Transmedia

For the past year and a half, I've been strongly advocating for what I have been calling cross-platform outreach for documentaries:  a way to disseminate the information that filmmakers do not or cannot incorporate into a documentary film; to encourage a grass roots movement of participation and conversation;  to explore the often fine line between subject matter and audience; to crowd source stories and footage as a means to expanding the conversation or to cast your film; or to simply let loose some cool ideas that do not fit into a linear narrative.   

Five Not So Easy Pieces

I just sat through all five documentary shorts that are up for an Oscar on Sunday night. And, who would have thought, I learned a few things (thankfully).

Artistry and compulsive obsessive disorder are cousins if not siblings and can save you or kill you, much like madness and genius share a thin line.

Documentary Distribution Update

Peter Broderick, an independent film distribution consultant and strategist posted this month on getting ready for festivals, with Sundance about to start.  Getting into Sundance is something many of us dream of and so few achieve.  Needless to say, the advice goes beyond festivals and also provides a good check list, and primer on independent distribution windows, strategies and current trends; a definite must read if you’re about to, in the midst of, or thinking of distributing anything with pixels, consecutive frames and sound...   

 

Peter links to a post by Thom Powers Distribution Advice for 2014 – a must read, especially for doc filmmakers and to Ted Hope’s blog who in effect has curated a list about all things festival – and distribution – and this list is being updated as we move along! That should keep you busy for at least a while… once you’re done, why don’t you share what you learned here?

Copyright, Copyleft and Other Considerations

Since we just recently were on the topic of right vs. left I thought I’d educate myself a bit on copyright law. My interest in the topic came up during the recent Digital Hollywood seminars here in New York on a panel about the art of the deal.  Lawyers on the panel used a lot of verbiage that I had certainly heard of, but lets face it, had little educated knowledge about.  Did you know what a “sunset provision” was? No, not a deal involving Sunset Boulevard, nor Before nor After Sunset. 

 

Here a quick overview of some of the concpets that came up during this and other pannels: Copyright, Sunset Provision, Creative Commons Licenses, Copyleft, Public Domain, Fair Use, and FRAPA and what they mean to me as a content producer and filmmaker.  Texts in italics are copied if not noted otherwise from Wikipedia or other sources (noted). 

 

To bring it to a point:  this is really a discussion to be had about the space between all our first Amendent rights (as US citizens) and our rights as content creators. With the event of the internet in general and social media in particular the landscape has shifted into a new dimension. Legal concepts and structures like Fair Use, Creative Commons Licenses and FRAPA give us protection, rights and options to negotiate that space between our right of freedom of speech and our right to protect our work as content producers.   

Crowd Funding a Year Later: One Success – One Bomb – Part 11

Gary Delfiner, Rob Barabas, David Mandel (blog interviewee),
Aubrey Levy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A year ago we accompanied David Mandel and his partners on the Kickstarter campaign for their feature Mulligan.  Here, a year and one more Kickstarter campaign later, a wrap up.

David: you now have two Kickstarter campaigns under your belt one, the feature Mulligan very successful the other, a documentary Indestructible Baseball on the Isthmus not so. Can you tell us where the big differences were between the two campaigns in terms of preparation, staffing, ask level, execution and leverage with ‘goodies’?

Megatrends

I came across megatrends repeatedly doing research for my next documentary Identity and the Other and decided to do a bit of further digging. I found different definitions for different countries and cultures, no surprise there. The following seemed the most comprehensive. 

 

Megatrends are defined as forces (i.e. trends) affecting all aspects of our lives over a long period of time. Factors are:

Crowd Funding – Where the Hell is my Gift? – Part 10

I feel like a three year old: I want my gift and I want it now.  Now, now, now!  

So, I did a bit of research and after I’m feeling more like a ten year old. Intellectually I understand the fact that instant gratification is not always possible and that a reward waits in the future, but I still want my gift now, darn it.

