burst out crying. I think it was a combination of the joy of reaching my goal and the relief that it was over. It’s important to be honest with yourself about if you and your team are up to the challenge.
Campaign 2: Indiegogo
When it was time to launch my second crowdfunding campaign for a documentary film about the transformative power of Montessori education, Building the Pink Tower (working title), I wanted to try a different approach. To be perfectly honest, I was still burned out on the stress of an all or nothing Kickstarter campaign a year later and didn’t know if I wanted to take on that level of intensity again. But my co-producer/co-director, Vina Kay, and I chose Indiegogo because we felt it was a better match for our film.
If you conduct more than one crowd funding campaign, you may be able to build upon the community of supporters you establish with each one. For me, there wasn’t much overlap between the two audiences (except for a few family and friends).
It’s important to think about niche audiences for your film and use this information to create a strategy for your campaign. For this crowd funding campaign, we have the opportunity to tap into an existing group of supporters. There is an established Montessori network – people who love it because they have had a direct experience with it either as a student, parent, or teacher. Vina and I spent the last two years learning about and connecting with this Montessori infrastructure in the U.S. and beyond. Our fundraising trailer had been viewed more than 15,000 times on You Tube, and a short video we created that reflected the vision for our film had been viewed more than 50,000 times.
Our current goal of $50,000 is high, but we feel we have the potential to reach it with the support of this passionate Montessori community. We had secured challenge grants of $20,000 as an added incentive to help us reach our goal. Most importantly, although we are optimistic, we want to be able to keep the money raised if we fall short of our goal. For these reasons, we felt Indiegogo was the best platform for this campaign.
In addition to what we did for our Kickstarter campaign, here’s a list of a few more tricks we are trying on this campaign:
-We created fewer “perk” levels and designed them to minimize our expenses; we combined our pitch and trailer into one video; we created a digital image that “donors” could use as their Facebook profile photo; we created photo/quote graphics that are popular reposts on Facebook; and we have paid to “boost” posts on Facebook with strong results.
-In addition, we have created opportunities to have our campaign mentioned in Montessori media, at national conferences, and in school newsletters.
-We are also grateful to be working with a public relations expert who is donating her time to help us explore how we can attract the attention of the local and national media.
One last topic that is important to consider for any crowd funding campaign is whether a donation is tax-deductible. Both of my films have a fiscal sponsor (IFP MN). This allows donations made through the fiscal sponsor to be tax deductible. This means that when a donation is made through Kickstarter or Indiegogo, it isn’t tax-deductible. Many people won’t care about this, but a few do. We have handled this by having a brief mention on our Indiegogo home page with a link to our fiscal sponsor donation page. Donations made through this page do not count toward our Indiegogo goal. I have since learned that there is at least one fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas, who has a relationship with two platforms (Indiegogo and RocketHub) that will allow donations to be tax-deductible. It would be worth looking into whether you can gain fiscal sponsorship. [ed. It can take time to qualify, so do this long before you launch a campaign].
Our Building the Pink Tower Indiegogo campaign ends on December 18th. To follow our progress, visit www.donatepinktower.org. If you know anyone who has been touched by Montessori education, please share our campaign with him or her. We are committed to making a film that will change the national education debate. (Thank you!).
I wish you the best of luck in your crowd funding endeavors. I hope sharing what I’ve learned so far will contribute to your future success!
Jan Selby is a multiple regional EMMY© award-winning producer, director, and founder of Quiet Island Films, a full-service video production company with national clients. After 25 years in corporate marketing, Jan followed her heart to become a filmmaker and video producer/director. Follow Building the Pink Tower on Facebook, Twitter and add them to your circle on G+
Sheri Candler November 21st, 2013
Posted In: crowdfunding
Tags: 9 Pieces of Peace, Building the Pink Tower, campaign text, crowdfunding, Facebook, fiscal sponsorship, Google Plus, indiegogo, Jan Selby, Kickstarter, Montessori, network, perks, Pinterest, Pitch video, promotion plan, rewards, Twitter, Vina Kay, YouTube
Crowdfunding for the second time
We continue to look at filmmakers who successfully have run more than one crowdfunding campaign in order to learn how success builds on itself. This guest post from UK based filmmaker Christopher Bevan of YSP Media talks about the importance of setting a reasonable funding goal and communicating regularly with your donors.
