Tag: KickStarter

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Truly Free Film

John Bruce on “Far From Afghanistan: Mission, Means, and Movement Building”

I think it is more than three years ago now that I first spoke of Truly Free Film. My hope then, as it is now, that artistic, social, and political motivations would harness the new technologies and it’s tools to usher in a transformation from a mass-market driven entertainment economy to a community-based approached to media and art. The examples of this are still few and far between. I remain very optimistic nonetheless, and am heartened by all of what “Far From Afghanistan” represents.

Far From Afghanistan: Mission, Means, and Movement Building

“If today I choose to make films it is to remind myself first and foremost that there are a lot more important things than films,” says filmmaker John Gianvito.

Last week, amidst a media brush fire of images from Occupy Wall Street and obituaries for Steve Jobs, the unfortunate 10-year anniversary of the start of the war in Afghanistan “passed quietly at the White House”, as TIME magazine barely reported. Meanwhile, streaming for free online Far From Afghanistan: The October Edition, presents work-in-progress segments from the forthcoming film Far From Afghanistan, October 6 through October 12, only.

Inspired by the 1967 film, Far From Vietnam (Loin du Vietnam), John Gianvito conceived of Far From Afghanistan as a project to bring together some of the boldest, most politically-progressive US filmmakers. The final version, to be completed in 2012, will also include contributions from native filmmakers throughout Afghanistan. Together they will utilize a mosaic of approaches, and explore issues of shared responsibility, history and memory, in a concerted effort to help accelerate resistance to the war.

Contributing segments to Far From Afghanistan: The October Edition, are John Gianvito, Jon Jost, Minda Martin, Travis Wilkerson, and Soon-Mi Yoo, with a special prologue by Rob Todd and Pacho Velez. From inside Afghanistan several Afghan filmmakers working as part of the group Afghan Voices also provided material.

Operating as a true collective, the filmmakers along with producers Steve Holmgren and Mike Bowes, platform producer John Bruce, and production coordinator Matt Yeager supported one another and enlisted dozens of others in order to make manifest this idea, without the hierarchy or procedure typical of most film development and production. “Putting together this film from scratch in about six months was a massive challenge. It would not have been possible even a year or two ago I think, certainly not in the same way. Working with no budget and with a team who were literally traveling around the world throughout production, we relied heavily on different web technologies to keep things moving… we used Vimeo to host cuts where we could provide comments, transferred final files through Dropbox rather than physically mailing drives, and had regular Skype calls to check in,” says Steve Holmgren.

Exposing selections from a film to audiences before the usual route of a major festival premiere is risky business. Traditional distribution cycles can take many months and sometimes years. Far From Afghanistan as a project has greater goals, beyond successfully navigating business-as-usual distribution channels. With the October 2011 10-year anniversary of war upon us, our mantra became “sooner rather than later”, and thus we made the choice to actively participate in, and ideally spur more, vital dialogue that needs to occur in order for people to better grasp the issues, and move collectively toward greater responsibility and resolution. Further, we hope to foster partnerships and collaborations with individuals, groups, and organizations at home and abroad. Most centrally, the project plans to connect with and provide assistance to humanitarian organizations with aligned missions, both in Afghanistan and domestically.

Far From Afghanistan: The October Edition streams online for just a couple more days. You can watch it on www.farfromafghanistan.org and also on www.fandor.com. Support the project on Kickstarter.

John Bruce is the platform producer for Far From Afghanistan, and works as a strategist for .John Bruce spent over a decade working in feature film and television production for NY-based independent producers. He is currently a strategist for Forward Mapworks, serving media ventures and organizations with social and environmental missions, and is the platform producer for Far From Afghanistan.

Far From Afghanistan: The October Edition brings together some of the best-known political filmmakers from the US, along with contributions by Afghan media makers from inside Afghanistan, in a special online event streaming segments from the forthcoming film Far From Afghanistan, during the week Oct 6-12 to mark the 10-year anniversary of the war.