I have invested in three projects on Kickstarter, a book, a cultural center and a film. Of course I have not invested in either, I have invested in PARTS of either:  small parts.  And herein lays the problem.  We (the Kickstarter community) invest in our friends’ and colleagues’ projects, or causes we are passionate about and more than not they are asking for donations to cover parts but not all of their funding needs. 

If I fundraise 10K for research of a documentary film I would be foolish to promise the finished film. First off, the delivery would be a few years from now and secondly I would not be able to guarantee delivery to begin with, because too many things can happen from research to finished film.  This seems too basic to have to mention, but I guess I do: make your pledges such, that you can deliver and do so on time. And in the interim: communicate!

There needs to be as much thought given to the fundraising part as to the delivery.  The goal is not only achieving our monetary goal by a certain date, but also - and equally important if not more important - the goal has to be to deliver on your pledge promises.  The dates for delivery have to be realistic and the goods or services to be delivered have to be realistic. And in the interim: communicate! (No, not a mistake – I just want to make that point again).  Shit happens, if it does: communicate.  Things get delayed:  communicate.  The creative process is a slippery one:  if it takes a lovely detour: communicate. 

I give you the three examples of the projects I have supported.  I did re-read and watch each of their pitches and here’s what works and what doesn’t.

Although I have waited the longest for Clouse’s Houses, the author Carol Clouse did a fine job managing expectations, explaining plan B upfront and keeping her backers up to date throughout the year she said it would take to finish her book.  Her fundraising goal was $5,000 which she reached June 22, 2011 with $5,055.  I pledged $25 to receive the book and an art card and to support (most importantly) the editor of the book for whose professional services the fundraiser took place. Needless to say, the editor, Barbara Fischkin is a friend of mine.  It’s a bit over a year, but the last communication to backers was six days ago and I’m apparently getting a 2^nd edition (after mistakes where discovered in the first) and it will be shipped to me by August 1^st.  

Good job: A. Why: Communication throughout the process.

The feature film Mulligan set out to raise $10,000, which it did by December 31, 2011 with $11,528. I pledged $50 to receive a golf ball and tee, both branded with the Mulligan logo, which I received promptly, but I am waiting on the digital download of the film and the score (both promised for May 2012).  

I just mailed with David Mandel who wrote on this blog about the behind the scenes launch a Kickstarter campaign and he says “they’re on it”.  Last Kickstarter communication: April 9, 2012. 

This would seem to be a quick and easy fix. You’re finishing a feature film, you don’t have a professional staff and you’re probably juggling a few new projects to keep paying the rent.  Make sure you make one person responsible of posting updates on a regular basis and everybody is going to be happy.  But you NEED to update.  And: if you think you’ll be done by May 2012 – add three months to be safe.  

Fair job: B+. Why: they did a partial delivery early on, but then got sloppy on their communication and delivery.

Now, on to the outfit that will make a Kickstarter success harder for the rest of us who come after.  Last summer I supported the cultural center Park51 (NYChildren Exhibit: Let’s open Park 51’s doors to the world!) for many reasons, one being that I was going to show my film there in conjunction with the exhibit NYChildren which ties in nicely with my film Abraham’s Children and the cultural center itself.  Park51 reached their fundraising goal of $70,000 on August 10^th, 2011.  

I pledged $25 to receive the book of the NYChildren exhibit, which was available for purchase at Park51.  This was September 2011. The last communication to backers on Kickstarter was posted on October 4^th, 2011. No book, no explanation and this organization has professional staff.  

Failure: F. Why: no delivery, no communication AND the book exists. Double boo!

This is the moral of the story: if it weren’t for the fact that I was supporting FRIENDS I’d not go back on Kickstarter to support a project.  I think the Kickstarter model is awesome and I hope one day to be one of the successful fundraisers to be added to a list of great creative projects at exceeded fundraising goals, but without delivery of pledges it doesn’t work and will increasingly work less, if potential backers, other than your parents, siblings and spouses, shy away after being ‘burned’.  Set realistic delivery goals and keep on communicating – it takes so little to do so, so do it!

