Category: Truly Free Film

Last week Jennifer Fox shared with us her 22 year process to getting her latest film made. Today, she share what she has learned about aiming for a six figure raise on Kickstarter. Will she make it? Well, it all starts with you…. Make it happen. I contributed. And now she’s giving back to the community — perhaps you can complete the karmic chain and give to her. There’s less than five days left!

The first thing everyone will tell you about a Kickstarter campaign is Tip #1: Reach out to your family. I must say this is not news to me. I have been reaching out to my parents all my life, long before Kickstarter. The older I get, the more I wonder if I could have lived such a high-risk artist’s life without their support. To give you just one example: when I dropped out of NYU film school at age 21, after only one year, to shoot a film in the war in Lebanon, they didn’t blink an eye. When I made a six-hour series on my sex life (and the lives of other women including those in my family), instead of disowning me, they came to the Sundance Film Festival and did a Q & A with me on stage. My parents always had a unique vision: My mom was a professional musician who loved art, film and theater, who would only give me blank sheets of paper to draw on as a child (no coloring books) – so that I would develop my creativity. My dad, who was a homebuilder and businessman, regaled us with the joys of entrepreneurship at the dining room table each night, the way some fathers talk about baseball. They succeeded in instilling in me a profound belief in my own creative vision, something that is very hard to teach. I often wish I could rent my parents out to my film students. In retrospect, that I am a film Director/Producer is just a neat amalgam of their passions.

My Jewish parents have a very hardy approach to life – neither of them has a penchant for wallowing in emotions (like I do); they are big believers in “ good attitude”. This has rubbed off on me despite my own tendencies. From them, I have learned that attitude and passion are what sell. I often hear film directors say how much they hate fundraising. The problem is that someone who hates what he or she is doing moves no one. From my parents, I learned to check my attitude when setting out to do something and if it isn’t positive I try to reframe it. And if it slips, as it always does, I reframe it again. Granted this is a very American, Reganesque approach, but there are things to take from everywhere. If you are going to be a filmmaker – particularly in America – you’d better figure out how to find joy and creativity in raising funds. From my Mom, I love creating and directing films but from my Dad, I love the challenge of figuring out how to fund something that no one thinks they want – only to discover that it is what they need. Making films for so many years, I learned that you don’t have to ‘win’ all the time, only a percentage. Every film that I have ever made has a drawer full of rejections. Perhaps I am negatively motivated, but those rejections often spur me to prove the world wrong. And again perversely I find this kind of fun….

Our team is now on Day 85 of our 90 day Kickstarter Campaign. There is a lot we’ve discovered and are still discovering. Like all creative endeavors, fundraising is a “process” that evolves and develops as you do it. Here are 6 of our top 20 tips so far. Some of them are about the actual work and some are more about what I would call, “psychological warfare”, so necessary for the game:

1. Reach Out to Family and Friends:

Unlike what many will tell you, I must say that for me family (and friends) are more about getting emotional support than money, necessarily. It is very dicey to ask people you know and love to give you their hard earned funds. I had some friends tell me that they felt offended that I was emailing them about our campaign. Discussing this with them led to some very interesting insights about why I feel this is a democratic and legitimate way to support the arts. But I am not here to proselytize. I immediately backed off. In a way what they are saying is true: they don’t ask me to fund their passion, why should I ask them to fund mine? However, that’s not exactly how I see it: I believe that the film project, MY REINCARNATION, has a greater good for humanity and is a contribution to people’s lives. Hence, it must be seen and is worth funding…

2. Build a Team:

Filmmaking is a collaborative experience, but so is fundraising. It takes a lot of brainstorming and thinking out of the box. It takes multiple skills that one person rarely has all of. Without a team you just can’t get the traction and the reach into the world (see previous post). But also it helps with the fear factor. I don’t know about you, but this kind of public fundraising scares the shit out of me. My team keeps me from losing it. Having a team is also essential for Tip #3 (and Tip #16 in the next post):

