“The rules on what is possible and impossible in the arts were made by people who had not tested the bounds of the possible by going beyond them. And you can.”
This is a line from a great commencement speech Neil Gaiman gave at the University Of The Arts. You can read the whole beautiful thing here:
http://www.uarts.edu/neil-gaiman-keynote-address-2012
Or watch it here:
By Colin Brown
In The Wall Street Journal, Slated was described as “Soho House for film financing, due to the requirement that you must be invited to be a member.” Another point of reference could just as easily have been AngelList. For those unfamiliar with this game-changing website, AngelList is a powerful funding vehicle that connects startups with a who’s who of early stage venture capitalists, high-net-worth individuals and angel investors. Simply put: AngelList is to Silicon Valley what Slated is to the film industry.
AngelList is a transformation-in-the-making that points the way forward for other long cloistered industries including entertainment. While the basic principles for investing in startups remains pretty much the same, the tactics have been evolving fast. You could say the same about film investing. Every few months, in fact, AngelList inspires a revised set of behavioural tips and conduct codes for successful fundraising, smarter investing and more effective profile-building in that particular sandbox. Here are links to five such lists:
All these articles are worth reading for their own sake, if only to get a keener sense of how Silicon Valley thinks about the business of backing disruptive ideas. As you read, keep in mind too that today’s technology angels are likely to be tomorrow’s film investors – and that these are the investment rules and social metrics that they’ll choose to play by.
But for those in film who like to cut to the chase, I have synthesized these fifty-some observations and distilled them into seven core pointers that are of more immediate relevance to equity crowdfunding platforms such as Slated. In so many ways these tips are simply adaptations of what already works in the elaborate real world of film networking – only they have the potential to work much faster:
And, finally, be aware that you are at the forefront of transformational change. As such, the rules of engagement will be in an inevitable state of flux, particularly in these early learning days.
Editorial Director of Slated
Check out “Kickstarter: Fan Empowerment … or Exploitation? “on Metro Magazine on why I think crowdfunding is so powerful – scroll to bottom here to find it: http://www.metromagazine.com.au/magazine/index.html
If you watched “RYAN” last week on this blog, you know of which I speak. If you haven’t start there and then come back.
This short was conceived and animated by Ryan Larkin.
I watched four movies the other day, and it was a wide variety at that. This is my favorite time of year — the time when film festivals entice me to binge on numerous occasions for numerous days in a row. Yet, I am entering this season, with some real dread: a fear that my most recent conclusion will soon be verified. I know I can never get enough movies but at the same time I think we need to halt much of what we are doing — if not making the films, then some of the ways we go about it.
For the first time in about twenty five years, I have had a year off from truly producing. I am not trying to earn the lion share of my income from generating new work, and after being slave to that dictate for so long, it is a welcome relief that hopefully grants me some new perspective. Nonetheless, I still define myself as an indie producer, and as such now damn myself as well as all my comrades when I look at our culture, its results, and I attempt to see things as they really are.
Indieland is cursed. We are sick and infected.
Join me, Rena Ronson, Brian Oliver, Paul Miller, & Andrew Eaton @ TIFF Financing & Packaging Panel Saturday Sept 7 1130A Hyatt Regency Hotel, Toronto. Sydney Levine moderates. This is going to be a good one, chock full of the information needed to get your movie made, and populated by a group of diverse perspectives.
“an intimate conversation on pulling it all together, either when working from an indie structure or when established resources are available”
But it should be FUN because I believe that virtually EVERYTHING that is considered “best practices” in terms of Indie “Financing & Packaging” is absolutely wrong — and I have a better way to offer!
by Kirsty Stark (Producer), Ella Macintyre (PMD) and Victoria Cocks (Writer/Director)
Part 2. Promotion: How We Drove our Prologue to 100,000 views in 3 Days
The day we posted our three-minute Wastelander Panda Prologue online, our intention was to share it with friends, with the hope that others would also enjoy it. The accessibility and overwhelming amount of content on the Internet gives you a sense that you can easily put something up and people will find it. What we realized is that realistically, you have to put it in front of them. The evening we uploaded it, we happened to be at our friend Ella Macintyre’s house. She’s one of those people that has grown up on the Internet, and knows it backwards and forwards – which blogs are owned by which media companies, who pays attention to whose content, and how information spreads from one place to the next. The first thing she asked us was “So, where are you sending this thing?”
Despite our initial ignorance, and lack of prior planning, we managed to have our Prologue seen by over 100,000 people in its first three days online.