The Problem

I watched a lovely documentary by filmmaker Jennifer Fox today, My Reincarnation.  It’s a wonderful family story against the backdrop of Tibetan Buddhist teachings.  Not only did I see a schoolmate and friend from film school at the New School, Antje, in one of the shots at the Italian ashram – what are the odds and I wish I had her last name to find her - but there was this lovely exchange between the elder Rinpoche and his grandson: “If you have a goat, you have goat problems; if you have money, you have money problems; if you have a car you have car problems”. At the last example, to which the young boy can relate to, his eyes light up and he says: “Yes, the car could be stolen”.  

I have blog problems; more accurately I have a time problem. I’ve been busy, so busy with production, that thinking about what to write - which takes up so much more time than the actual writing - is just not happening.  But, now I’m back and with new material in hand.  So, stay tuned, dear reader (whoever you are) and the conversation will continue.  

And by the way: if you want to read about a Kickstarter success and hear from the horse’s mouth, read about Jennifer and her team’s efforts to raise $150K to finish the 22 year journey of My Reincarnation.

Crowd Funding – What’s Taking so Long? – Part 5

In our Crowd Funding series we are following in real time the Kickstarter campaign for an independent feature called Mulligan. 

That is: by now we thought we’d be in the thick of it, but as it goes with these things, the start of the campaign has been pushed back twice. Below a short interview with David Mandel, the co-producer of Mulligan on what’s going on.

What was the reasoning behind pushing back the start of the Kickstarter campaign?

Unfortunately, we were just too busy and too rushed, and didn’t want to release a substandard project just because of an arbitrary self-imposed deadline. Since we first started preparing for Kickstarter we’ve had to:

• Find a sound mixer

• Go through and figure out the sound issues in the movie

• Upload footage and sound files back and forth between people on different ends of the country

• Do some minor additional editing

• Coordinate ADR sessions for 4 actors, all of whom are working on other projects in four different time zones. Yes, 4.

• Prepare for and submit a DVD to SXSW film festival

Meanwhile, this same group of people is also busy prepping our next feature, to be shot in March.

That’s a lot to work on when it’s your primary job, but everyone involved in this is already working a 9-5, so to try to make all of this happen AND get the Kickstarter campaign in shape… let’s just say we were running on fumes by last week. So everyone agreed it didn’t make sense to just launch on our original date, especially given that we have nothing to lose by delaying, and everything to gain by making sure that when we do launch, we’re doing it in the best possible way. Deadlines are important, but there’s no need to force ourselves into a corner and put out an inferior product.

What’s been the most difficult aspect of getting ready?

Without a doubt, the video. The video has to do so many things - convey the story, be appealing without feeling too needy, explain what the money’s for and how it’ll be used, show off the footage, and just generally touch people. It took a while to coordinate shooting it - probably unnecessarily so. Then to edit it. Then we started sending out drafts of it to friends and strangers, and the responses weren’t good. So we’ve taken the feedback and gone back to the drawing board for the video. It’s painful, but there’s no question we’re doing the right thing. Had we launched with that video, there’s a chance we wouldn’t have raised the full amount. And there have been - and still are - lots of arguments about how to proceed, what to leave in and what to take out, etc. It’s all good, it’s part of the process.

We’re very lucky in that we’ve got the time and the determination to try and get this to be the best it can be, and again, not be pressured because of an external deadline. So we’ve pushed the launch date from November 18 (last Friday) to December 2 (next Friday). The biggest lesson here is that you should always try to get feedback on something you’re sharing with the world - and that you should give yourself enough time to adapt when that feedback isn’t glowing.

Crowd Funding – Who’s DOING It? - Part 4

If we go back to part 2 of this series on Crowd Funding and look at “Outreach” and what needs to get done to have a successful run in fundraising for an independent film (documentary or narrative) it’s clear that it’s all in the preparation.

