» Posts Tagged ‘kickstarter’
I’ve always thought Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, and other crowdfunding platforms are actually “best” suited for gadgets and technology products where you pre-buy something out of self-interest (as opposed to helping someone make something, as you did with me). Despite this, on Kickstarter Film & Video was the largest category in 2011, which is a testament to the generosity and connectivity of the filmmaking community. Here are a couple of filmmaking-friendly products for DSLRs on Kickstarter, both of which are looking to lower the price point for follow focuses and remote-control helicopters: More »
Explore the Underwater Realm is an in-progress series of films that are getting a lot of attention in the filmmaking community, and for good reason. Not only are they making a series of ambitious underwater shorts, they’ve been releasing extremely helpful video tutorials during their Kickstarter campaign as well. I backed their project, and after watching these tutorials and checking out these rewards, I suspect many of you will want to follow suit! Seriously — the tutorials here are incredibly helpful. This is a guest post by director David M Reynolds.
I don’t know about you guys – but I don’t spend a lot of time looking for ways to give my money away. That said, it’s not difficult to squeeze cash out of me – all you have to do is show me something that is going to make my filmmaking better. More »
After the first week of my Kickstarter campaign for Man Child I mentioned that Kickstarter project creators should expect to be in the dark due to a lack of analytics for project creators. Let there be light! Today Kickstarter introduced a new creator dashboard, which should be a tremendous help for anyone trying to figure out which of their fundraising efforts are, well, paying off. More »
What if all of you who backed my campaign to make Man-child could actually have a stake in the film, so that if it makes money, you make money? I couldn’t offer you this, because in America, such profit participation is illegal thanks to the Securities and Exchange Commission. In many other countries it’s legal (see: The Age of Stupid’s brilliant campaign in the U.K.). However, thanks to the U.S. House passing the Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act last week, it seems this profit participation may soon become legal. If it does, crowdfunding as we know it could change tremendously, as will the fundamental structure of raising equity for small businesses (and films). More »
During the Man-child Kickstarter campaign I received a few questions about my pitch video, which included an animated example of the Kickstarter widget. This is not something that originated with my campaign — it was a creation of the filmmaking team Joke and Biagio, who first used it in their Dying to do Letterman campaign, and then shared it for anyone else to use. It’s a very nice tool to help illustrate how a crowdfunding campaign works, so if you’re going to run your own campaign, you might find this useful: More »
Here’s what I learned from running a $125,000 Kickstarter campaign for my feature film Man-child, which became the most funded project in Kickstarter’s narrative film category — for just one day, it turns out. More »
The Kickstarter campaign for Man-child ended successfully at 108% funded: $125,100!!! Thank you all so much — it’s been a dream come true. If you missed the deadline, you can still back the project here! According to Ustream we had over 1,300 views of our live video stream of the concluding party — the archive of the video is below. Thank you all for making this possible, from the bottom of my heart! Now the real work begins… More »
Exactly 24 hours left in the Man-child campaign, and we’re so close! Despite this screencap from my Twitter campaign video, I haven’t had a team to help. But what I have had is help from a lot of other websites! So in addition to writing a dozen posts about Man-child here on NoFilmSchool, participating in Independent Film Week, Facebooking and Twittering almost non-stop, and writing my own Press Release — all while simultaneously trying to post the latest helpful news about filmmaking here, as usual — I’ve also thankfully popped on a lot of other web sites. Some of these were guest posts, some were interviews, and some were posts written by others out of the simple desire to help the campaign. This has been a community effort that has made it this far thanks to, literally, thousands of people. I can’t say it enough: thank you so much for helping. It takes a village! As I say in the post title — and to use a sports analogy — I’ve left it all on the court. Now we’re on the cusp of making history together. Here’s a list of appearances elsewhere that I’ve been able to keep track of over the last 37 days: More »
I’ve learned a lot over the past 36 days of running a potentially record-breaking Kickstarter campaign for my film Man-child. The clock has switched from “days” to “hours” remaining and we may or may not make it! I’ve tried to share what I’ve learned about crowdfunding along the way, including a Ten Must-Read Posts Before Running Your Own Crowdfunding Campaign post. Here’s a second compilation of valuable posts.