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Truly Free Film

Koo On “Your Audience is Worth More Than $”

Film may be 110 years old, the Film Industry a century, Amer-Indie, as a semi-organized infrastructure and process, 30 years, but as a creative community we are only a few years, at best, in. Sure the guilds have been here longer, but as an open & transparent, group, activity sharing information and aspirations, it’s taken the rise of blogging culture to bring us together.

As much as we are coming together on a general basis, indie film communities come together now around specific voices. Nonetheless, other than Kevin Smith there are very few folks who have truly built and served their audiences to such an extent that that audience is in fact a community that can be depended on to support a film to the extent necessary to move it through production and release. Or rather, until recently. Crowdfunding, more than just a money raising tool, allows us to measure how communities can truly make movies happen. Koo, who has built the much loved and very useful blog No Film School, now is making a film, and as he shares below, he couldn’t have gotten so far with the support from the community he has so loyally served.

My crowdfunding campaign to make a youth basketball feature film Man-child has made it most of the way to raising its $115,000 goal (!). I’ve been working tirelessly since launching the campaign on August 16th, and you can bet I won’t be sleeping much until it ends September 23rd (this Friday). I don’t know if we’re going to make it all the way, but in coming this far, I’ve learned a lot — and that’s what I’m here to share. This post is also the story of how as a community we got 11-time NBA champion coach Phil Jackson — arguably the greatest living basketball coach, and someone I’ve never met in person — to back my Kickstarter film.

You have at least two audiences

I run the indie filmmaking website NoFilmSchool, and the site’s readers comprise my primary audience for the campaign. But even if you don’t run a website, you still have a primary audience — your friends, your family, your high school and/or college, and any other networks that you might belong to. This is your obvious first stop in a crowdfunding campaign.

Whatever kind of movie you’re making, your film has a topic. That topic has an audience. In the case of Man-child the topic is basketball, and so in addition to my web site’s followers, there exists another community that is potentially interested in my film: basketball fans. This is your second stop: people who are interested in your topic. But I think when you go after the second audience is important, because there’s a difference between the people who know you personally and the people who don’t. The former are willing to lend a hand because it’s you. The second group needs a bit more convincing.

Credibility first

People have mentioned in the past a notorious dead time in the middle of a crowdfunding campaign. Without the excitement of the launch or the urgency of a deadline, crowdfunding campaigns begin to resemble a 2-liter of RC Cola with the cap off (they go flat). This is a great time to try to reach out to a new audience, because if you did your job in the first half of the campaign (and didn’t annoy your followers on Twitter) — you’ll have more credibility than you did when the ticker read “$0 pledged.” Once the campaign was able to demonstrate social proof thanks a number of backers on board — but only then — did I try to reach out to the second audience.

Audiences are like venn diagrams

There isn’t a lot of overlap between my following of independent filmmakers and the basketball community at large. They’re like venn diagrams: two circles that overlap but for the most part exist separately. If your friends and family are in the smaller circle, the point is to reach the people in the larger circle who have no idea who you are. This is how your audience is valuable in a way that has nothing to do with what’s in their wallet.

Internet is plentiful, money is not

I launched NoFilmSchool by living out of a suitcase for 10 months. I know what it’s like to be short on funds. But during those 11 months when money was nonexistent, what did I have plenty of? Internet. Wi-Fi on a friend’s couch. A free connection at Starbucks. 3G. Even people on the other side of the planet who might not ever have a chance to see your indie film in the theater have a ‘net connection (and many countries are way ahead of the U.S. when it comes to broadband speeds). So when running a fundraising campaign, think of your fans friends and followers as more than financial contributors. They’re your allies in morphing the two circles of a venn diagram into one.

Strength in numbers

In the case of Man-child, as soon as we hit the halfway mark of the campaign (time-wise; we were not yet to 50% funded), I wrote a post asking for help from NoFilmSchool readers. Not financial help, but social media help. Along with an instructional video, I included links to lists of NBA players, media members, and bloggers on Twitter. Dozens of us began reaching out on Twitter collectively, asking ball players and journalists to check out or at least retweet the Man-child Kickstarter campaign. Personally, I was totally ineffective. Promoting your own campaign/product/service seems more like spam than someone asking on behalf of a friend, and there is strength in numbers: public figures have tens if not hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter, and getting their attention is a crapshoot. They get mentioned so often that you need luck on your side to be in the right place at the right time; the more of you there are, the better your odds.

