Financing / Crowdfunding : Crowdfunding for a 30min film, where to start? by Tony Glaser

In general short films do not make money so people usually "invest" in the person - not the in the project hoping to make money. My advice is to look at the crowdfunding sites and see what others are doing. See what YOU like, what YOU might donate to. When you find one that inspires you to donate look at "why". You know the movie will be awesome so you have to inspire others to know that too. So come up with a great pitch - something that will make people who don't know you want to be involved. I'm sure you have a complete budget finished so you know exactly how much you need. Put together a great pitch video.

Yeah, my budget is done. The most important thing is paying my actors to me. I'll definitely start watching some pitch videos. I didn't even think of that.

While paying the actors is the most important thing to you I'm sure you think paying the crew is a little important.

The crew is a close knit group of guys I work with. We all talked it out and we agreed the most important thing is to pay the talent. If I have to get anymore outside help I'm definitely going to pay them.

Hi Tony, A successful crowdfunding campaign starts with the crowd. How big is your crowd? If your crowd only encompasses your friends and family your crowdfunding won't go very far. How much are you trying to raise?

My crowd is going to be mostly film festival goers. I want to see how far my first major project will go. Definitely SXSW, Cannes, Sundance, and whatever I can get my filmmaking fingers on. I'm revising the budget on how much I need for equipment, props, rental costs, crew and talent pay. I'm trying to raise 10k as a high ball. I know it won't get that but any little bit helps.

Hi Tony, I've seen people with as little as 200 Facebook loyal followers raise $6000 fairly quickly. That $10,000 should not be out of reach. I have 34,000 followers on my twitter account, send me the link and all blasted out a couple of times for you.

Tony, you say your crowd (those who will donate) are film festival goers. If film festival goers do not know you why do you think they will donate to your project. I understand they you will enter all the major fests, but do you feel people who attend fests generally donate to crowdfunding?

Thanks Franklyn! I appreciate it. I'll let you know when I'm done with it. Parker, you mean crowd donors! I thought you meant meant my audience, got it confused.

Yep, that's what I thought the discussion was about; crowdfunding. My GF is producing a movie and looking to crowdfunding so I'm soaking up what I can. The "crowd" seems to be the issue. A director I work for makes films for a specific niche market. He did a crowdfunding campaign to buy new equipment. Because he had a "crowd" he raised three times what he needed. I hope you keep us informed on your progress. I love success stories.

Yeah I don't exactly have a crowd specifically. That's something I'm still in the process of figuring out now. We're still planning the pitch video tonight and hope we can come up with a entertaining way to retain some attention to whomever sees it. It's definitely one of those issues on the back of my mind as I'm thinking of a way to get donors.

Hi Tony, If it was me I would have already started building my crowd months ago. Do you know any one with their own crowds that might be willing to talk to their crowd about your project? Or someone you might be able to reach out to like a group of reenactment club of some sort. For example, Maybe there's a group like the Civil War reenactment trupp but instead of Civil War maybe there's a 1930's mob reenactment trupp or club or something. These groups usually have a support network of well-wishers and friends, family, that you might be Able to tap into. Whatever you do, you are going to have to be creative at this late date.

I'll have to look into reenactments but I do have a ton of filmmaking networks here that I know would help out. So I think I'll see what I can find about 1930's reenactment. Thanks for the advise!

At least I'm not on a tight timeline so I can do more research.

Wow, interesting, so how does someone get a crowd for crowd funding?

Hi Rafael How to get a crowd for your crowd funding project depends on how creative you are. Everyone starts by asking friends, family and associates to help, but that only gets you so far. Somewhere down the line, you have to start reaching out to strangers. Now, depending on your film you might be lucky enough to find groups that might be willing to introduce your project to their members, like Civil War reenactment groups, if your film has something to do with the Civil War. You have to start thinking very creatively to find enough people for your project. Finding groups is only half the problem, once you are getting in front of people you need to get them to sign up for your email newsletter. Yes, get them to sign up for your email newsletter! Being able to talk to people through your newsletter in a person-to-person fashion is much more effective than you might think when it comes to raising funds for your project. You can turn people through a newsletter who are just well-wishers into donators over a little bit of time. And never underestimate the value of a well-wishers. Well-wishers may not donate directly to your fundraising campaign, but they can introduce your project to their friends and family as well as their business acquaintances, which can lead to more followers and donations. There are so many ways to do this, I can't possibly go through them all in this post! Just think outside the box and get a little creative and do the work, you'll have a better chance of reaching your goal.

Yeah I'm currently looking into some historic associations with ties do the content of the film. As well as looking into well populated areas on the internet that share the same interests as whats in the film. Starting to build that crowd.