The in crowd
Independent filmmakers are turning to you to help fund their projects. Here’s a look at crowdsourcing and why it’s catching on
Canadian filmmaker Robert Pilichowski is guardedly happy about the $14,000 raised on Kickstarter for All Out War, his documentary on the global b-boy dance scene.
It’s not the $3 million that was ponied up for a Veronica Mars movie. Or the $3.1 mil Zach Braff attracted to direct his movie Wish I Were Here.
It’s not even the $200,000 Indiegogo’s “Crackstarter” campaign raised to buy the elusive alleged video of Toronto mayor Rob Ford smoking crack.
In fact, it’s a tiny fraction of what Pilichowski has already spent over a decade on this gamble. After initial grants from federal and provincial Arts Councils, he’s mortgaged his house to continue to film the competitive dance formerly called “breakdancing,” which now takes place in fight rings, worldwide. The budget is up in the “$350,000 to $400,000” range.
The $14,000 is “finish line” money for the movie, which premiered at the North By Northeast festival in Toronto, and has a CBC broadcast commitment. “It’s post-finishing things like colour-correction, music, sound design, marketing, submissions to film festivals, DVD production, stuff like that,” the Polish-born Canadian filmmaker says.
Will he make money? “No,” he admits with a laugh. “But I would never have experienced what I did if it wasn’t for the film. We went all over the world with these guys, from huge competitions in Europe to shantytowns in the Philippines. Some pretty incredible moments.”
Filmmakers like Pilichowski represent the real users of Kickstarter and other “crowdsourcing” sites. Kickstarter has sourced more than $120 million for film projects in four years, but in smaller increments than you’d imagine.
Probably the most frugal filmmaker in Canada, Ingrid Veninger has financed at least three micro-budgeted features herself, without grants — including the award-winning
Modra, shot in her family’s ancestral village in Slovakia. She’s done it all on the strength of actor friends’ favours, small crews and on-the-fly footage.
Her fourth, as-yet-untitled film — about an acting teacher (Aaron Poole) with a problematic relationship with his son — is already shot, with a main cast of eight and 44 location shoots. She’s crowdsourcing her film for the first time, seeking $17,800 via Indiegogo. (A popular route for Canucks, since it deals in Canadian dollars, Indiegogo does a third of its business up north, doubling the number of Canadian campaigns in a year.)
“That’s a lot of money for me and it’s going to get me through post-production, the music, the marketing,” Veninger says. “Even with $17,800 there’ll still be a lot of favours. Printing posters alone costs so much.”
Crowdsourcing is charity. Nobody owns a piece of anything for their investment. In film, one typically gets (depending on the size of the donation) an onscreen credit, maybe a T-shirt or a DVD (throw in a tote-bag and it could be PBS).
Others get more imaginative. For a $100 donation, Veninger says, “my daughter will do two hours of free child care. Another actress, Hannah Cheesman, makes these felt dolls that she’ll personalize “in the contributor’s image.”
Five hundred dollars gets dinner with the director and a cast member.
“It’s my first time doing it,” Veninger says. “Am I scared? Yes. Do I know for sure we’ll raise $17,800? No. Am I going to have fun doing it? Yes!
“If they’ve given $5 they’ve got a little bit invested and they care about it. Now they’re part of the tribe.”
And sometimes, there already is a tribe. After two seasons on Space, the occult/comedy series
Todd and the Book of Pure Evil was cancelled last year — with cliffhangers hanging, and at least one character apparently dead.
The producers, however, didn’t accept cancellation, and went to Indiegogo to help fund an animated feature that would tie up the loose ends.
“We actually thought we were going to have a Season 3,” says producer Andrew Rosen of the made-in-Winnipeg TV series. “So we wanted to at least give our fans that conclusion. Our line was, ‘Space can discontinue us, but only we can cancel us.’ ”
“And Indiegogo was a way to measure if we truly had fans. Everybody told us what a cult show it was, and that people loved it. A change.org campaign got 11,000 signatures to bring back the show. At Fan Expo (in Toronto) there were placards and everything. And another fan started a website called savetoddandthebookofpureevil.com. “I guess it was analogous to Veronica Mars. The difference is Veronica Mars has more affluent fans. Ours are a lot of passionate stoners and teens. We were telling some of our major fans to not give us so much money because they needed it to live.”
Even so, the “ask” for Todd, $75,000, was quickly eclipsed, with donations of $125,000 — about half the budget of the planned animated feature. (Rosen says at least one impressed broadcaster has offered to match the figure.) The schedule has the movie opening in limited release in June 2014, ahead of a broadcast window.
Rosen says “about 50%” of the money came from the U.S., where
Todd is on Netflix. About 30% came from Canada followed by Australia, France, Germany and Brazil. In Brazil, he says, “fans early on translated the show and downloaded it through torrents.”
You could call it grey- market syndication.
Even the Oscars are in on it. This year’s documentary short winner Inocente benefitted from $52,000 of Kickstarter donations, and a Canadian nom for best live-action short,
Buzhashi Boys, received $37,000 (mostly from the AfghanCanadian community).
Of course, film and TV projects like these are a thin sliver of crowdsourcing. Games and tech get plenty of action — including the Pebble Smartwatch (available for $150), which accesses the time via your smartphone, and which raised $10 mil of start money on Kickstarter.
“I think the next year or so will be crucial,” Rosen says. “We’ll find out if people deliver on their promises. If you donate to something and it doesn’t happen, it could make you think twice.”