So I asked my friend David Mandel who’s the co-producer of an independent narrative film called Mulligan to share his experience of preparing, launching and hopefully successfully finishing his Kickstarter campaign. David and his team are planning to launch on Friday, November 18, 2011.

Here a few questions I asked David during the preparation process:

1. Why Kickstarter? Very few other options exist - Kickstarter seemed to be the best known, either through their own marketing or because so many other people have used it. I’ve gotten a couple of emails about Kickstarter in the past and after looking through the website and browsing several projects, it seemed like a good fit - they have a relatively high success rate (not sure the exact numbers) and their overall approach and layout are very attractive.

2. What did you do to prepare? I’m working with Will, the director and Graham, the producer (I’m a co-producer) on it. It’s a bit tricky because Will and Graham are currently out in LA - but Graham’s moving back here right before the campaign starts. We’ve sent close to 100 emails back and forth about amount we need, what rewards to give, how we’re going to do outreach, etc.

The reward system is what has occupied the biggest part of our thinking (see below), but every aspect gets a lot of thought and discussion, particularly because we feel as though we’re trying to raise a significant amount of money (also see below). The division of responsibilities is still being hammered out, but basically I will be primary on updating and managing the Kickstarter page, Will will be working on Facebook and other social media - as the director he is much more the ‘face’ of the movie, and Graham has been working behind the scenes to negotiate the rates for the various expenses for which this money is being raised.

One big thing to come out of this process is that, succeed or fail, we believe it’s a good marketing opportunity. It’s very much a ‘launch’ for the movie, even though it hasn’t even been submitted to festivals. Our thinking is that spending this much time and effort to raise awareness for the movie at this stage will pay off down the road if and when it gets into festivals or gets distributed. And I do suspect that - if done right - this campaign will have a positive effect on festival/distribution opportunities.

3. How did you choose the ‘goodies’ - (called Rewards on Kickstarter)? This has been the most overthought aspect of the whole process. We did a lot of research into various other projects on Kickstarter, paying close attention to the rewards and the donation levels - that relationship is very important. Many stress that you shouldn’t do ‘the PBS/NPR’ thing, i.e. ask $100 for a tote bag. Having spent some time in the non-profit world, I know why that is done, but I also understand why some feel it’s a ridiculous price.

So, our goal was to come up with good rewards that people would want, mix in some humorous stories/selling points about them, and try to price them accordingly. This obviously gets much harder as you climb up the tiers of donor levels - it’s hard to think of anything you can provide that’s worth $500 or $1,000. We also tried to steer clear of rewards that would require a lot of time and energy to ‘produce’ and/or mail - we haven’t made DVDs yet, and as you might know, printing and copying them is both expensive and time-consuming.

Where possible, we tried to come up with digital alternatives that would be easier and cheaper to deliver, without making people think we were ripping them off. Most people probably feel a DVD of a movie is worth more than a digital download of it - even though the digital download is in some ways more useful because it can be played and accessed anywhere. I’d like to say we were thinking of our carbon footprint, but the reality is we’re all working jobs in addition to this movie, and don’t have the time and money to print and mail 100 DVDs.

You also have to think about your potential donors - some of these will be friends, family, acquaintances, but hopefully there will be lots of people who have never heard of you or the movie, and what would any of this be worth to them? The best thing is to try to sell the movie, sell yourself, and make people feel as though they’re being acknowledged and reward them on multiple levels.

4. How did you choose the length of the ask (30 days)? Some research suggested 30 days was the ideal timeframe. It matches our schedule of needs, and it’s during a time of the year when (hopefully) most people will be in a giving mood: Thanksgiving and early December. I think it gives us time to learn and adapt as we progress, so that if we do hit a ‘slump,’ we can regroup and think of ways out of it before the clock runs out.