One success story is worth the effort

Despite my own lack of success, thanks to the efforts of others, several NBA players — including two-time all-star Stephon Marbury — retweeted the Man-child campaign. More importantly, Executive VP of the Los Angeles Lakers Jeanie Buss watched my pitch video and became a backer — along with legendary NBA coach Phil Jackson. I saw a jump in the campaign’s progress and didn’t know where it came from, so I went to look at the backer list, and there was Jeanie Buss. I hadn’t reached her, but someone else had. I thanked her on Twitter and we started direct messaging. She told me Phil had matched her pledge. My head exploded.

Your campaign is like a film

Films are better when they have an arc; the same goes for a crowdfunding campaign. In the past, I’d seen crowdfunders issue a press release at the outset of their campaign, but I didn’t feel launching a campaign was enough of a story by itself to get picked up by anyone. 10,000 people have run Kickstarter campaigns, after all — and that’s just the successful ones. More than double that number have launched campaigns. But I did think this social media success story — and the name recognition of having Phil and Jeanie on board — was a story. So I wrote a press release designed to get the campaign in the hands of the basketball world.

The jury’s still out

As I write this, the jury’s still out as to whether this press release has successfully brought in more of the basketball world. As a one man band running this campaign all on my own, it took me longer to get the press release out than I would’ve liked — even working around the clock — and I haven’t given media outlets much time to write up a story before this Friday’s deadline.

When it comes down to it, though, whether or not the Man-child campaign is picked up by a large sports web site, the social media outreach effort was a success — the story told in that press release has become an integral part of not only the story of the campaign, but the story of the film. And Phil Jackson, are you kidding me?!?

Your audience is worth more than $$$

More people have internet access than have credit cards. In the past month I’ve gotten a lot of messages from people who don’t own a credit card but want to help the campaign somehow. These aren’t messages they’re sending via snail mail or smoke signals — they’re through Kickstarter, they’re over Twitter, they’re via email. They’re online and they want to help. My personal friends (who aren’t very active on Twitter) logged on and had fun seeing if they could get a big name to retweet it. Give your audience something to do other than cut checks!

The “dead” midpoint of a campaign is a great time to start asking for help to reach a second audience. In fact, if my own experiences are any lesson, I would go out with this initiative prior to the midpoint, because you want to give yourself enough time before your campaign ends for your collective efforts to have an impact.

Speaking of which — my campaign for Man-child ends this Friday, September 23rd, at 11:59pm Eastern. If we don’t make it, I will certainly have learned a lot in the process, but I’d love to learn a lot more by actually making the movie! So if you feel like getting some great rewards in exchange for your support, check out my campaign — a download of the full film is just $10, a DVD is $24, plus you’ll be sent the unique frames of the film that you made possible (details in my pitch video below). Best of luck with your own crowdfunding campaign, keep that second audience in mind, and thanks for reading!

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Truly Free Film

The Costs Of Crowdfunding

Filmmakers speak of crowdfunding as if it is free money. It isn’t. In some instances it isn’t even close to being so.

In Indie Film, where filmmakers are routinely asked to take blood from a stone, you’d think the costs would leap from everyone’s tongue.

So what platform, puts the most money into your pocket? Well, the answer ain’t so easy.

As this is now the era of the six figure crowdfund raise, the answer is a combination of low fees and high user base. How many campaigns truly open up beyond the friends and family base?

The hard facts are a little easier to come by. Costs, in ascending order:

Kapipal • Currently no fee + PayPal processing fee (~2-4%), (must use PayPal, Italian)
IndieGoGo • 4% fee if you make your goal, 9% otherwise, +3% credit card processing fee
Kickstarter • 5% fee, +3-5% credit card fee (only funded if you make your goal)
Eppela • 5% fee + PayPal processing fee (~2-4%), (must use PayPal, only funded if you make your goal, Italian)
RocketHub • 4% fee if you make your goal, 8% otherwise, +3-5% credit card fee
SoKap • 5% fee, 10% fee on product sold via their marketplace, +3% credit card fee
United States Artists • 15% fee + 4% credit card fee

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Truly Free Film

Lynette Howell on “Producing Is Supporting New Talent Through More Than Just Production”

If you are a regular reader of this blog, or follower of mine on Twitter, I think you know that for me a Producer only deserves that credit when they truly commit to support the project from beginning to end. You also probably know how challenging I find the calling of producing these days, when we are required to do more and more, and are rewarded, at least financially, less and less.