As an independent filmmaker, I was very keen at looking into crowdfunding as a viable option to get our next project off the ground. I’d first heard about the idea of doing this at Chris Jones’ Guerilla Filmmaker’s Masterclass back in 2011 and, when the time came in March the following year, I made the decision to press ahead with our first crowdfunding campaign for a short film called Caught in the Headlights. I chose to use IndieGoGo due to the flexible funding option and also because, at the time, dollars were the only currency on there and I wanted it to be open for international backers.
Having watched lots of other crowdfunding pitch videos, it was clear to me this had to be well made and feature interviews with the team talking passionately about our project.
What helped was already having an existing social media base to reach out to with regular content updates. The first campaign was an overwhelming success for us and we raised $2893, or 181% of our target with backers from all around the world. From this campaign I learned a lot and it was an exhausting experience, but well worth it. The effort of continually pushing the campaign through social media can be a trying process and much of the campaign I ran alone, adding to the work involved, but again totally worth it.
The biggest thing I learned from running that campaign was perk fulfillment. I listed perks that, once factored in, cost a lot to create and took up a lot of time to fulfill. Fortunately we raised more than our goal, so this didn’t affect the film’s budget, but when we had American backers qualifying for perks that required additional postage, the numbers didn’t add up.
In the end, we wrote to backers explaining the situation, offering them the option of digital versions of the physical items to cut down costs, and all were happy to accept this to help the film. Yes, we essentially offered more than we could deliver in terms of perks, but on the one or two items where this became an issue, we were honest and upfront about it. Many backers are more concerned about the project, but giving them the information and choice is still very important. The film turned out well and went on to receive several awards and nominations on the festival circuit.
As far as sending updates to the backers through IndieGoGo, this started frequently, but as post-production continued, these updates became more sporadic as fewer events were happening that warranted passing news on to our backers. Once we began the festival journey, we updated our backers each time we were nominated for or screened at a festival. I did find it was easier to direct backers to our social media channels if they chose to follow them as this was far easier to update and more flexible too. The film is now available online and since we are no longer contending for festivals, we have ceased updates on the project and informed backers of this news. They can of course follow us through social networks still.
Our second campaign ended earlier this year for a short film called Love & Other Chairs
Love and Other Chairs IndieGoGo Video from Christopher Bevan on Vimeo.
A similar funding target was set and this time we were fortunate enough to reach 136% of our target. This is where the lessons of the first campaign came through. We created perks that were mainly digital, cost less to produce and were easily manageable, but still valuable. They included a mention in our Twitter feed and Facebook page, thanks in the end credit roll of the film, a thank you credit on imdb, as well as a walk on role, and executive producer credit. We did away with perks that required posting, everything was delivered online.
In terms of communication with backers, we used videos to convey messages on occasion, but again this would happen more frequently depending on what news we had on the film. We did use the IndieGogo update function a lot more during this campaign, releasing concept art and casting details to backers throughout to keep the momentum going.
During the campaign for Caught in the Headlights, we found that our $25 perk was the most popular, and this is where we’d directed most of our rewards. We’d looked at IndieGoGo’s stats to back this up and when creating the Love & Other Chairs campaign, we created an equivalent £20 perk that had similar weighting and once again this proved to be the most sought after perk. So we learnt the second time round about stacking up what people were going for.
We also chose to reach out to the same backers who had contributed to us in our first campaign via a direct email campaign, details of which were available from our fulfillment spreadsheet generated by IndieGoGo after the first campaign. I would estimate nearly half of our backers came back again to follow up their support, some upping their contribution and going for a higher credit on the film this time around. I think most donors want to see a quality product at the end of it. Most perks that short films can offer don’t have huge monetary value, but offering a credit or being a part of a project have the most appeal.