5. How did you choose the amount realistic to raise? Did you base it on need or based on what you think you can raise? We’re trying to raise $10,000. This is probably the hardest thing to figure out, and it’s one of those things that has to be partially based on reason and partially based on emotion/hope. We know how much money we need based on certain deliverables: festival submissions, color correction, sound design, a website, etc. It's hard to ask people for money - even though the project is more than worthy of it. Everyone knows what today's economy is like, that there are problems out there that need people's money and attention. But this is a film that very much deserves to be made and seen, and I'm confident if people could see the full finished product, they'd take the afternoon off and plunk down a movie ticket’s worth to see it. I hope that translates to a successful fundraising campaign.

I can safely say that having exhausted all cheap and free possibilities; this is the minimum amount that we can ask for in order to guarantee making this movie the best it can be. It’s also reassuring to know that should we go over our asking price, we get to keep the overages.

How do we know we can raise this much? Mostly from looking at similar projects that have been successful on Kickstarter, and from acknowledging how much thought and effort we are putting into this. Because of the stage we’re at with the film (picture-lock), we can show off clips from the film, and I think that’s going to be the biggest selling point. The movie sells itself, and I suspect it’ll be a lot easier for people to commit to a project that’s so close to completion and one they can already watch parts of.

Next on Friday, November 18th: Questions for David: how is the countdown to the launch panning out? Any surprises? Anything you’d do differently?

And you, dear reader: leave us your comments!

How do I Fund my Documentary – Interlude

After having written about crowd funding, attending the Independent Feature Project week seminars for documentary filmmakers in September and reading anything and everything about documentary funding, outreach, sourcing, networking and ROI’s I’m a bit tired. I think I’m going to take a nap now. Oh right, I sold my sofa to fund the Kickstarter campaign – we needed a great video to launch. Well, then I’ll just go to bed - no pillows though – that was ruined on one of the late night working sessions to reach out to backers before the Kickstarter deadline expired. It’s actually quite comfy sleeping without my pillow – I just sometimes have a hard time adjusting my eye line at the computer screen now that I carry my head at a permanent 45 degree angle because I can’t pay for the chiropractor to set my spine straight, but it it’s well worth it – I raised another $25 by pre selling a DVD of a film I have pitched so many times I recite it in my sleep and I have done so much outreach work for it that I have to pinch myself every once in a while as a reminder that the film hasn’t actually been shot yet. Maybe I won’t nap after all. Sound familiar? Welcome to my world.

But how DO I FUND MY DOC? Find a sugar daddy. If that’s against your morals or you are too old for a savory sugar daddy, find some other outlet for your passion and creativity. I highly recommend blogging – cheap, fast, instant gratification, no help needed.

The above mentioned Independent Feature Week of seminars had two days of seminars geared towards independent documentary filmmakers. One of the seminars was titled How to Fund your Documentary. IndieWIRE’s Sophia Savage wrote a nice recap on the seminar. The recap is worth the read – the seminar itself was not so inspiring (I guess that’s when I found a Wiki entry called “death by Power Point” – need I say more).

Both days I heard a lot about pitching and three projects were pitched in front of an audience. Nothing new – just the good old points rehashed yet again: your doc should (must!) have an untold, character driven story. You need to have unique access or position to tell that story and you need a certain urgency to sell. Add a dash of salt et voila!

But as my friend Aideen would say: we’re excellent at what we do but we are not geniuses. And at my tender age I must confess – I know she’s right. If I had a genius I would imagine that by now it would have stuck out its head and asked for a drink. So where do I go without the genius in my back pocket? Work twice as hard or get a day job (yuck!).

The question of course is never answered: how do to fund your (that is my) documentary? I’d love for one of the panelists to look me in the eye and say: Nina, go to so-and-so and they’ll fund your film soup to nuts (or was it soup to desert?). Now, that would be a nice ROI for the $140 I paid for the seminars.

