Social Media Fundraising?
EDIT: Since I wrote this more research has revealed some specifics. I'm sharing that now. Thanks!
Lots of exciting things going on here at GadZook Films. First off I started a Twitter account. You can follow me and the GadZook crew by clicking the little icon in my sidebar.
GadZook Films is also on Myspace and Facebook, so add us to your friends and group lists! You'll feel so smug when all of your friends marvel at how GadZook Films was your friend months before we accepted their friend request. There's a link in the sidebar to the Facebook group as well, if, ya know, you just like to watch.
But here's the real issue: can independent filmmakers, like us here at GadZook Films, raise money using the internet's vast social networking resources? The folks at IndieGoGo believe we can. They have an interesting, albeit not new, business model. You, as Joe Filmmaker, set up a project on their site, establishing a specific fundraising goal. You e-mail friends, family, fans and let them know about what you're doing and how they can help. Theoretically the whole 6 degrees of separation should nab you more fans and more potential donors.
With regards to the fundraising aspect of IndieGoGo, it's a pledge system. Donors may pledge money to your cause using Amazon Payments (a filmmaker must setup an Amazon Merchant account). Money is not taken out of the donor's account, however, until the project meets its goal. IndieGoGo charges a 9% administration fee against all the money you end up actually raising. If you don't get any of the money then you don't pay. 9% is pretty high, more than some of the film-related non-profit umbrellas I've worked with in the past charge anyway.
For the record, Fundable.org, another web-based fundraising tool for filmmakers, charges a 10% admin fee. They use PayPal instead of Amazon to delivery payments.
It's basically a method of leveraging any sort of social network you've constructed for yourself to help raise money for film projects. And I'm going to be a guinea pig and try it out. Head over to my IndieGoGo site, become a fan of GadZook Films and stay tuned. I'll be uploading a project in the next week and try to raise some financing for it. Help me out and you'll see first hand how it'll help! Questions, comments?
In next week's column I'll discuss paying for online video content.
How does this economic crisis affect you?
I've been talking with a couple filmmaking friends of mine about this bailout crap. OK, cutting through the mumbo-jumbo and what it means for your money, what does it mean for your future potential financier's money? More to the point, if you're looking for financing how is the disaster at Wall Street gonna affect your chances of finding it?
Well, let's try and lay it out. If you know or knew investors personally then you're going to have the best chance of convincing them to part with their hard-earned dollars. This was the case before the collapse of Wall Street and it'll be the same long after this hullabaloo is over. The most difficult piece of the puzzle has always been finding the investors - those people with enough money to drop into your production and not bankrupt themselves if they lost it all. If you know a person like this, now's the time to talk to them about diversifying their portfolio with non-stock market investments.
If you don't know a person like this, now's probably not the best time to approach an individual who may be wealthy but also may be undergoing cash flow problems due to the economy. They are looking for safe options and probably can't or won't take a chance on someone they don't know who can't (legally) guarantee them any return on their investment. Most financiers have their money tied up in the very things that are tanking right now. Many of these things are not insured due to their speculative nature. Even real estate is taking a hit. It won't be as easy for folks to draw out their assets or borrow against them.
So what do you do? My suggestion? Brush off those scripts you had that you know you could make for say $100k or less. Scripts with budgets that are modest enough that you could feasibly find a few accredited investors who have maybe $10-15k in liquid assets that can come together to finance the project.
But better yet, make videos for the 'net. Production values aren't as important, but story is. Hone your craft, focus on telling a good story and make it memorable. This will build your audience and help you find future investors down the road when the economy is back on its feet.
While the "rescue" (don't you dare call it a bailout!!) plan is very, very, very far from perfect, there are some aspects that are beneficial to filmmakers. Richard Verrier at the LA Times had a story on those pieces. To whit:
Specifically, the legislation would allow filmmakers who shoot in the U.S. to qualify for a tax deduction granted in 2004 to domestic manufacturers that capped the top tax rate at 32% instead of 35%. Additionally, the tax package lifts the budget cap on the existing tax deduction, which was limited to movies that cost less than $15 million to make -- in effect excluding most studio films, which cost a lot more.
Now producers would be able to immediately deduct all production costs up to $15 million, regardless of the movie's total budget. The change also extends the existing credit, which was due to expire this year, to December 2009.
Don't get excited yet, friends. The bill still has to pass the House who shut it down last time it came through. It's tough to support such a dastardly bill simply because it offers support for us filmmakers, but it is good to know there is some consideration being taken (although this has more to do with major studios than Jane Filmmaker).
