This episode I'm joined by Richard Gale, creator of the short film "The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon," which is on its way to becoming a feature film thanks to a healthy festival run and a rabid YouTube fan base. Learn how Gale turned festival success into a cottage industry and a budget for a feature-length horror comedy.
Yes.
A young man in Ohio named Zack “Danger” Brown posted a Kickstarter project in early July with the modest goal of raising $10 to buy the ingredients for a potato salad. With 25 days left in the campaign, Brown has raised more than $30,000 from nearly 3000 backers. What can we learn from Mr. Brown and his crowdfunded bomb of mayo-soaked root vegetables?
By now you've probably heard about the nasty fallout of the delivery of digital downloads to Veronica Mars backers: the disappointed fans and the offers of refunds to backers who ended up buying copies of the film from Amazon and iTunes. It speaks a lot to how much services like iTunes have become the default entertainment ecosystems and the fact that, if you want to try to buck that trend with a Veronica Mars-shaped Trojan horse, the execution had better be flawless.
Kickstarter just posted this clever sub-section of their site that highlights some of the more remarkable Kickstarter-related moments and campaigns from the last twelve months. Stick with it to see the DeLorean Hovercraft and the human-powered helicopter.
Asking for money is an awkward thing. When the answer is "yes" it's great, but when it has to be "no," well, even saying "that's OK" gracefully can add to the uneasiness.
To avoid this, when I ask friends for contributions to a Kickstarter campaign (as I have been doing every day for the last two weeks), I make it clear that I'm only asking for a dollar. That's it. If they want to give more, great. We have some great rewards that anyone anywhere who loves film festivals will enjoy. But really, one dollar will make me really happy. Giddy even. A $1 request makes it really easy for the askee to say yes (almost everyone can pitch in a buck) and that $1 pledge carries way, way more weight than a simple tweet or a like.
Here's why.
 | The Better Film Festival Submissions Toolkit has a very simple purpose: to help you improve the way you submit your work to film festivals.
Divided into 7 core tasks with a discussion of each task, the 16-page Toolkit is designed for quick reading and gives you concrete, actionable tasks to make your film submissions package better. Best of all, you'll get the insight you need to better understand what programmers look for and how to submit with confidence. |