As Wendy Levy from Tomorrow Partners said: we have to be interactivists not just filmmakers. Amen.

Crowd Funding - Your Backers - Part 3

"Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted." — attributed to Albert Einstein

There is much talk about Social Return on Investment, which in a way works brilliantly in tandem with Documentary filmmaking which more often than not comes with a cause attached. Narrative Films have a harder standing here.

If you look at the history of crowd sourcing and funding  you see that the platforms that pioneered before Kickstarter where mostly attractive to investors because they put a personal story and a face to their investments. But still: they were straight money investments. It’s easy to say: you give me $250 now and in 18 months I will return $300 to you: it’s a clean, clear-cut deal, no emotions involved, no room for interpretation. Only: we, as independent filmmakers, know that, but in the rarest cases, we cannot promise a principal plus interest in return on investment.

So we look elsewhere. When you crowd fund a project you engage backers on a totally different level, they do not only support you financially, they also provide encouragement, support, and public validation. Backing through crowd funding creates a stronger bond for better and for worse as the backer supports not only our work, but also you (or your team).

Let’s say our levels of support are:

1. for $1 you get a thank you credit on the film’s website
2. for $10 you get a thank you credit on the film’s website and in the film’s credit roll  
3. for $25 you get all of the above plus a DVD copy of the yet unreleased film and a poster
4. for $250 you are now an associate producer of the film (and get all of the afore mentioned benefits)
5. for $2,500 you get all of the above and a cameo in the film 

As of level 2 you are heavily invested. Your name is now not only on the website (where it can be removed in a flash) – it’s now in the credits of the film and stays there for all eternity. It better be a brilliantly good film – otherwise your backers are going to be embarrassed to see their (potentially) good name associated with a project of dubious creativity (or worse: content). Choose your benefits carefully – give a backer the option of anonymity. Public acknowledgement might be more than backers bargained for.

The more your film is on message and is cause related the easier it will be to reach out and find people willing to back your film. In finding your audience and you might be surprised to find that your audience is not who you thought it was. One group might not like the slant on your message, another might not be ready to ‘hear’ your message, and support might come from a group you would have never thought of.

At the IFP week a filmmaker spoke about a documentary she had produced about a young marine coming back from Iraq. Naturally she thought that the marines would be her first audience. She invited them to a screening with a discussion after to find out how they could help support the film. The scene after the screening must have been very awkward. There were quick good-bye’s and the vaguest promises of support. The marines who saw the film where still on active duty; they were not ready to see the documentary, nor able to acknowledge what happens after deployment. The filmmaker later found great support for her message in the war veteran’s and mental health communities.

What I learned:  the crowds don’t come to you – you need to find them, be it for a Kickstarter campaign or an outreach effort to show and share your film and ideas.   It’s hard work and endless contacts made, but if you are passionate about your film (documentary or fiction) and you have a strong message you will get there (whatever your “there” is) and you will find alliances in the most unlikely places – mark my words.

Crowd Funding - Outreach - Part 2

Backers are invested in your project, both figuratively and where it hurts, they are the peels of the onion around your project core and they help you reach out further. Treat them well. But before you can treat them well you have to reach them and you have to have a plan on how to do that and how to SUSTAIN the outreach. Especially on a documentary which can take years to complete.

My guestimate is that for every one in 1,000 social media online backer you get an action; unless you’re a superstar (which if we were we would most likely not be dabbling in crowd sourcing to begin with, or at least hire someone to do it for us – but what would be the fun in that?

A nice episodic anecdote about the film I am I is on Peter Broderick’s blog, the maverick independent distribution consultant. Kickstarter has a hall of fame. The most successful film funded was Blue Like Jazz. Click on the link and see how they set up their project. It’s succinct and funny and it had of course a great head start because it was based on a bestselling book with the same title by Donald Miller who had a big and loyal on line following.