What do you think?
Who doesn’t like short films?
Whell... back to the drawing board. With interest in "Plight of the Living Dead" beginning to wane, we here at GadZook Films are looking for new projects to focus on. That's not to say POTLD is out of the running just yet. No indeed. It's slowly churning away in the back of people's minds. People who know people. People with money. It's only a matter of time before they realize the gold mine they're sitting on.
Until then, we're starting to work on some new scripts for short films. The goal is to make one this year or early next. Something for the history books. Or at least, the local film history books. A fun, well made, somewhat funded, masterpiece. No concrete story ideas are out yet so I won't divulge anything. And we're so far away from actual production I can't even speculate what it might consist of or when it might take place. Suffice to say we plan on keeping things small in the cast department and shooting something with a hint of genre in it so that it gets wide play at prospective festivals.
I'd like to keep us around $5-7,000 (like Snow Day) and I think we can be even smarter with budgeting to stretch the dollar further. That means we need to raise $5-7,000!! I'm always looking for new ways to raise money without going to the proverbial well of non-profit umbrella status. Any ideas are welcome.
Story ideas, however, are not. We're not on the hunt for scripts so please don't send any. Danke.
So after a long hiatus (our last filming endeavor resulted in two trailers for Plight and Fetch) we'll be getting back behind the camera soon. Not to mention a return to the 48-Hour Film Project - which we won two years ago. Time to show those artsy-fartsy types what makes a good film! Hah. I kill me.
Updates, Updates
Aw, crap. You mean people actually READ this thing? Crud. I hope you don't think this means I'm gonna go easy on you guys. Yes, that means you too Mr. Genius Award (ha! you don't know which Genius Award winner I'm speaking of! THE POWER!). So a bunch has happened since we last chatted, my blog, you and I. Let's discuss.
Where to start? We completed our business plan a while ago - as complete as a business plan can be without being proofread by a lawyer. See the tricky thing in all this money-raising is that you can't raise money without seeing a lawyer. Contrary to popular opinion, lawyer's aren't free! Go figure! So we had to dance around the subject within the plan about how the investment would play out. That's really info for the investment memorandum anyway. So we finished the plan and I must say it's quite a document. 35 pages not including the multitude of supporting documentation. It has gone through a number of hands to get feedback and mostly the feedback has been great and good (as in great feedback that was also construed as telling us we did a good job).
With this completed plan we approached our first investor - a connection one of us has through a day-job. The lunch meeting went well, most of his questions were answered by the business plan and the questions we didn't immediately have answers to we handled well. While this didn't turn into an immediate offer, I think we laid some good groundwork and it was a great experience.
While contemplating with my office-mates about a potential move, the motivation was upped a notch when our office was broken into last week. Here's the scary thing - it was an inside job. From what we can tell someone who had access to the building (possibly a resident) and knew the business we engaged in broke in. It appears they mildly tried to jimmy open my door, then turned their attention to the main security door - a door that is not our main and generally off most people's radar. It looks like they used a screwdriver to try and pry the door open - and boy they tried hard. The wood is all dented and the paint chipped off. Apparently frustrated by this they decided to break the glass on one of the main french doors that open to our office.
Instead of taking any of the flat screen monitors, G5s, harddrives, DVD player, TV, they instead went straight into my friend's office, opened up a camera bag, removed the DVX-100a located inside, took a couple of the wireless microphones also in the bag, and then left. Why didn't they just take the bag and run? Why just take that if it's money they're after? This could only be the work of someone who knew what they wanted. Our office is located in an apartment building which is apparently full of poor Art Institute students. How anyone poor can live in Belltown is beyond me, but this is what my office-mates tell me. Now I'm not pointing fingers, but the burglar knew our office, knew where this camera was, and had access to the secure building (they didn't leave out the front door anyway). So that sucked. I was lucky in that it appears I got off scott-free, but we shared that camera as opportunity allowed and so the loss is felt between both of us.
The news of the break-in traveled fast and my office-mates were soon on the phone brokering a deal to move to a new space ASAP. It's all up in the air right now, but hopefully we'll be out of there in the next couple of weeks. Naturally this adds yet another layer of complexity to this whole movie business thing.
