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…)

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…)

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…)

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:

• http://koo.co/nbaplayers
• http://koo.co/nbamedia
• http://koo.co/nbabloggers

I’ve included some example tweets below. A couple more things: (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…)