Roughly what you need to get your outreach going is:

Proposal:

• Think about your pitch: 20 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minute versions
• USP – why YOU - what is your unique selling point?
• Think about financing beyond crowd funding
• Prepare several budgets (calculate for different scenarios)
• Time line

Pre-campaign things that you need to have lined up:

• Basic website 
• Graphic element you can use for on-line presence, mass emails, postcards, announcements, etc.
• Teaser video (not a trailer) – talk to your audience directly and get them to donate with urgency

Pre-campaign outreach:

• Align yourself with non-profits and interested groups that can lend you their support to give you credibility and their network of fans, friends, followers and members to help you reach out
• Bolster your twitter following (remember the 1 per mille rule) as well as your FB friends and fans (and if you have good business contacts on LinkedIn and have built your Google+ circles – it won’t hurt either)
• Email outreach list with a distribution channel like Constant Contact with a layout/design that mirrors your website
• Relevant blog
• Having a follow up video for a final push might help too
• Letters and contacts lined up to hit big sponsors the moment you are ready to launch your project on line
• outline of what you will be giving backers in return for their investment (set realistic goals and be original without embarrassment)
• Lots of coffee and RedBull
• Help
• And: give your kids up for adoption and find a loving home for your dog

Before you set a deadline and upload your project:

• You need a firm grasp on what your goals are financially and time wise
• How much are you asking for?
• How much can you expect?
• Do you have a matching/gap donor in the wings should you be close but not at your goal an hour before the deadline?
• How are you sustaining a respectful follow up and communication with your backers after deadline and until you can deliver on Your promised goods?

What did I forget?

Enjoy and let me know how it went….

Crowd Funding - The Basics - Part 1

For a few months now I’ve been saving links (in the not so old days it would have been news clipping slowly yellowing in a folder) about crowd funding and on Kickstarter in particular. I have enough material (and opinions) at this point to start a series. And you guessed right: here’s a (mini) series on the general topic of crowd funding. I’ve known about Kickstarter and its counterpart IndieGoGo since 2009 and I have used IndieGoGo for a distribution outreach for my film Abraham’s Children with mixed results. 

Both online platforms have gotten press of late with new investors for IndieGoGo and the announcement that Kickstarter was chosen by the World Economic Forum as one of the technology pioneers of 2012. For the WEF report click here.

To set crowd funding into context, Bill Clark (@austinbillc) wrote a recap of the history of crowd funding on Mashable‘s, September 15th, 2011 issue. I highly recommend reading this short article.

Yesterday Kickstarter announced on their blog that they have as of last week 1 million backers and Mashable announced today that Kickstarter surpassed $100 million in pledges. To put this into context the fiscal year 2011 budget for the National Endowment of the Arts is $154 million. At the current pace of more than $2 million in pledges each week, Kickstarter backers are pledging more than $100 million a year!

Let me give an example for those who are not following and are about to bounce off: on either website you can choose to support any project you like. Most likely you’re there because someone sent you a heart throbbing email asking for your support. Let’s say you choose to support an independent documentary with $25 that gives you in return a DVD of the film once it’s finished. The film (project) is looking to raise $10,000 to pay for music licensing rights and has a fundraising deadline of January 24th, 2012. Your credit card only gets charged after the deadline passes and if the project has raised at least its proclaimed goal of $10K by the deadline. Otherwise your pledge goes uncollected (and the project does not get made and you do not get the DVD). Each project has different levels of support. It can be $1 for your name to be listed as a supporter on the project’s website, to $5,000 for a cameo in the film or a singing part on a music album. The sky is the limit. 

The statistics that Kickstarter put out yesterday are very interesting: most notably that the biggest contributions happen in the $11 -$25 range (nearly half of the 100 million raised to date – 30 months since inception). The number that really interested me however is how many projects were successful. Note: on Kickstarter (unlike IndieGoGo of the old days) your fundraising has a time limit set to it, which seemed counterintuitive to me at first and was the reason why I chose IndieGoGo over Kickstarter in 2009 for Abrahams’ Children – but, the urgency that a time limit creates is of great value when raising funds (this for all the procrastinators out there). Of $100 million pledged, about $84 million where successful and about $12 million failed and $5 million where given “live” meaning off line. Unfortunately there are no stats on how many actual projects that translates into.