3. Brainstorm the Campaign as a Rollout with Different Phases:

Our team, Katherine Nolfi, Lisa Duva, Stefanie Diaz and myself, discussed how the campaign would start – rather simply – and how we would keep rolling out new facets over time. We knew this had to be an international campaign since the film’s subjects are international and the Buddhism has an international reach. This meant that everything we did had to be done for the USA and abroad, often country by country. This included building email lists, adding new incentives, and creating regular new videos for our website, facebook and twitter that could be linked with our consistent updates on Kickstarter. We saw our campaign as having three initiatives: the web campaign; seeking out and approaching larger private donors to become Producers, and setting up “Sneak Preview Benefit Screenings” in key locations (so far we have held screenings in Melbourne and New York City). The screenings were part of our plan because we had a unique problem: we were fundraising for a film that was technically finished, but that no one had seen. We hypothesized that people might need to see the finished film to give it money. In the end, festivals also helped on this account (see the next post, Tip #8). But I also learned that the film’s trailer was often enough for people as in point #4…

4. Make a Good Trailer:

Of course “make a great trailer” is common wisdom for any kind of film fundraising. However, MY REINCARNATION was such a difficult film that I didn’t edit a trailer during the fundraising process. When I looked for funds, I always showed edited scenes assembled in a half-hour or hour format. (Probably why we failed miserably much of the time.) We didn’t have a clear narrative for 18 years into the shooting, making it impossible to cut a trailer. One we finally cut the trailer, right before launching at festivals, it was rather easy to do because the story arc was so clear. Now I’ve been told by some people that they cry when they watch our trailer. It has helped many people to make a donation when they haven’t seen the film yet. As our Kickstarter campaign continued, we wanted to add an additional fundraising pitch to our trailer, perhaps on-camera, like so many directors have done. I filmed myself speaking to camera while at the Singapore Film festival, sent it back to NYC and Lisa edited it. But, we rejected it. Quite frankly, we have been showing my face too much in our effort to get moving images up on the web (posting a lot of Q & A Videos from festivals). I feel it’s the wrong message for a film project on a Buddhist theme, where I am beginning to look too much like a “Star.” So finally, Katherine came up with another approach using testimonies from our “NYC Sneak Preview Benefit Screening” last week. She edited them this weekend and the new video for our campaign will go up later today, with just 5 days left to our campaign (so check back on our Kickstarter site this afternoon to see the new video live).

5. Craft your Kickstarter Pitch Carefully:

Our team started by looking at the best-written pitches we could find on KICKSTARTER and basically mimicked their format. We liked the ones that explained everything, including how KICKSTARTER works. Since we were reaching out internationally and to an audience that was not in the arts, we felt this explanation necessary. Then we had to carefully frame why the film was still looking for money when it was technically finished. We made the explanation general, instead of giving a precise cause (which I am not sure was the right tactic in retrospect). Then we tried to turn a negative – that the film was finished – into a positive: this was a no risk venture because the film was already guaranteed distribution all over the world. We just had to find the last chunk of funds to pay for its costs before it could be delivered to television and other markets. This is very difficult to talk about simply because you are fighting people’s misconceptions about the film business and money, which come from Hollywood Blockbusters. They think films make big money – and get paid big money in distribution, which is not the case for documentaries (see my previous post).

6. Incentives:

Since you can’t really put many images on your own Kickstarter page, Stefanie created a full brochure of pictures of the Kickstarter incentives on our MY REINCARNATION website so people could see what they were getting. She used the PBS pledge images as her model. We gathered a mixture of incentives, some Buddhist oriented and some film community oriented. One thing that we did very early on, even before the Kickstarter campaign began, was to offer a “Limited Special Edition Pre-Release DVD” for sale on our website at a very high price: $108. This DVD is a ‘vanilla version’ without extras or multiple language subtitles. We started to sell this a good six months before our Kickstarter campaign to help keep our office running during the festival release. When we put up the Kickstarter, we decided to offer the DVD in two ways: the Commercial DVD in 2012 at $25 and the Limited Special Edition Pre-Release DVD in September 2011 at $108. This has been our most successful incentive. For higher priced items, I raided anything I could find in my home: there are two of my own museum quality paintings by a very well known Buddhist Painter (one is sold and one still remains so far) and a beautiful antique Tibetan chest that my parents gave me (which I asked them first if I could sell, guess what they said?), still available. I even put up a limited edition watch I received from being on the Zurich Film Festival jury last year (gone). Basically nothing I own was off limits. It’s been a great Buddhist teaching to struggle with – and let go of – my attachment to my objects (that chest is one of my favorite possessions)!