It is always inspiring for me, when a Producer steps forward, embraces the full demand of the role, and does with a great attitude and recognition of the benefits that come from the commitment. Lynette Howell has not been producing that long, but she has learned a great deal, as we all can from her generosity of a guest post today.

ON THE ICE –
Supporting new talent through more than just production:

The kind of exploration into distribution that I find myself doing on my film ON THE ICE is new for me… uncharted territory and truthfully out of my comfort zone, but one that I find myself glad I am being somewhat forced into not only embracing, but championing.

As an independent Producer, I started my company with the mandate of supporting new talent. At first, this was a necessity. I didn’t have any relationships with established Directors when I entered the business. Therefore the only way to begin a career producing meant that I had to find projects that other more established producers didn’t want to take on – either because they were too challenging to make, or too small for a Producer to earn a living on. This necessity quickly turned into my true passion for discovering new voices and this passion then turned into an understanding of how crucial this kind of support is to the continued growth and evolution of the independent industry.

Since my first movie almost 7 years ago (Ryan Flecks HALF NELSON) I have produced many movies of all sizes and genres, ranging from Derek Cianfrance’s BLUE VALENTINE to David Ellis’s SHARK NIGHT 3D. But it is not the size, scope or scale that draws me towards putting my energy into a project — it is about finding stories that speak to me, and they continue to often come from new filmmakers.

As an Advisor to the Sundance Creative Producing Initiative, I continue to be a huge supporter in any way that I can of up and coming filmmakers. In 2009 I met Andrew Okpeaha MacLean, the Writer and Director of the short film SIKUMI that was the winner of the Jury Prize for Short Filmmaking at Sundance the prior year. He was at the Directors Lab with a script for his feature film ON THE ICE along with his producing partner Cara Marcous who was also a Lab fellow.

The script for ON THE ICE had so many built in challenges to it —
1. LOCATION — Set in Barrow, Alaska — which is the Northern-most point in the United States, deep in the Arctic Circle. The only way in or out during the winter months is by plane.
2. WEATHER — Temperatures can drop to 40 below with wind chill. All gear has to be winterized prior to shooting. And for some scenes crew cannot have any skin exposed because of the high risk of frostbite.
3. CASTING NON ACTORS — The script featured an all Inuit cast and Andrew felt it was crucial to work with local non-actors.
4. BUDGET — Making a movie in these extreme conditions does have a cost and so raising money for this would be extremely challenging.
5. SHOOTING SCHEDULE — The ONLY month we could shoot in Barrow was April because of weather and light issues (Barrow has 24 hours of darkness in the winter, and 24 hours of sunlight in the summer). Therefore we had a very short window to put this movie together!

But it was such a fresh script, setting and structure for a movie that I simply had to get involved despite all the obstacles

Through 5 different equity investors, a post-production deal, numerous grants, a tax credit and tons of support in kind, Cara and I managed to raise the money necessary to make the movie.

Production was such a challenge because of the above-mentioned issues (and some I didn’t forsee, such as using a bucket for a toilet everyday on the frozen tundra). But we managed to make a very special film that feels unlike anything I have seen before. The movie premiered at Sundance in competition earlier this year and went on to win two awards at the Berlinale Film Festival (the Crystal Bear and Best First Feature Film). The awards validation proved that there was an audience for this film, but we all knew that it was going to take a creative way to reach them.

All the incredible effort from so many people pushing this unbelievably challenging movie from a short film all the way to a critically acclaimed feature film found itself with an uncertain distribution future.