One thing I learned after the first couple of weeks: I implemented an unsaid rule for my twitter account that I wouldn’t mention my film campaign (or retweet the mentions of others) unless I had talked about something else since my last mention of the campaign. There’s a balance between talking about yourself and remaining relevant. And while that might balance might have shifted over the past few days — there are only 2 days left, so my sense of urgency is overpowering the desire to show self-promotion restraint — this Twitter lesson is included in one post below.
As I say in the introduction to the first ten, “luck favors the prepared.” And in setting out to run this campaign, I read a whole lot more than ten posts. So here’s a second set of ten posts to read when preparing your own campaign. More »
I assume by now you’ve seen my Kickstarter video, which features two of me composited into one shot. Everyone knows how to do this — set up the camera on a tripod, don’t move it between takes, and film both sides one after the other — but it’s not a very “good” effect if you’re trying to go for something that isn’t so obvious. One way to make the effect more subtly convincing is to make it a handheld shot, and while I didn’t take my campaign video this far, I thought I’d use the video to show one way of compositing two people into a more naturalistic, shaky shot using After Effects. Here’s the tutorial (which is pretty basic, but may be educational to anyone new to After Effects): More »
Big news about Man-child today, thanks to you! Three things:
FIRST: with only ten days left in my campaign to make my first feature film, I just discovered that if we’re successful, we will make history. I didn’t start out with this goal in mind, but as I was exploring Kickstarter I found that if Man-child is funded it will become the single most funded project to be listed in Kickstarter’s narrative film category. Wow.
SECOND: we are officially most of the way there. Most of the way to making history, that is! 51% and counting. However, the campaign is ending next Friday. As you know by now, Kickstarter projects are all-or-nothing, so if we don’t make history we’ll make… nothing. Now is a great time to get on board!
THIRD: last week’s Twitter outreach campaign was extremely effective. Thank you to everyone who helped reach the basketball community — it was a classic case of “strength in numbers,” as I never could’ve done it alone. In fact, we now have a success story worthy of an official press release (after the jump). What happened? Well, we were able to reach none other than one of the greatest basketball coaches of all time: More »
As I say in the video, thank you guys so much for your support. We’ve gotten this far, but we’re past the halfway point and we’ve started falling behind. So I wanted to share a way you can help make the Man-child campaign a success — even if you don’t want to back the project (or if you already did — thank you!). Anyone who appears on the Twitter lists below is a prominent member of the basketball community. Let them know about this film — it’s a well-researched movie by an indie filmmaker who’s played basketball all his life (@ryanbkoo), it’s about part of the basketball world that you don’t normally see in the movies (the recruiting of middle schoolers), and it could really use their support! By reaching out to them as a community (and by talking amongst ourselves), let’s see if we can get #manchild trending this week on Twitter — together:
I’ve included some example tweets below. A couple more things: More »
Ever since those iPod Nano watches raised almost a million dollars on Kickstarter, it’s been clear that crowdfunding campaigns like helping an indie filmmaker make his first feature film pale in comparison to efforts where backers are simply pre-buying a cool gizmo. An alarmingly small percentage of the population is buying or renting movies, and it follows that it’s harder to persuade folks to back a project if the only reward is a DVD — thus my effort to also send the unique frames of Man-child to backers, so they’ll receive a more personalized reward for helping make it a reality. Okay, back to the gizmos, as this one’s very cool: CineSkates are a set of custom-designed rollerblade wheels paired with a Joby Gorillapod Focus tripod that allow for some very cool low-angle shots with an HDSLR. Check out the Kickstarter campaign, which reached its funding goal in a single day and still has over a month to go: More »
Ten down, twenty-eight days to go. I’m learning as I go with the Kickstarter campaign for ‘Man-child’, which just passed 500 backers! In addition to last week’s Ten Must-Read Posts Before Running Your Own Crowdfunding Campaign, I thought I’d jot down some some thoughts, tips, and quotes from the first week of my campaign, which has included some triumphs — and mistakes. If you’re considering trying to crowdfund a project in the future, I hope these notes will be helpful. More »
I just launched a Kickstarter campaign for my first feature film (seen at left), and I hope if you’re reading this that you’ll help me turn my dream into reality. Seriously: my entire life has been leading up to this, and I can’t do it without you. However, this site has always been about helping others while I’m learning these things myself, so I kept track of all the valuable posts I found during my research. If you’re thinking running your own crowdfunding campaign — defined as asking for small amounts of money from a large number of people, as opposed to asking for large amounts of money from a small number of people — consider the following posts essential reading. I should note on my own campaign that there are some great rewards available — get the entire film for just $10, or get a producer credit for $120!
