Financing Your Project: Kickstarter

The Internet to a filmmaker is one of the greatest places one can go to promote their film. With the popularity of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook as well as YouTube it is no surprise that these resources are among the best to help spread the word about your production. Now, filmmakers can focus their attention to the Internet for more then just film promotion;  the opportunity to finance your film over the web is now becoming very popular for independent filmmakers. Thanks to a website called Kickstarter (www.kickstarter.com) filmmakers can set up a page for their production and accept donations for the film all through there project page. 

How easy could it get? Financing a film is supposed to be one of the greatest challenges of filmmaking, but thanks to kickstarter they are making this daunting task seem much more doable.  Since 2009, Kickstarter has funded a near 1,500 productions and has dished out over $10 million. What gets even better than that is that this year at Sundance a total of 5 of the films in the festival were all funded through kickstarter.

Taking the search for funding to the internet provides many opportunities to the independent filmmaker. Producer Kim Jackson said that “As a producer, any platform that provides new opportunities for funding resources is a good thing, especially when you retain 100% ownership.” If all goes as plan and your project gets funded a major bonus to the production is that is shows distributors that people have an interest in the film and it can potentially be a success.

Why fund a project? I think this is something that the team starting up the fund needs to really keep in mind when establishing their fundraising page. As people review their page they are going to be asking themselves why should I give them my money? I think to really hook potential investors you need to introduce them to the topic in a way that really sparks their interest. I feel that an effective approach to this may be by having the films producer, director, and other above the line crew come together to create a sort of pre-production documentary.  Having these keys introduce the project and explain what they will bring to it from their department, I feel is an extremely effective way to show that the production has potential and it should be funded.

When people have donated there hard earned money to your fund, I think it is very important to thank each and every person no matter how small of a donation. Keeping ties to the video concept, I see it being appropriate to send a thank you video from the crew to all those who donated. As the production continues on sending these people video updates showing what there money is being put to use to is something that can make your many investors feel more involved in the process. To those who donate a pretty penny to the fund, I see it being important to credit these individuals in the film with some sort of producer credit. Also I think getting these investors involved directly with the production and inviting them on set will really make them feel they put their money into something good.

Kickstarter is defiantly the new way of funding films in today’s Internet age. With the ease that this service provides there is no need to look anywhere else for financing for your project. Whether it be film, theater, photography, dance, or music kickstarter is the place to get your project up and running!