#Creative Professional Conclusions FILM 303 PCA FILM BLOG POST | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

zacharyleishmanfilmstudent · 4 years ago

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FILM 303 Creative Professional Conclusions: Crowdfunding and Sourcing Deep Dive – Lecture Notes and Thoughts:

This session featured a deep dive look into the many resources available to secure and utilise crowdfunding in for our grad film projects, or for use in future projects across our practice. The session was designed to discuss the many options available to us to secure funding, and then use this research to begin planning how we may utilise these resources.

Crowdfunding as a concept in itself is fairly simple. In all productions, producers are required to develop a budget that covers all below and above line costs from cast to shooting and development processes. This budget is typically financed by a studio but frequently in independent endeavours media makers have to find means to finance themselves.

The most common form of funding independent filmmakers can gain is found through crowdfunding. Taking the place of the involvement of friendly investors, this is where strangers who have been convinced to donate to the project contribute to the budget with their own money, in an effort to support the project/creator.

Crowdfunding can come in three different forms. All take place usually on social media the forms consisting of, equity crowdfunding, where investors receive a return on their payment, rewards crowdfunding where non-financial incentives are offered for donations and finally simple donation crowdfunding which is just simply charity.

Rewards crowdfunding is the most popular and the method I have the most experience with and would personally offer. It is the less risky option should your production run into issues and you find yourself unable to return funds to your investor and is ultimately a good show of gratitude in any small form to your backers.

Rewards crowdfunding involves the artist offering specific rewards once certain milestones are achieved in your push to gain funding. An example of this could be offering concept art, a copy of the script, pieces of your soundtrack or early test screenings. It assures the donor of the feasibility of your project, that actual work is going towards it, whilst also maintaining interest in the project, possibly helping develop communities around it, if enough people want to work to access all of your available rewards. It is effective in being in its own way, supplementary content creation but does also pose the risk of fitting into the gig economy, you are putting all of your eggs in one basket and there is zero guarantee of success.

The overall benefits do though greatly outweigh the risks. It generates a maintained social media presence for your work, doesn’t come across as corporate, allows you to directly appeal and pander to niche audiences and you can sometimes be lucky enough to gain extra funds even after the donation period has ended.

There are several platforms on which artists can crowdfund but possibly the two platforms that bare the most use and benefit to my practice are Kickstarter and Patreon. Kickstarter is effectively the epitome of the rewards crowdfunding system previously discussed. A site specifically designed to creators to pitch projects and find support it operates on a reward system utilised to draw up attention but is reliant on the project reaching its total funding goal to access any of the funds you’ve gained during the process.

Patreon in contrast to this differs in that it is a support network for artists not their projects. Here artists can offer rewards in return for directly funding their livelihood. Used particularly by YouTubers they offer rewards such as exclusive content or direct communication in return for money they use when ad revenue is not available. There are no direct downsides to Patreon but there is a very tricky formula to maintaining audience interest and does require you to be producing regular and quality content if not quality rewards to make the donation seem worthwhile.

Both have been used to scam and cheat certain audiences and like any social media there are adverts for even the most useless and inane of the causes. However, both platforms can be used to really provide positive support to creatives and really help make or break their art in a time where it is increasingly difficult for artist to gain the likes of major studio support or just have their platform on which they operate, treat them fairly.

After having discussed the styles and functionality of these platforms we were tasked individually with researching the successful instances artists have found on these platforms and then determine how we might create our own campaign or programme on these platforms.

An extremely successful Kickstarter campaign that I have previously researched at great lengths due to the sheer impressiveness of its success, is the Kickstarter campaign for the Indie hit game, ‘Shovel Knight’. Through Kickstarter, indie development team Yacht Club games were able to launch their 8-bit homemade platformer into one of the industry’s most beloved and well-known titles.

The success of Shovel Knight was born out of the game not just being a legitimately fantastic product but through the approach Yacht Club took when trying to fundraise for the project. Setting the bare minimum target for their total goal their approach focused on acquiring what was necessary, it made the project seem trustworthy. The team wasn’t seemingly asking for any more than they needed just what they needed to make the game and survive financially. The honesty present was a huge reason to place trust in this team, when the platform had previously been used to take excessive amounts of money from fans and not committing it to the actual listed project, as seen in the case of the now industry hated ‘Mighty Number 9’.