Given the technological advances and through social media, there is an opportunity for my support, your support and the support of many others towards new filmmakers to now transition into distribution in a meaningful way.

I have made movies that went to festivals before and weren’t able to find a distributor willing to pay a MG, or give the movie a wide, or even aggressive platform release. I have been left selling a film for a very small amount of money and then having it released in five to ten cities and ultimately no one really hearing about it or seeing it due to lack of marketing dollars or the same level of passion and commitment from the distributor that came from the filmmaking team who struggled to make the movie. Filmmakers traditionally feel more comfortable with the idea of a “real” distributor releasing a movie, even without a viable plan to release their film because there is a stigma associated with not having this branding. I believe this stigma is potentially short sighted and want to support the idea of alternative methods of distribution, especially for movies like ON THE ICE which don’t fall into the obviously commercial slam dunk scenarios for most distributors, no matter the size – but that clearly have an audience.

Through the new Sundance Initiative and Kickstarter, we are exploring a different approach to distribution for ON THE ICE. We are trying to raise $80k which will allow us to take the movie to a much broader audience than would be possible had we gone down the traditional path of a somewhat cosmetic theatrical release or a non-theatrical route. I want this movie to be SEEN by as many people as possible. The work that our team has been doing is staggering – more care and attention to detail in how to approach this audience and really use the money raised to reach a much broader number of people is incredible. It takes a lot of effort and determination. But I want to prove it can work, so that we can continue to ensure that the new voices of tomorrow’s filmmakers have a home for their movies.

If you are reading this, there’s a good chance you are involved in independent film or independent art of some kind. So, you may not be in a position to pledge much money, but I hope that you will consider passing our Kickstarter link on to the friends and colleagues in your life who might be interested in what we’re trying to do. The act of forwarding this on is incredibly powerful for us and it could mean we can release our film.

To support ON THE ICE go to our kickstarter page:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andrewmaclean/on-the-ice-the-movie

Lynette Howell
Silverwood Films

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Truly Free Film

Video: Yancey Strickler of Kickstarter

If Indie Film had a person of the year, it would be Kickstarter this year. It’s given more movies the needed boost than anyone else this year (as today’s earlier post can attest.
Thanks to Dan McGuire for the tip on this!

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Truly Free Film

Alex & Andrew Smith on “Crowdfunding = Barnraising: We All Have To Do Some Heavy Lifting”

It’s kind of hard to find the appropriate analogy for what we do, particularly these days. Often I am tempted to think it is running full speed against a brick wall without any protective headgear on, hoping that a door may open the moment before impact. But those are on my down days. Usually I can see us all working together, building bridges, fusing connections, doing the labor that will lift the culture in many ways. It shouldn’t be so hard to describe that, but I still struggle.

Which is one of the reasons I was so pleased to reconnect with Alex and Andrew Smith, twin brothers, whose go to it attitude and willingness to reach high with their ambition has never been lagging. They look for the truth of it, and don’t shy from the honesty of the hard work. Which is why the analogy they unearthed for crowdfunding for their guest blog today is so fitting.

Back in the 70’s, when we were little mop-haired twins, our parents would host ‘work parties” at our ranch in rural western Montana. They’d call up all their friends– my father’s English Lit colleagues at the university, his graduate students, all their hippie, carpenter, writer, rancher, logger and bohemian buddies– and invite them up, first to do some ranch work, and then to have a party.

And we would all, together, gather stones spit up from the meadow and stack them on rockpiles; pile up old fence posts, rotten lumber, old rusty tractor parts and scrap metal; we would clear irrigation ditches and thin the larch stands.

And every spring we would take on some seriously ambitious, semi-crazy project—trying to turn the basement of an old burnt down farmhouse into a swimming pool, or fusing two old hand-hewn turn-of–the-century log cabins together, to form the “big house” – the house in which we grew up.

In short, a lot of good people would come together for a short period of time, and they’d get something epic done quickly. Then there’d be a softball game, and a feast— chili and salad and beer— and a bonfire with guitars, stories and singing. We still have the Super-8 movies to prove it.

