The 26th Interfilm festival for shortfilms was held in Berlin last week. In addition to some great screenings I also attended the ShortFriday event, which included a panel on crowdfunding. This year crowdfunding has become a buzzword in Germany as well, which is underlined by the fact that three new crowdfunding platforms have gone online during October and November.
The groundrules for crowdfunding
On the panel were the founders of these three platforms (Startnext, Pling and Inkubato) as well as Aaron Koenig from Bitfilm, a veteran player in shortfilm distribution. The speakers formulated a few rules for a project to have success with crowdfunding:
- Your community is everything. Without word of mouth and a positive ring to your project you cannot raise financing through crowdfunding. Many successfully crowdfunded productions employ half or full time community managers to keep in touch with their tribe.
- The artist is at the heart of all crowdfunding efforts. You cannot sign up to one of the platforms with a project and just expect the money to roll in. You have to give your financiers a good reason to part with their hard earned money, just as with any other sale. Like the often repeated mantra of film financing goes, “at the end of the day, people invest in you“.
- Giving back is important. The producer does not share any IP-rights of the film in exchange for money donated by the crowd, so he has to compensate these supporters and early adopters in another way. The possibilities are endless, from signed special edition dvd’s to invitations to visit the set during filming. The point being: Why would someone give you money up front, instead of waiting and deciding when he sees the finished product.
When does it work?
So what kinds of films does this financing model suit? Koenig from Bitfilm summarised it well. It works best if
- you need a small amount of money (my guess would be between 500 and 5000 euros). This is still possible for anyone through dedicated effort and mobilising your tribe, and may well take your no-budget film from being a pipe dream to being a reality.
- you are a name in the business. Koenig’s example was that Quentin Tarantino would say that he’s had enough of the Weinstein brothers and now seeks crowdfunding for his next film. With his critical mass of fans this could work out.
- you have a controversial subject for your film, like the crowdfunding success The Age of Stupid. This requires that people feel strongly enough about your message, so that they want to make sure the film gets made.
In the end, Koenig said, if your film has enough commercial potential you don’t need crowdfunding, but will be able to find the money elsewhere.
Conclusions
I’d say that crowdfunding has it’s specialist uses, but it is not a wonder instrument for financing any kind of film. If your project benefits from the features mentioned above, and you’re prepared to do the leg work, it is an interesting avenue to explore. It could also be very useful in financing development, a phase that is often heavy on expenses and short on funding.
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