Being honest and passionate about what you are creating is very important as well as sending contributors regular updates to show that you haven’t just used them for the money and ceased communication. I have seen so many campaigns that send one, two or sometimes no updates and don’t talk to the people who have already supported them. I have personally backed 6 or so campaigns now and am always more attracted to filmmakers who interact and keep in touch.
Managing the donors can be tricky, but the spreadsheet function on IndieGoGo helps in that you tick off backers who’s perks have been fulfilled as well as maintaining a list of what you still need to do. It is a challenge to run one campaign, let alone two back to back, but our success encouraged us and the results were worth it.
I think in order to have the best chance at success, you must set a target that is achievable based on having pre-existing material. Had we set out for £2000-3000 and been overly confident the first time around, we may not have hit our target. Yes it is hard work running these campaigns, but the pay off is great in that you have a ready made audience for your films. Know your audience, know your realistic funding target, know your timeframe and try to bring a track record. This is what will give people confidence to support your work.
Christopher Bevan is an award winning filmmaker specialising in directing, producing and writing. He has amassed a wealth of experience over nearly 8 years of filmmaking whilst actively working on over 60 projects. His films have been screened at festivals both at home and abroad. His award winning short film Caught in the Headlights (2012), picked up best picture and the audience award at the Transitions Derby Film Degree Showcase and has been nominated for several other awards. He is in post-production on his latest short Love & Other Chairs (2013) and the pilot episode of sitcom Jobseekers (2013). He runs production company YSP Media based out of Derby, United Kingdom. You may follow him on Twitter @chrisbevan89 @yspmediafilms and on Facebook. Also, on the Facebook page for Love & Other Chairs.
Sheri Candler November 19th, 2013
Posted In: crowdfunding
Tags: Caught in the Headlights, Chris Jones, Christopher Bevans, crowdfunding, donor communication, Guerilla Filmmaker's Masterclass, independent film, indiegogo, Love and Other Chairs, perk fulfillment, pitch videos, YSP Media
Running more than one crowdfunding campaign
This week, our crowdfunding series will focus on filmmakers who found success on their first campaign and have decided to run a second. Today’s guest post is from Toronto-based filmmaker Shasha Nakhai of Compy Films.
My experience with crowd-funding began with the first film I directed, a 20 minute documentary called THE SUGAR BOWL. The film’s bare bones budget was about $10,000, but I only had about $6,000 raised at the time. In order to make the film happen, I knew I had to raise more money. Being a first-time filmmaker, my options were very limited. I heard about IndieGoGo when I came across another film’s campaign and decided to try it out myself. I set a low goal of $3,000 and ran the campaign on my own. I not only met the goal, but exceeded it raising $3,265 and an additional $1,000 outside of the campaign.
This initial campaign was run during a time when there wasn’t yet a wealth of information available on how to run a successful campaign and I found it very challenging and more of an experiment just to see what would happne. I chose IndieGoGo simply because I live in Canada, and at that time Kickstarter required a US bank account.
I think the main reason behind my project’s success was the subject matter, the personal connection I had to the story and the fact that there was a real lack of films coming from the Philippines. I also had a strong pitch video, even though it was very simple. It was a video of me pitching the film at the Pitch Competition, but my passion for the project really shone through.
The Sugar Bowl – Teaser Trailer from Rich Williamson on Vimeo.
The #1 thing I learned from running a crowd-funding campaign was that I had to leave my pride at the door. You can’t be afraid to ask for things, otherwise you won’t get them! Also, framing what you are asking for is so important. The way you talk about your campaign to others makes a huge difference. For instance, using words like “join us,” “support,” “back,” and “pre-buy” instead of “donate” actually makes a psychological difference. It becomes more about an exchange rather than simply begging for money.
It is also important to have a team to work together on a campaign. It is mentally exhausting to take on a campaign by yourself and I was running myself into the ground trying to plan the trip to the Philippines while at the same time running a 24/7 crowd-funding campaign.