In better news we have managed to work out some financial issues and are moving forward with our development plans for "Plight of the Living Dead". In still better news "Snow Day, Bloody Snow Day," continues to wow audiences winning an Honorable Mention at the HorrorDance Film Festival and was recently accepted into the 2006 World Horror Convention. Buy your copy TODAY!
On Wednesday, Ms. Jessica Baxter and I attended an industry screening of Hard Candy. Seattle doesn't get industry screenings like this. We get press screenings, sure. Sometimes they masquerade as industry screenings, but really they aren't. This was a full-fledged industry event. There were cameras, the mucky-mucks of the production company and distributor were there (though the distributor sadly didn't make themselves known to us lowly serfs). The movie was good and it was nice to receive an invite directly to ME directly from Lionsgate. How I got on THAT list I have no idea. But keep me on it! 
Thursday I attended my first Filmmaker's Saloon at the NW Film Forum in like, a couple years or so. It was generally pretty good. They hold them quarterly, have a fairly well-known guest-speakers and allow for some networking. My only gripe is that it's less a social and more a panel discussion. The night got interesting when the floor was opened for questions and the questions finally were steered towards Seattle filmmaking in general. While I certainly didn't disagree with the panel's assesment (that Seattle filmmakers are "getting better all the time" I wasn't sure I agreed with some of the other comments made by them or some members of the audience (one gentleman said that if you accept money from anyone other than yourself you will make a mediocre film, but that if you spend all your own money that movie can never be mediocre - I'm not sure if he was speaking from a purely artistic standpoint from the filmmaker's point of view, or if he just had a bad experience with studio-money grubbers). The networking was... tight... and I sadly didn't get to say hi to the panel moderator Andy Spletzer whom I've been e-mailing back and forth about a future project. Anyway, was nice to get out and see some new faces. The current film editor from the Stranger said she thinks Seattle film would be better if there were more people making movies. I dunno, but there are nearly 7,000 filmmakers in this greater Seattle area by my last count. I don't think it's necessarily a quantity thing...
Coming up we've got SIFF, STIFF, our first ever investor party, the 48-hour Film Challenge, another fundraiser and general good times. Stay tuned.
Waking Up
So how about some updates, yeah? The budget is nearly finished and we've made some headway on the business plan for "Plight of the Living Dead". We're in mild talks with some producers to help co-produce the movie - I say mild because most of these talks are mainly getting to know you talks and "Oh, this sounds interesting... keep me in the loop," type things. Talking to some sales agents (and of course, they need some attachments and a business plan before they can even think about committing) and also have a couple lines out at some of the more independent studios like First Look and Anchor Bay. What does all this mean? Bupkis. I haven't special conversations with Hollywood mucky-mucks, no secret "ins". I've followed most of the basic channels that practically anyone could follow. Bottom line is, it's not hard to get HEARD in Hollywood. The hard part is actually being LISTENED to.
While I was doing research for the business plan I came across an interesting formula for determining an accurate budget for your film. You take five or so recent (~5 years) films that are similar in size and scope and story to your picture. Tally their gross revenue. Average the totals between the five and divide by four - this is your "perfect," conservative even, budget point. The point where you will likely see a revenue stream if you made your movie for that amount and assuming you received the same amount of distribution options as those other films. So, as an example, let's take five imaginary film grosses for 5 imaginary romantic comedies (because EVERYONE loves romantic comedies, right?):
Lovin' and Squeezin' - $5,000,000
When Gary Met His Hand - $14,000,000
Two Friends, Two Passions - $7,500,000
Lover's Quarrel - $8,250,000
Urinetown (okay, this is really a musical, but I needed a fifth film!) - $2,500,000
Total Gross: $37,250,000
Average Gross: $7,450,000
Your Ideal Budget: $1,862,500
And really, anything under $2M is usually jackpot territory. If you can find a story that can support a budget of $2-5M, in a popular genre (and they keep changing every year!), you should take the time to do it right. Of course, if you can make that movie for $500k - more power to you and ask for an upfront fee because the studio will have a veritable goldmine. I'm of the mind that it's difficult to make any feature for under $250k - especially if you intend on finding a buyer for it. Sure you can cut crew and cast your friends, not pay anyone, get things for free - but the meat and potatoes is in post production and deliverables. This is where your movie comes together. And if you lowered your budget in the front end to save a few bucks, you may just find yourself shit-canned in post with a difficult to sell picture. Is that to say you couldn't sell it? No, but your workload will increase exponentially. I suppose there's some formula I could come up with that states basically the budget amount and your personal workload as producer affect each other at inverse rates. The higher the budget, the less work you need to do. And vice versa.