Louis Pasteur once said, “chance favors the prepared mind.” If you use an all-or-nothing platform like Kickstarter, as I am, you’re taking a huge chance: if you don’t make your goal, you get nothing. To prepare, then, I read everything I could get my hands on. Here are ten of the most helpful posts for anyone thinking about launching their own fundraising effort on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or any of the other crowdfunding sites: More »
Here it is, at long last: my first feature, Man-child. I’ve spent the past year writing it and many more years dreaming about it. I’ve just launched an ambitious Kickstarter campaign to try to turn the dream into reality, and I’m hoping and praying that, if you’ve found NoFilmSchool to be a valuable resource, you’ll consider helping me. I hope to share everything I learn during the production of the film here on this site, going beyond DSLRs and technology, and getting into more content about financing, directing, producing, the film festival circuit, distribution… absolutely everything I learn along the way. But of course, to do that I have to make the movie first, and I need your help to do so! More »
Novacut is a work-in-progress HTML5-based collaborative editor that is currently fundraising on Kickstarter. It will run as a desktop application, but will also be made available in an online incarnation, and the entire project is open-source. It’s different from established NLEs like Avid, Premiere Pro, and Final Cut Pro in that it’s being designed from the ground up to allow editors to collaborate in real time over the internet. Here’s Arin Crumley (Four Eyed Monsters) and Christie Strong on the NLE: More »
Here’s an interesting interview with Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler, wherein he talks about the history of the popular crowdfunding web site. The interviewer for ThisWeekIn is entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, whose Weblogs, Inc. network I used to write for (DVguru, to be specific). Even if you’re already familiar with Kickstarter, it’s a great story — including the tidbit that films have collectively raised 25 million dollars (!) to date: More »
Many folks seem to think that crowdfunding is some magical new way of raising money that works like the Staples Easy Button. People love to talk about the success stories, but of course there are hundreds of campaigns that fail (and no one hears about them). With this in mind, marketing and publicity specialist Sheri Candler has written a great post about mistakes to avoid when about running a Kickstarter or IndieGogo fundraising campaign. Her post is a must-read for anyone thinking about crowdfunding. Here’s one of her reasons: More »
Now that U.S. troops are leaving Iraq, we’ll probably be hearing a lot less about Iraq and a lot more about Afghanistan (and innocuous mosques) in the daily news. But that is not to say that the ongoing conflicts in Iraq will be lessened in any way, other than in our perception. One such Iraqi conflict relates to rise of homophobia in the muslim world. From Baghdad to Brooklyn is a DIY documentary focused on this conflict, though after watching the trailer I did find myself left with one complaint. Well, two really: More »
Samuel: One note about the upgrade policy: Adobe took a step back and gave more le… Are You Ready to Make Adobe a Utility? Creative Cloud to Launch Alongside …
Ryan Koo: Working professionals. Are You Ready to Make Adobe a Utility? Creative Cloud to Launch Alongside …
Thomas M: I think this would be great for a company that needs to temporarily add se… Are You Ready to Make Adobe a Utility? Creative Cloud to Launch Alongside …
James: John....your a dink. If you are producing anything for clients I hope they… Are You Ready to Make Adobe a Utility? Creative Cloud to Launch Alongside …
John Jeffreys: who actually pays for adobe software Are You Ready to Make Adobe a Utility? Creative Cloud to Launch Alongside …