What we learned for MY REINCARNATION is that the Buddhist incentives work much better than the film incentives. So far no one seems to care much about me or my career to purchase say a “Consultation with an Award–Winning Filmmaker”. So much for my ego and 30 years of hard work!

— Jennifer Fox

Jennifer Fox is an internationally acclaimed, award-winning Producer, Director, Camerawoman. She is known for her groundbreaking work on both documentary features and series, including BEIRUT: THE LAST HOME MOVIE, AN AMERICAN LOVE STORY, FLYING CONFESSIONS OF A FREE WOMAN, and now MY REINCARNATION. She is the subject of three films on filmmaking, TO HECK WITH HOLLYWOOD!, CINEMA VERTE: DEFINING THE MOMENT and CAPTURING REALITY: THE ART OF DOCUMENTARY She has Executive Produced many award winning films, including LOVE & DIANE, ON THE ROPES and UPSTATE. She teaches and consults on directing and producing internationally at institutions such as New York University, the Binger Lab in Amsterdam, the University of Zurich and many others.

I have been producing for about 25 years now. I have routines, methods, and even rituals that help me get done what I have to get done. But if there is one thing that is constant in the film/media biz it is change. If we don’t remain eternal students, we don’t evolve and grow. Both our art and our business requires that we sometimes abandon all we have learned and take new approaches. We have to learn new tricks and embrace them with the love of a true amateur.

Not surprisingly, I am inspired by tales of filmmakers doing just that. It would be hard to find a story that captures this necessity more than Jennifer Fox’s 22 year ordeal with her latest film. Thankfully it brought Jennifer both all the way through and too a point that we can all now join in and share in both the process and success. We can learn from her guest post today.

As a 30+ year documentary veteran, there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s “change or die.” And while I am spewing out truisms that I’ve collected, I’ll share another one, “survival is winning.” I love making films, I certainly don’t expect to get rich, but what I do hope for is to be able to wake up each morning and to do what I am so privileged to do: work on a film and every few years, make a new one. So far I’ve succeeded. But this current film threatened to sink my boat more than once.

I must say I always knew MY REINCARNATION was a difficult project. I walked away from it many times, saying it was impossible. But something always drew me back and after 22 years, we had a fantastic story that we were launching in the world. It seemed that my worries were for naught. The film had several European television stations onboard as co-production partners (more on this in my next post), had been sold to PBS’s premiere series POV, and was invited to top festivals around world. So, at the end of last year when I discovered that one of my European co-producers, through no fault of their own, had failed to raised their promised $100,000 towards the budget, the wind went out of my sails. As the main Producer, I was responsible. In fact I had already technically “spent” that money finishing the film, I just hadn’t paid the bills. My brain went into an exhausted tailspin.

(For those of you who may have fantasies about the money you make once a film is finished, I hope I don’t ruin your day. My experience is that the majority of funds have to be raised before the film is finished. There are very few films that make large sums of money in distribution. To give you one example: a country might pay $50,000 or higher to get involved in a television co-production, but once the film is finished, that same territory will only offer a fraction of that to buy the film outright. Meanwhile, all European film subsidies and US foundation grants are for development, production and post. No one gives money backwards.)

So there I was on New Years Eve 2011 with a big problem: How could I raise funds for a film that was technically completed?

Making MY REINCARNATION I had already been forced out of my fundraising comfort zone. In the past, my films were funded with television pre-sales and foundation and government grants; I didn’t “believe” in documentary investors because I thought it was too hard to pay them back. Moreover, I had never figured out how to approach private donors. This time, trying to raise funds for a spiritual subject, I faced a whole new set of challenges. It took 12 years before the first trickle of funding came in and 18 years before any substantial monies. Throughout the production of the film, I was forced to think out of the box: I privately approached and successfully brought on several private donors in exchange for producing credits; I ran a lottery and auctioned off most of my valued personal possessions; I pre-sold DVDs; and then I took my first ”investment/loan” through a deal with IMPACT PARTNERS.

