Comments on: Crowd Funding vs. Hybrid Film Financing

By: George Maynard

George Maynard — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 05:41:54 +0000

Dear Bloggers:
Creative financing is a major concern that we, at Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, Concordia University Montreal, try to instill into our students, especially those individuals whom are planning to produce their own art cinema kind of work, what ever that may be. We teach a graduate course in film production, titled Developmental Stage/Phase Filmmaking, we try to address the needs of our students with state and federal financial agencies, as well as, more private avenues that require some intelligent self promotion and project advertisement. With that said, we could start such a dialogue about a very difficult subject, as to how do we, independent filmmakers, finance our own movie projects, without going bankrupt in the process? Good luck with the debate. Bye!
Truly yours (at your disposal for Q & A),
George Maynard, BSc, BFA, MSc, MFA, Graduate Level Film Production,
Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, Concordia University, Montreal QC.

By: Peter E. Jackson

Peter E. Jackson — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 22:49:05 +0000

Stacey

Not sure if you saw this posting on Crowd Funding. If not, I thought I would pass it along to you.

SEC Insight into Film Crowdfunding Via a Public Securities Offering

By: ryan

ryan — Wed, 26 May 2010 14:13:04 +0000

This is a great post – but I just want to point out that crowd-funding isn’t as easy as it sounds. I’m trying to raise money for the printing of a series of books for toddlers to help them build cognitive skills (worldoflil.com) – which, I know isn’t a film, but still has the principles – and once you tap your family and friends the big challenge is – how do i get anyone not associated with me already to jump in? Or even to become aware of the project. Questions such as this need to be answered before you start your raise… I tried to do this to the best of my ability and am still just 1/3 raised with about 35 days to go via kickstarter. It’s not as easy as ‘build it and they will come’.

The sites out there for crowdsourcing, such as Kickstarter or IndieGoGo, are great – and they allow anyone with an amazon account already set up to make a payment or pledge rather easily – but you still have the step of having to sign up for their site. I think once they figure this out (ie, allow users to make a pledge without signing up for their site) it will increase the amount of people who make a pledge. Because most of our family and friends aren’t heading back to donate. They are one and done on our project – and if it isn’t mindless and two clicks away they aren’t going to do it.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 25 May 2010 04:14:03 +0000

I think you might find this video that Alon from Invested.in made interesting: http://blog.invested.in/2010/05/alonymouss-5-tips-for-a-successful-crowdfunding-campaign-video/

By: Lakshmi

Lakshmi — Thu, 20 May 2010 03:38:18 +0000

Hi Stacy:

I’m just getting into the world of raising money for my film, and I wonder iif you could provide links to those “…but I’ve also seen some really impressive individual websites with video presentations on them” that you mention in your post?

Thanks for the great articles.
Lakshmi

By: Pierre Samuel Rioux

Pierre Samuel Rioux — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 18:18:49 +0000

Hi
In some country this way to get the money is not Legal so the first ting to look is there.
In Canada get well informed before because it’s could cost you 100,000 to 200,000 to be legal.
My point of view is stay a way of this if you are Canadian.

By: Sonja

Sonja — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 07:10:41 +0000

Is there a rule of thumb, how much crowd funding costs the producer in terms of accounting and documentation responisbility towards the investors?

By: Matthew Griffin

Matthew Griffin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:54:03 +0000

I agree, I don’t think it can be a single funding source situation anymore for the super indie producer. But the really exciting thing about the possibilites that are being realized with digital fundraising and promotion is that to a greater and greater extent it’s completely unnecessary to go crawling to anyone when you want to get your movie made. It’s a great day to be an indie moviemaker.

By: IndependentFilmLover

IndependentFilmLover — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:30:16 +0000

Crowdsourcing seems the most popular technique for indie film makers to raise funds at the moment and a great example of how digital media and technologies are helping first time auteurs realise their vision on their terms. The Lord of the Rings fan film Born of Hope raised fund this way too i think, and thats a damn impressive production!

By: Nick Loritsch

Nick Loritsch — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 17:03:15 +0000

We supplemented our initial, seed money, using Crowd Funding and were able to wrangle a decent amount. See our site here – http://www.bornandraisedmovie.com/

Nick Loritsch