I have a love-hate relationship with crowdfunding. I hate having to promote myself, but I know it's necessary. I hate having to beg for money, but I know it's not really begging. In a perfect world, the door will open and someone, not my parents, will enter who believes in me and supports me financially in all my decisions.
The perfect world metaphor is overplayed, but it fits.
We used crowdfunding for my latest project: A web series about life as a 30 year-old - the time when we're supposed to be adults, but don't know how to be adults. The first season is 6 episodes, 15 pages an episode. We were in talks with a producer and that fizzled out, so we looked to crowdfunding as a source. The team behind the show was optimistic. I was not. I knew the struggles with crowdfunding from the countless stories I'd hear from fellow filmmakers.
These are productions with people, both in front of and behind the camera, that have significant credits under their name. If they couldn't wrangle enough money for their productions, then I didn't hold out hope for us. Don't misinterpret realism for defeatism. No one, including me, is a bankable talent. We just don't have enough credits at this time in any of our careers.
Our goal was the first season of the series and we asked for 50K. I knew we wouldn't get this. We weren't ready. We weren't prepared. Our perks weren't perky enough. The effort was there. What we were offering in return for funding wasn't enough. Again, my colleagues were hopeful, so we pushed forward.
One of the necessary components of crowdfunding is a consistent social media presence throughout the campaign. You need to be posting every day, multiple times a day through any and every social media portal. We did this, but when Facebook primarily consists of your friends and family and often times the two interchange with your production team, you're not reaching a whole lot of people. We did what we could on Twitter and Instagram, but still, it wasn't enough.
Out of our asking amount of 50K, we raised 2K. We used Indiegogo. They give you the option of flexible funding (for a fee). That allows you to keep anything you raise, even if you don't meet the goal. Kickstarter is all or nothing. You make your stated goal or you go home empty handed.
We took the 2K and shot several commercials and a pilot episode. The pilot takes place prior to the events of the first season. An introduction to the characters and a chance to create a content was what crowdfunding afforded our project. To me, that's a success. We would've still been talking about making our show if we never tried crowdfunding. We may have raised only 4% of our goal, but it was 4% more than we had at the time.
No comments:
Post a Comment