I would say the biggest mistake I made during my campaign was not accounting for the fact that the funds being raised were in USD, not CAD, and that there would be additional wire transfer and conversion costs on top of IndieGoGo’s interest. Another flaw was my lack of updates. If I were to run this campaign today, I would set a higher goal, bring on board a team and be more consistent with social media and updates.
Which brings me now to the campaign I am running today.
Right now I’m producing a short comedy called WEEKEND WARRIOR, directed by Lyndon Casey. Before we started the campaign, I identified my biggest assets. We have assembled an experienced team with strong resumes; the director’s last short film [Captain Coulier (space explorer)] premiered at Sundance 2009; and one of our actors, Dillon Casey, has 20,000 followers on Twitter. Taking all of these into consideration, we decided to set a goal of $15,000, which we are still actively fundraising.
One major advantage we have is being able to tap into already existing mailing lists and social media followers from all of our previous films. Each member of the team is building on their already-existing networks as we move along and we will continue to build on and engage our audiences all the way into production, through to distribution. We’re now creating weekly skits or update videos and actively seeking out media coverage and guest blog opportunities such as this one to keep up momentum.
One important thing we were really missing was a graphic designer on the team. Our most popular perk to date is the only one that has a picture. I realized people are probably not going to be interested in purchasing a tote if they have no idea what it looks like. So to remedy this mid-campaign, we paid a graphic designer to create a tote that people would want regardless of whether it was supporting our film or not. That’s one very important thing remember –assess your campaign along the way to evaluate what is and is not working. Change what you can.
Regardless of the fact that I’ve already run one successful crowd-funding campaign, we’re still finding this one challenging. Perhaps it’s timing – it’s Movember, a typhoon just hit the Philippines, and people are saving for Christmas. Or maybe this kind of film just isn’t for everyone. Whatever it is, we’re confident we’ll be able to overcome it if we continue pushing the project out to wider networks. We’ve got an audience out there and we’re going to find them!
Shasha Nakhai is a filmmaker based in Toronto, Canada with Compy Films. Her award-winning short films have screened at festivals worldwide including the Hot Docs, DC Shorts, LA Shorts, Atlanta, and Aljazeera Film Festivals. Most notably, The Sugar Bowl won Best Film and Best Documentary at the Aesthetica Film Festival, the WIFT-T Award at the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, and was nominated for the Aljazeera Film Festival’s Gold Award. The Sugar Bowl and Joe recently aired in the United States and Europe on ShortsTV and will be released on iTunes later this year.
Sheri Candler November 18th, 2013
Posted In: crowdfunding
Tags: Canada, Captain Coulier, Compy Films, crowdfunding, Dillon Casey, funding goal, indiegogo, Lyndon Casey, Shasha Nakhai, The Sugar Bowl, Toronto, Weekend Warrior
Crowdfunding via TV? Yes, and it won’t cost a dime
Today’s guest post is from Emmy winning producer/director Victor Zimet of Home Team Productions who is actively campaigning for finishing funds to complete a new documentary about Croatian/American composer Nenad Bach called Everything is Forever. But did you know campaigns now have a new promotion outlet on a TV show in Buffalo, NY?
It’s taken fifteen years to make our film, EVERYTHING IS FOREVER. But I never expected the crowdfunding process to consume half a year.
For two months, we wrote and re-wrote copy explaining who we were and what the project is about, cutting trailers for the film and a sizzle reel for our company, HOME TEAM PRODUCTIONS, and shooting on camera wrap-arounds for the campaign pitch video.
It’s been an enormous amount of effort, and it was important for us to emerge from the campaign with adequate funds to finish the film. We chose the flex plan of Indiegogo, in which we could keep what we raised even if we didn’t meet our goal.
Two tips from veteran crowdfunders I found useful were put the F-word back in fundraising, that word being fun. This loosened me up enough to stop taking everything so seriously, and sparked a wave of creativity. One example involved shooting a video replete with music, dancing, and a silly party hat, which became the centerpiece of a virtual birthday party and fundraising event posted on Facebook. That stimulated some donations.