Gaining publicity for the game was something Yacht Club was able to quickly get their hands on, sending early test models of the game’s beginning stages to streamers focused on retro game content, attracting both their fans and support. It signalled this was a project that was meant for the fans and was a love letter to the fans who missed this era of games as well as to the era itself.

The real killer of this Kickstarter however were the reward tiers. The make-or-break factor of many a Kickstarter, Yacht Club promised new character campaigns that would be released as full DLC once the stretch goals for the main game had been reached. Effectively saddling themselves with even more work, work that they didn’t finish until years after the full game’s eventual release in 2014, the team once again sold donors on Shovel Knight as a product. This was not a one and done hit, this was a product that would be supported and would become a long-time investment to the fans good enough to believe in the product.

A larger risk had the game failed, but one that they were ultimately able to pull off, the main lessons I would take from this campaign is the importance of getting your name out amongst the fans and giving them decent incentives to back you that are actually valuable.

A Kickstarter campaign is not something I intend to start for my grad project film ‘Eulogy’ given the film has already been self-financed and doesn’t likely require further funds. However, I still believe that the project could possess a strong campaign that offered a variety of rewards to those who chose to donate. The budget I would hypothetically want to reach would range between £200-£300 and whilst lacking the funds or manpower of Yacht Club to produce the same quantity of rewards or the scale they possessed I would still attempt to produce a quality and modest set of rewards.

£1 Patrons = Name in credits and a signed copy of the script

£5 Patrons = Name in credits, signed copy of the script and behind the scenes featurettes and commentary videos

£10 Patrons = Name in credits, signed copy of the script, BTS videos and original limited print of the artwork featured in the film.

£20 Patrons = All of the above and early access screening of both work in progress and final cuts of the film.

These rewards I would envision to be a decent incentive for donors to consider donating and given the low rate of the budget and rewards available at every tier, it seems likely that even if the majority of donations were on the lowest tiers, I may still be able to finance the film and the donors will be thanked for their contribution.

A platform I do greatly intend to make use of in my future though is Patreon. Whether my practice continues to focus on filmmaking or not a great hope that I have is that I will be able to commit to the creation of video essay material on YouTube analysing media I have a knowledge and affinity for. Ad revenue is famously a poor means of supporting oneself through YouTube so if in some reality I could attract a following, I would offer a Patreon through which they could support me.

My Patreon model would be based on a current Patreon I currently donate to, the patreon for the ‘Let’s Fight a Boss’ podcast. An Irish podcast the trio discuss the media they’re consuming and offer livestreams of obscure video game series, their playthrough of ‘Shenmue’ being possibly their most famous content. Their Patreon model is quite modest, there not being many rewards, they can offer in a Podcast format but still being worthwhile enough in themselves. The rewards I have been able to access by donating, is access to their private discord for fellow patrons, shout outs for actual patrons during episodes of the podcast and access to exclusive episodes not featured on their channel.

Any rewards I would offer on Patreon would follow a similar model, I myself wanting to produce some similar digital rewards that also focuses on thanking and involving fans in my work to show gratitude for their charity. Whilst there’s no guarantee this plan will ever actually take shape, this is the hypothetical rewards system I have long planned to offer.

£1 Patrons = Name in the credits of videos and access to channel discord.

£5 Patrons = Name in credits, access to channel discord, a verbal shoutout at the end of the video and access to behind the scenes editing commentary videos.

£10 Patrons = All of the above with early access to videos, access to private vote to determine topic of videos and access to four Patreon exclusive videos not featured on YouTube.

This is model I think I could feasibly create and that ultimately isn’t greedy. I doubt I will commit to YouTube full time, but this is enough of a rate where I could consider it a viable side project/earning if I can hopefully develop enough of a following, and I believe this reward programme is quite generous in that regard and wouldn’t lead to burn out.

The many benefits and pitfalls of crowdfunding have been apparent to me even before I considered entering this industry myself. My desire to utilise crowdfunding within my current practice is undeniably minimal as I do not have the confidence to consider asking for money for an amateur project. However when my practice does eventually alternate to this new video essay focus, considering crowdfunding on Patreon will be completely necessary if it is media I want to make viable.

#Creative Professional Conclusions FILM 303 PCA FILM BLOG POST

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