Day: June 8, 2010

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Truly Free Film

A Nice Example of Well Planned KickStarter “Rewards”

Check out Amos “the avatar of no-wave cinema” Poe’s KickStarter page‘s pledge incentives for his new translation of Dante’s “La Commedia” for an example of well thought out rewards.  There are low ones that most will skip over so that they don’t think themselves cheap.  There are high ones that feel out of reach but encourage you to also reach higher.  They give a DVD (which frankly could have been a digital download) at the the second lowest level.  Even if I didn’t know, like, and respect Amos and his work, I might be inspired to give (I did).

Update 6/9: It has been pointed out that offering profits via KickStarter may not be legal, so get your lawyer to weigh in on that before trying it at home. When Amos & Co. they took the share of profits off the “offering” (ain’t it great how easy it is to change things in this digital age?).

And check back here tomorrow for some thoughts from Amos on the current creative environment.

Categories
These Are Those Things

Just Like PB&J, It’s Rock&Roll & Film

Founded by filmmaker Allison Anders and musician/daughter Tiffany Anders, Don’t Knock The Rock Film And Music Festival, Los Angeles has been bringing amazing off the radar films and live performances to the sophisticated music nerd and diehard music fan for the past 6 years.

For those of you who don’t know the fest, and don’t want to take my word for it, Variety just gave them a nice shout out.

Now the festival needs your help and has started a KickStarter campaign to show you how.  If you are in Los Angeles, you particularly don’t want to miss this, as the awards are, not surprisingly, a bit festival-centric.

Categories
Truly Free Film

Thoughts On Audience Building

Today’s guest post is from filmmaker (and mind map builder!) Mike Ambs.

In a recent post here, Ted Hope listed “38 More Ways The Film Industry is Failing Today“; many of the questions and points made among the 38 stood out to me, and I’ve spent the last several days trying to openly brainstorm steps that could lead towards change. But today, I wanted to write about one in particular: Ted asked why we don’t encourage, or even demand, that a film build it’s audience (say, 5,000 fans) prior to production and greenlight.

For starters, I love the idea of audience builds. I think the practice of audience builds before a film gets too far off the ground would be a great shift in how we think of films, how we approach them, how to involve the audience long before they ever sit down in a theater – but it raises a few key issues:

Filmmaking is storytelling, and stories are told many different ways and take very different paths. Because of this, it might not be the best idea to mandate audience builds. One reason for this is it could, if taken advantage of, create yet another “door” that is opened easier only for some.

So the real question is, “why” take this route?

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