The other piece of advice also involved Facebook; the user creates a Facebook Event announcing the campaign on the first day it is launched. Invite all of your friends and ask them to share which we found to be far more effective than just posting an announcement on a timeline.
After thirty hard-fought days of fun (and anxiety, we’re only human!), we raised two thirds of our goal and were at peace with our efforts.
But it wasn’t over yet.
On the eve of the campaign’s conclusion, we were approached by a producer for THE CROWDFUNDER SHOW, which airs on Fox 29 WUTV in Buffalo, NY, inviting us to be a featured segment on the program. Delighted that our ingenuity made an impression, we accepted. THE CROWDFUNDER SHOW is a half hour weekly show that profiles the best, brightest, and most interesting crowdfunding projects looking to make a mark, follow a dream or improve a community.
On December 29th, our campaign will be featured in a four-minute segment packaged in the half-hour show.[ed. To apply for consideration on the show for your project, go HERE].
Having gone through the rigors of a previous campaign, we were able to supply the necessary material to the show quickly and they had our campaign up on the crowdfunding site FundRazr, where they sponsor projects, within 24 hours.
Now, here’s where it gets really interesting. In our original campaign, we offered perks such as downloads of some of our earlier films, including festival favorite RANDOM LUNACY. We also offered exclusive bonus interviews featuring pivotal figures from the films. Another perk provided an opportunity to do a commentary track on the EVERYTHING IS FOREVER DVD.
THE CROWDFUNDER SHOW sponsors projects on the Fundrazr site and they are providing an extra incentive to donors. They reward contributors with sponsored gift cards for the same amount of money they contribute, up to $100. With this crowdfunding model, what you give – you get! Donors receive a gift card that matches their donation, compliments of retailing giants such as Best Buy, Home Depot, Starbucks, The Gap, and more. The result? People can support our campaign and it will not cost them a dime. This model is a win-win. With the holidays coming up, you bet that I myself will be purchasing some gift cards!
It’s a brave new world in fundraising, and if this is the first wave, we’re excited to be part of it. It will be fascinating to see what donations may result from four minutes of TV time.
Victor Zimet is a veteran of the film and television business with over thirty years experience to his credit. Together with partner Stephanie Silber, he founded HOME TEAM PRODUCTIONS, producing and directing award-winning documentary films, television, and not-for-broadcast projects since 1999. For more information or to donate finishing funds for EVERYTHING IS FOREVER, visit their website.
Sheri Candler November 14th, 2013
Posted In: crowdfunding
Tags: Buffalo, crowdfunding, documentary, Everything is Forever, Facebook, Fundrazr, Home Team Productions, independent film, indiegogo, Nenad Bach, Random Lunacy, The Crowd Funder Show, The Film Collaborative, Victor Zimet
Kickstarting the Apocalypse
Today’s guest post is from Gabriel Diani & Etta Devine who are actively campaigning on Kickstarter for their film Diani & Devine Meet The Apocalypse. They have some sobering news for those looking to wade into crowdfunding.
We knew it would be tough. We’re not famous, our project wasn’t based on an existing brand, and only seven percent of Kickstarter campaigns over $100,000 make their goal. Seven percent.
We’ve run two successful campaigns in the past. One publishing campaign for $30k and a film campaign for for $27k . Because of that experience, we knew we couldn’t hit $100k with our current social media/audience reach, perhaps $60k or $70k…but $100k might as well be $1m.
We decided to do something big and bold for our latest Kickstarter to fund our movie Diani & Devine Meet The Apocalypse. Something to expand our audience and get the attention of press outlets who are becoming weary of crowdfunding stories. With that in mind, we planned a massive 30 plus video Kickstarter campaign featuring our friends and fellow cast members.