This year I faced a whole new problem. With the film already playing at festivals, I racked my brain, what to do? Ideally I would find one large patron to complete the production costs, but I had exhausted my contacts. When I delicately returned to the people who had previously donated monies to tell them my sad tale (which is what all the books tell you to do), everyone politely declined to pony up additional funds. I was running out of options.

There was only one straw left. I knew I had listen to my own mantra. (You know that one about “change/die”). Early last year, I was introduced to crowd funding when my singer/song writer friend, Ana Egge, emailed me to ask if I would donate to her KICKSTARTER campaign to record her new album. ‘Who could turn down such a talent like Ana?’ I said to myself. So, I gave her a small donation and really enjoyed the updates and the feeling of being part of her creation. I even gave her a second contribution mid-way through the campaign. I saw the democratic power of this new arts patronage. I was intrigued. ‘But it’s not for me…’ I thought.

When it came to my own project, the idea of going public with my financial problems and holding out a hand to the world terrified me. To me, asking for money is something private to do behind closed doors one on one. I was embarrassed to tell people I had this funding challenge; what would the community think of me?

But desperation is a powerful motivator. I didn’t know if I could do a crowd funding campaign. However, one thing I knew for sure, I couldn’t do it alone. I was exhausted from the last 22 years of pushing the ball up hill on this film. Honestly, at my age the idea of a “web anything” can be a bit daunting. Moreover, I was already committed to a heavy festival tour with MY REINCARNATION as part of its outreach and distribution. How could I be on the road and running a campaign that would surely take so much work?

So I decided to look for help. I reached out to another girlfriend and filmmaker, Katherine Nullify, who had done a successful Kickstarter campaign for her first feature UPSTATE last year. She brought in another filmmaker friend, Lisa Duva, currently making her first feature CAT SCRATCH FEVER. We all worked together several years ago on the web 2.0 theatrical outreach for my previous film FLYING: CONFESSIONS OF A FREE WOMAN. These were women who could do anything and quite honestly I needed their juice. I wanted to enroll them to help me out.

My idea was to do a crowd funding campaign, but also to look for new larger donors to offer producing credits. I had the crazy idea that we could re-credit MY REINCARNATION in the territories that we hadn’t delivered the film yet – primarily the USA. I pitched the idea to Katherine and Lisa and they thought it would fly. Since I was broke, I offered them a percentage of the funds we would raise as payment. Thank god they accepted.

The third person of the team was already in place. Luckily for me, for the last year I had been working with a young, self avowed, web geek, Stefanie Diaz who had built our MY REINCARNATION web site and could do anything web. She loved the idea of a Kickstarter campaign – it was right up her alley.

The team was ready to go. The biggest question left was how much to aim for? We knew that most campaigns only try to raise between $5,000 – $15,000. But that would be a drop in the bucket. There was no way we could target the $100,000 we really needed, because it seemed impossible. So with knees shaking we launched our 90-day MY REINCARNATION Kickstarter campaign with a goal of $50,000.

I have never been so nervous in my life. 46 days and endless sleepless nights later, we hit $50,000. So with 44 days left we decided to keep going and try to make it to $100,000. How we got this far and what we came up with during those nights will be in my next blog post…. Meanwhile, with only 9 days left, I better get back to the web to write some Kickstarter thank you notes and beat the drum further…

— Jennifer Fox

Jennifer Fox is an internationally acclaimed, award-winning Producer, Director, Camerawoman. She is known for her groundbreaking work on both documentary features and series, including BEIRUT: THE LAST HOME MOVIE, AN AMERICAN LOVE STORY, FLYING CONFESSIONS OF A FREE WOMAN, and now MY REINCARNATION. She is the subject of three films on filmmaking, TO HECK WITH HOLLYWOOD!, CINEMA VERTE DEFINING THE MOMENT and CAPTURING REALITY: THE ART OF DOCUMENTARY She has Executive Produced scores of films and teaches and consults on directing and producing internationally.