Those mid-1970’s community gatherings, in their “Whole Earth Catalogue” funky, post-psychedelic form, were a reiteration of a much earlier homesteader model— the old fashioned ‘barn-raising’. (Cue the clip of Harrison Ford in suspenders in “Witness.”) The family who needed the barn would do all the heavy preparations. The mapping and measuring. The gathering of tools, the cutting of lumber, the cooking– and they’d get everyone to come over– and they would all, together, raise that barn. And in the next season, this family would pitch in to raise some else’s barn.

And, so, too, now, creative project-makers find themselves returning to that reliable, roll-up-your-sleeves, grass-roots, reciprocal “gather”— and its corresponding “glean”—salvaging the fine apples that the industrial machines left behind– to get our crops in (the literal ‘roots of grass’), and our barns built, be they actual buildings, or specifically, in this context, the sturdy, scrappy, home-made architecture of indie films. We’re not talking DIY, but rather, DIO—‘Do It Ourselves’. This joint effort spirit is what gives crowd-financing platforms their energy, power, and, indeed– joy.

Our own father is gone now– he’s been gone a long time. Not all of his projects turned out exactly the way he thought they would: few things do. But on those golden ‘Days of Heaven’-like gathers, magic happened. Serious work happened. It was a truly communal effort: work hard; play hard. Later there’d be dancing— and even some howling at the moon. Almost forty years later, the result of those efforts still bear fruit.

And that’s what we are trying to do with the Kickstarter {Barnraiser} campaign for our film, Winter in the Blood: gathering, gleaning, raising load-bearing beams. Digital uploads and Mail Chimp-generated email lists have replaced Whole Earth catalogue instructions, but the communal work— and the sharing of strategies of ways to best get to our goals— remains the same. “You help us with our project—and we’ll honor your contribution. And help you with yours.”

We’ve been brainstorming and barnstorming for over four years on our film project. We’ve drawn the maps, measured the clearing, cut the timber, smithed the spikes. We’ve stewed the meat, iced the beers, set stumps around the fire, and invited a bunch of good people to join us. The script is written, the cast is cast, the crew is lined up, and we are—90% financed.

Now we just need a little help– to hoist our movie up onto its feet. To anchor it to the ground.

To raise this barn of a film.

Thank you for reading, and thank you Ted for articulating (and being) Hope.

–Alex & Andrew Smith

Alex and Andrew Smith directed the feature film THE SLAUGHTER RULE which premiered at Sundance in 2002 (and starred the incredible David Morse, and the then unknown Ryan Gosling & Amy Adams). They are now crowdfunding for their next feature and the campaign ends July 6th. Please contribute. I did

Due to popular demand to get to know a bit more about the film, the WinterInTheBlood team have provide these additional links to media that they created for Winter in the Blood.

Our presentation about the film- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ht0N2UrOnCo

Alex, Andrew & Ken on writing the film- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cehbpHTGDpk

Susan Kirr talks about Producing- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqA0687u17I

A How-To video for Kickstarter- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5beV7FglLo

A word from one of the interns that will be joining us from Long House Media- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpTWaTO-zO4&feature=related

David Morse talks about the project- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBX6jl7gkPE&feature=related

Chaske Spencer talks about the project- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbuzEr5E5i8

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Truly Free Film

Guest Post: Beth B “Who Says An Old Punk Can’t Learn New Tricks?”

I moved to NYC in the early 80’s with dreams of making films that would change the world. To prime my path, I was prepared to serve first. There were two internships I wanted. Having grown up listening to Alan Lomax’s Southern Journey records, he was one. He didn’t hire me. The Super-8 No Wave film thing was taking the city by storm — or at least the East Village. I turned my sights to working for Beth B, one of the key figures in the “Cinema Of Transgression”. I got the interview… but not the gig. Although I have had to watch from afar, I have kept track of Beth and her work, and have always found it inspiring and uncompromising. How Beth navigates the challenge of giving her work form while leading her life and not being lead is both a marvel and a mantra. As Beth points out in her post today, it is not easy, it is a struggle, but the rewards prove the choice’s righteousness time and time again.

Continue reading “Guest Post: Beth B “Who Says An Old Punk Can’t Learn New Tricks?””