We’d start with our main campaign video to introduce ourselves, lay out what the project was about, and give people a hint of what we had in store for the rest of the campaign. We’re not fans of the filmmaker-sitting-in-front-of-the-webcam-crying videos because we believe that if you’re asking people for money to make a movie, you need to show you know how to make a movie.
We stopped cutting our hair or shaving and over the course of four months we went to seven different apocalyptic locations (some up to 3 hours drive away) to shoot the different segments of the video, slowly distressing our costumes until they were dirty rags by the end.
While we were doing that, we also shot thirty mini-shorts called “Apocatips” with the intention of releasing one for every day of the campaign. This would give us new content to post to keep backers engaged and give us new things to talk about. We also put a bunch of our talented friends in them so they would be more enthusiastic about sharing them with their circles when they came out…because we’re sneaky like that.
We also have several famous genre actors with active fan communities and we wanted to target those audiences to pull them into our campaign. We made a video with Armin Shimerman and Harry Groener who are both very well known and respected for their work in “Star Trek” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and targeted the video to those audiences.
Barry Bostwick was going to be in Romania while we were prepping the Kickstarter so we gave him a script outline and he shot a bunch of crazy footage while on set for “Scorpion King 4.” We sifted through all that footage and put this together with our editor Chad Meserve.
But our biggest gun was Janet Varney, the voice of the main character in a popular anime show called “The Legend of Korra.” The audience is rabid, active (because the show is on right now), and a younger demographic that is perfect for understanding what crowdfunding is. We shot a funny video with Janet dressed as her character and knew that it had the potential to go viral.
Has it worked?
We know a lot of people in the crowdfunding world and they have all been very complimentary about not only the quality of the videos, but the quality of our rewards (we believe in giving early adopters to our cause more bang for their buck) and the beauty and clarity of our Kickstarter page (thanks to our designer Lee Thompson).
The Apocatips have done the job of keeping our backers engaged and giving them new things to share and talk about each day, as have the supplementary videos. We’ve gotten some great press, but the pledging through those outlets is way down from when we did our previous campaigns and most outlets seem unimpressed by the quality and quantity of the videos and usually only mention it as an aside.
The biggest surprise was the Janet Varney/Korra video, which exceeded our wildest expectations in terms of fan response. As of this writing, it is over 42,000 views on Youtube, gifs people made from it have been reblogged multiple thousands of times on Tumblr, and all of the comments on the Youtube page have been overwhelmingly positive. It’s difficult to tell because the Kickstarter backend tells you the total pledges that came through Youtube or Tumblr, but not which specific video or post. All of those eyes on the video brought us around 13 pledges…maybe 20 if we’re generous…out of over 42,000 people watching. We had planned on a 0.01% conversion rate. We got about 0.0005%. That miscalculation has certainly made things more challenging, but there’s still hope. As of this writing, we’re at 42% with 10 days to go. It’s not where we’d like to be, but we’ve jumped about $15,000 in the past three days so it’s not impossible.
We’re not sure what all of this means for the crowdfunding ecosystem. There’s lots to dissect and many factors at play including diminishing Twitter influence and how the Facebook algorithm for sharing posts has changed drastically to limit the number of friends/followers our posts are shared with since our last campaign. Our first movie has almost 1,000 “Likes” on its fan page. We shared one of our videos on it and Facebook showed it to 38 of those 1,000. This is (of course) to encourage people to pay money to “boost” or “promote” their posts. We’ve been doing this, but our friends and audience who have been sharing aren’t paying to boost their posts so our message isn’t spreading as far or as fast as it could despite the fact that this campaign has been shared more times on Facebook than the last one (136 vs. over 2,000 at the time of this writing).
Our email list is around 2,000 subscribers and we’ve been emailing our backers once or twice a week. All of our previous backers are on that list, but we also sent project updates from those campaigns within Kickstarter in case our email was going to spam. Our number one referrer to our campaign this time is Direct Traffic, which means clickthroughs are coming mostly from this email list. It’s almost twice the traffic from Facebook which is the complete opposite from our last two campaigns.