This fund raising model does two things, it a creates the above mentioned urgency and secondly protects a supporter from giving money to a project that will never happen for lack of having reached a fundraising goal. The challenge for the filmmaker in our example is to make sure that the limit set for the raising of funds is realistic but not so low that several campaigns are needed to deliver on the goods promised to backers. And this is the biggest challenge with films; documentary or fiction: our budgets are not in the single digit “K” range, but mostly in the 100K plus range. How much do we rely or have to rely on crowd funding?

Do we fundraise in many different steps and run the risk of stressing our welcome with friends, fans and followers, or do we run the risk of setting our goal too high and not reaching it by the deadline? Not to speak of the fact, that these campaigns are a huge amount of work. Uploading your project on either Kickstarter or IndieGoGo does not mean anybody is going to support it. There are entire social media outreach strategies behind these campaigns in conjunction with old fashioned ways of communicating, like email, and – yikes - phone calling. You need to produce at least one pledge video and a plethora of ancillary graphic, writing and other creative materials – which are all fun to create but can cost money and definitely will add the ‘time sink’ called independent movie making.

What is your experience? Care to share?

Next: reaching out to those backers of yours.

The Future of Storytelling from a Documentarian’s POV

Chris Brogan’s series of posts on the future of media, work, marketplaces and community got me thinking about the future of storytelling.

The future of storytelling is non-linear (sadly, as far as I’m concerned), media centric and for that reason flexible, I would venture to guess also more fragmented and modular. Storytelling will be increasingly interactive, in cases even crowd-sourced, free and digital. Copyright will get a run for its money and will need to reinvent itself. Curation of content will take on a big role. I also think the message of the story will become more important.

The message has always been the core for documentaries; and maybe I’m co-mingling message with truth. As documentaries will have to adapt further to non-linear, media centric, flexible, interactive and free – how does that change the story? Marshall McLuhan: “The Medium is the Message”, says that societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the medium by which people communicate than by the content of the communication.

Where IS the message? Where IS the story? What story does the medium itself give us and how will it shape us into the future? How will eternal story lines of Romeo and Juliet, Pygmalion and the Iliad come to us? Is the internet the message or the medium or ultimately the meta-medium. I would suspect all three.

Small Moments

Last night I was invited to the North-East Regional fundraiser for the Boys and Girls Club of America. Thirteen youth competed for a spot to their National competition in DC that day. They had been grilled during the entire day and then spoke for two minutes each before a sell-out crowd of about 150 at the fundraising dinner.

The young lady who won, Dempsey sat after the tables had all cleared and most guests had left, alone at her table with the gigantic mock up check from the Reader's Digest Foundation in her lap. It was a beautiful moment, noticed first by a woman who works for RD. I looked around for a camera and saw the young woman's sister's camera and asked her to take a picture - for herself - of this lovely and intimate moment. At that point another video producer who was at the table with us jumped into action, walked over, pulled the check into the light and made sure it was well visible for the camera. I was shocked.

First for the fact that I had not thought to do that myself and then that I had that reaction to begin with. My instinct was right - and it was a documentarians instinct and not a corporate video producers, it was a beautiful intimate moment, perfect for the camera of Dempsey's family and the checks amount or donor where at that moment irrelevant. But the other producer's instinct was great too - capture this intimate moment but make sure it's relevant for her client RD, even at the risk of losing the magic.

Can one wear both hats as a corporate director and a documentarian? Where are my instincts stronger? Had I reacted differently if RD was my active client? How many hats can we wear effectively, especially in a creative environment?

How many hats do you wear?