Insert flippant “Insert witty line here” here
Hallo! Whew, some actual time to post. My dayjob has been very, very busy. For about a week every month I'm swamped with stuff because of our month-end reconciliations. Anyway, for now I'm fairly caught up. Though if you look at my workload you'll see I've still got about 10 items on my to-do list. *sigh*
So some of you have demanded info about what I'm doing with "Plight of the Living Dead". In an effort to satisfy your thirst for knowledge I'll try to encapsulate succinctly all that we've got going on. So in a few months you can check back in and see if I was successful or not. I'll present this as a list just to aid in reading. It's not necessarily in production order - meaning not in the order I intend to do them in - but it should serve as a good guide. Mind you, all of this is untested by me. It's info I've gathered through talking with other filmmakers, reading and generally getting my butt out there and learning.
1) Developing contacts. This is something I'm continually working on. I know most of the filmmakers in Seattle. I may not know them well, but I know them or have heard of them. I think it's safe to assume I have some fairly biased preconceived notions on many of them, which isn't fair to them (though sometimes it is!), but generally my notions have been proven true. Still, there's a whole slew of people I have never spoken with that I'm trying to talk to or develop a relationship with. Carl Spence, James Keblas, Lance Rosen - these are guys I know of, maybe even spoken to once or twice, but really don't know all that well. Ideally I'd like to talk to filmmakers who've produced AND distributed their films using concepts I'm toying with. I'm not looking for filmmakers who self-distributed (though the concept fascinates me and I usually have the utmost respect for them), or who are sitting waiting for distribution to come to them. I am talking (or someone on the team is talking) to a publicist, a sales agent, a moderately-sized name actor, Hollywood producers and the occassional investment contact. Mostly these folks say hello, tell me about your project and then I never hear from them again. Sometimes they'll come back with a "like the script, don't have time now" which I can take as either a polite way of saying "fuck off" or they may actually be interested but shy because we have no money. Anyway, to me this is exciting. Even just chatting with these people briefly, regardless of their ability or inclination to work on our project, yields great information.
2) Creating a business proposal. I've gone back and forth on this but it looks like I'll need to create something. We're forming an LLC now (was sole-proprietor before). The state has made it easy to form an LLC, you can pretty much do it entirely online. Things that confuse me are taxes and stuff. I don't want to get screwed paying double for anything. Hello... accountants? Anyone out there? Anyway the business proposal is pretty straight-forward. I just need to hunker down and write. It gets hard when I need to explain how we "intend to make the movie". Uh, with cameras? If you've ever written a successful business proposal I'd like to hear what you did.
3) Financing. Well, good news is we're in the black. Bad news is our balance is about $0. We're not going to be signing any actors anytime soon on that amount. The Catch-22 monster (any artists out there who can draw this beast? I picture a Push-Me-Pull-You type animal) rears its ugly head again. Of course we can't attach an actor without money. And I can make promises in the form of Pay-or-Play deals till the cows come home. But if I don't get that money, I will be forced to pay on my own - which would suck. And of course I can't get financing until I attach someone with street cred that proves we mean business to the financiers. Here's where my contact/networking list comes in handy. We haven't hit the jackpot yet with an understanding investor or actor, but we've made some dents.
That's essentially where I'm at right now. Working on a business plan, which means finishing a proposed shooting schedule and attaching some cast/crew (if possible), with hopes that I can then approach sales agents and investors with a straight face when I ask for money. It's quite daunting, considering the level of our budget and the fact that raising that much through investors alone is nearly impossible. *sigh* *again* Still, I've learned quite a bit in the last few months and if anything I've found that I'm exactly on the right track. Whatever that means. I assume it means in a few months I'll either have my budget or be another one of the struggling few. We happy few.
Committed
And the ball begins to roll... I spoke yesterday with a fellow who is passionate about films being made here in Seattle which of course I completely and unequivocally agreed with. While he can't assist me directly he promised to connect me to people that could. And connect he has done. The proverbial ball is in their court now. They have the logline for "Plight" and a recommendation from this fellow, and really why not help? Right?
I move in to the new office on Tuesday of next week. I'm excited for many reasons, not least of which is that now half my shit can sit in my office instead of taking up valuable floor space at the apartment. But I'm probably more excited because I'll finally be able to bring in an intern to help me compile the vast amounts of tapes I have! It'll be an editorial internship which I'll post on my site and through other outlets in the very near future. Mainly cataloging, capturing and some light editing. Will be fun!