If you’re thinking of jumping into your first (or next) crowd funding campaign, be more cautious than usual. Ours is an ambitious project to be sure, but we did our homework. We have a track record on both Kickstarter and in the world of independent film and we spent five months writing, shooting, editing, color correcting, and doing VFX on over 30 videos and planning the campaign…and yet we’re still facing a steep uphill climb.
The crowdfunding world is weird and wonderful, but it is constantly changing. It was never easy to raise the type of money we’re aiming for, but as crowdfunding evolves it may be getting harder instead of easier.
Gabriel Diani and Etta Devine are award-winning actors, writers, and comedians who are often compared with classic comedy teams like Nichols and May and Burns and Allen. They have performed at comedy festivals all over the country, raised over $30,000 on Kickstarter to replace the “N-word” with “Robot” in Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” and garnered over 1.3 million hits on their web series Mary Olson. Gabe wrote, produced, and starred in the horror comedy feature film THE SELLING which played at over 30 film festivals, was in the Top 10 of About.com’s Best Horror Movies of 2012, and received rave reviews from The Huffington Post, Ain’t It Cool News, and FilmThreat. Co-produced by and co-starring Etta, the film is available on DVD/VOD and just had its television premiere on Fearnet in April. You can see their sizzle reel here.
Sheri Candler November 13th, 2013
Posted In: crowdfunding, Distribution Platforms
Tags: Armin Shimerman, crowdfunding, Diani and Devine Meet The Apocalypse, Etta Devine, Facebook, Gabriel Diani, Harry Groener, Janet Varney, Kickstarter, The Legend of Korra, Tumblr, Twitter, YouTube
Crowdfunding for Bomb It 2-Jon Reiss takes his own medicine
A guest post by filmmaker/consultant Jon Reiss who used Kickstarter to raise over $20,000 for his graffiti documentary follow up, Bomb It 2.
Its almost impossible to write a post on crowdfunding these days that would portend to have something new to say. But I think personal experiences are always helpful and when Sheri asked me to put my thoughts down – how could I say no? I have advised on a number of crowdfunding campaigns so I’m trying to frame this post in terms of what really struck me while running my own campaign – here goes:
1. The first few days are nerve-racking! It’s hard not to panic –and there are ways to prevent against panic. I presold a number of higher value rewards in advance of the campaign so that these would clock in on the first day, giving us an immediate boost. This, I feel, was and is essential. Mobilize your super core audience well in advance, especially those who you think will pony up and do it early.
2. Know your audience. I cannot say enough about this. Even though this was a Kickstarter for Bomb It 2, I had a feeling that we would not get that much support from the graffiti/street art niche – for a few reasons:
A. Even though we were working to redevelop that brand, I had let it slack over the previous 7 years. We did a bit of maintenance – eg our Facebook page in the previous 2 years went from 0-13,000. But the level of engagement was not that high.
B. That audience in the past has not been a big purchasing audience.
So I knew that most of my support would be through my filmmaker as distribution and marketing guy identity. We planned many rewards around this aspect of my brand that I have been developing over the past several years. These are the rewards that sold the best and where most of my support came from – thank you all!
3. Use your Kickstarter campaign to build your brand beyond the project. I’ve always told people that crowdfunding is as much about audience development as it is fundraising, but I didn’t realize how much that was true until I really saw it in action in my campaign and I felt the results. I actually think that artists should do them once a year as a heightened way to connect with their audience.
4. Create a membership perk. As part of my personal brand building, I really wanted to start creating monthly “conversations” with my audience. My first incarnation was a monthly “Join It” conversations for 10 months. We’ve done one and are about to do our second. It’s a bit chaotic – keeping track of the questions on Twitter and trying to fit them all in while keeping the talk focused on a topic. But it’s fun. We’re about to switch to a new platform that will let us really see who is participating which goes toward building a long term relationship with an audience as well. It is better to know exactly who I am speaking with than to regard my supporters as a faceless mass.