We're gearing up to shoot another exciting project in the next couple of weeks. More on that soon.
We’re a movin’ on up!
This made me smile: Choral Nintendo Themes.
Aside from that, birthday was great, currently nursing a sore throat, waiting to hear back from some agents in LA and otherwise probably divulging far too much information about my production than I should. Aren't I a stinker? Ah well, that's how I run things. Smelly.
Cheers!
Breakdown, shakedown
Katrina update: my family in the area is safe and sound, little to no damage. Thanks for the well wishes. I won't get into the whole political thing again - I will still urge you to donate to the Red Cross or if you're in the area to volunteer time, donate clothes, etc. Every little bit helps.
Now that we have a completed script, I've begun breaking it down to rough out a schedule. With this schedule I should be able to finalize a budget (although at this point it's merely finessing the earlier temp budget). I've never broken down a script before but it's all fairly logical and straightforward. It ain't rocket science. I keep forgetting exactly how logical production management can be. It's one of those nebulous things that when you initially look at it it looks too complex and overwhelming. But the more you think about it everything fits perfectly and you really can't do one thing without doing another. It's probably one of the only things in this business that makes sense to me.
I've made some contacts and received some more advice. At this point working with a professional production manager is out of the question, unfortunately. I don't necessarily WANT to do this breakdown and budget myself, but in order to save $5-6000 I'll happily comply. I also spoke with a casting director I've had the pleasure of reading for once upon a time and he gave some sage words regarding finding talent on a limited budget. He confirmed though, that any budget under $1million is going to be looked at as too amateur for most agencies to even consider. We'd need to lock a million dollar budget - or at least state that we had such. Heh. Hollywood.
At this stage in the game though, my trip to LA is well... unplanned. I have oodles of friends to see, of course. The premiere of Serenity to see with whomever will see it with me. But I hope I can get some meetings with folks. We'll see.
The budget train
I'm nearly complete with what is most likely a laughably awful budget. Ya know, for business plans they say to find some films in your budget range with a similar theme or genre that might've been successful (hopefully so) that you can use to compare your movie to. For us, there aren't any. So I've been using some horror movies with similar budgets. Some of them have comedic elements to them, some of them are flat our comedies, but none are similar in tone to Plight of the Living Dead. This is both exciting and frustrating.
Anyway, so I'm almost done. The biggest hole right now is in the cast. I don't have nearly all the supporting/day-players in there, let alone any extras. I know some of the options for figuring out fringe costs and union fees, but that's all in a limbo right now. We're so close to going over budget that my method of overestimating will most definitely put us in the "too far out of reach" realm. And then I wonder how these other movies did it....
Okay, well it's not fair to compare Bubba Ho-Tep with us, other than the fact that it's a horror-comedy with an estimated $1,000,000 budget. Still it is a film in our genre with a budget we're eyeing. It was also written and directed by Don Coscarelli, Master of Horror, creator of Beastmaster, Phantasm and um... Phantasm! Anyway, they had ONE creature and the whole design and creation of Bubba Ho-Tep was done as a favor to Don and only cost materials. We have over two dozen zombies, in our film, with about half of that number being of the day-player variety or larger (meaning their make-up needs to be a little more intricate than most background performers). And I don't have the clout that Don might have. Don is able to put a bunch of crew and cast together who will work simply because they want to work with Don. We do not have this... yet.
Still, Bubba Ho-Tep was far from a commercial success. Video sales may have brought it into profit for the studio but its initial theatrical release was far from a surefire hit. Still, it has enough of a following to prompt Bubba Nosferatu. Go figure. Anyway... blah blah.
So I've got these books which describe how to make a movie for under $500,000 and for over $1,000,000. We're shooting for in between so I'm constantly having to go up and and under in my estimations. And it's all complete guesswork! Fun! What makes it really frustrating is looking at a movie like Bubba Ho-Tep and realizing that a movie like this CAN be made for under a million - but just as many favors as we had to call in to make Snow Day, Bloody Snow Day will need to be called in for this. Again, this is all assuming this budget can even be raised. Dontcha love filmmaking? I do.
Good thing I'm confident this film can get made. It's a stellar script, it really is. If you've read it before, it's even better now. If you haven't read it yet, you won't - you'll have to wait for the movie. Look for it Halloween 2007.