5. Keep it Personal. People want to invest in you – not necessarily your project – so if they don’t see you in your video and don’t see you in the updates, it’s just another film. I’ve seen projects that should have been successful, fail – just because the filmmakers didn’t put themselves forward. I don’t understand why the artist wouldn’t really. Even if you are shy on camera, use that to your advantage. Claim your weaknesses as strengths and your strengths as strengths too. I found it really hard to convey the “script” I had prepared, but I didn’t feel that improvising on camera was focused enough. So I created a video about my own difficulty in creating a video.
6. Prepare content in advance. We had a lot of videos and photos prepared in advance, but that was for the Bomb It brand meant to appeal to the street art audience. I was always playing catch up writing blog posts for the film sites I wanted to engage for my personal brand as a filmmaker. I feel as if I eventually did enough, but I could have done more. It is advisable to talk to these publishing sites well in advance. The more popular ones have scheduled content and you need get yourself slotted into their publishing schedules.
7. Be Flexible! We constantly added and altered awards during the campaign. We priced items low early for early adoption then, when those sold out, we added more at a higher price point. Items that weren’t selling (like the artwork, which was surprising), we kept adjusting the price. Some items still never sold. Note: you can’t adjust an item after one has been sold.
8. Email is still the conversion king. While Twitter is good for getting people excited and engaged, all of our donation spikes happened after our email blasts. Cultivate an email list and don’t abuse it.
9. Grab Bag of Confirmed “Crowdfunding Truths”: All of these have been written about before, but they were all born out as extraordinarily true so ignore them at your peril!
A. Prep is crucial. Running a crowdfunding campaign is very similar to making a film. The more you prepare, the more smoothly the shoot/campaign will go.
B. Have a team. There is no way I could have done this without the people on my team – King is a Fink, Diana Duran Jones, Nijla Mumin and Yanique Sappleton. Also, the international team that created the campaign videos: Bernadette Wegenstein (my Austrian director on the breast cancer doc I am producing); Yevgeniy Vaskevich (Russian) who shot and edited the videos; Leone Fei (Italian) – sound.
C. Set your goal appropriately. I didn’t want to pound people and I knew that my film audience was one of the most saturated for campaigns – so I set my goal modestly. However, in retrospect, I should have set it higher because it helps in fundraising when you need to push the last 2 weeks. We hit our mark too early. Then again, I didn’t want to pound people, so in the end I feel we made the right choice.
D. Create a range of interesting rewards. I hate campaigns with DVD, Poster and Download – I’m so bored with those perks. What is interesting about YOU?!
E. Perhaps this isn’t a truth, but is related to the last point. What kind of unique experience can you provide that would be of value to your audience? Sheri Candler got me thinking about this early on and it was great advice. Also you don’t need a fulfillment company or to create merchandise for experiences, one less thing to take money out of your campaign. However, you do need to schedule them!
10. Do not do a campaign when mercury is in retrograde. I thought we did a pretty good job preparing for our campaign and getting people rallied in advance, so I was surprised that after a couple of days our momentum started slacking. It felt like we were walking through mud. When communicating with people as a whole, I always check to see if mercury is in retrograde. (I can see Sheri’s eyes rolling!) [ed: Yes, you can] Sure enough it was, and sure enough when it went out of retrograde in our 2nd week (usually a lull), it seemed that things started to click better. In your timing, don’t just avoid holidays and other known slow periods. Avoid when mercury is in retrograde. This usually happens 1-2x a year. (Also not a good time to pitch projects in general).
Thanks to Jon for contributing his experience crowdfunding for Bomb It 2 on our blog. You can view the entire film on the Bomb It 2 website as well as purchase other merchandise. For more fun and information – follow Jon on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram (@jonreiss)
If you have a useful crowdfunding story of your own, we still have some publishing slots left in November. Please send an email to me sheri [@] thefilmcollaborative.org describing what you would like to share.
Sheri Candler November 11th, 2013
Posted In: crowdfunding
Tags: Bomb It 2, crowdfunding, documentary, independent film, Jon Reiss, Kickstarter, perks