Fundraising

Raising funds for any project can be a pain. I mean, unless you are a rich child or know someone with a lot of money raising the funds to create your video project this can be a difficult task.

Now, in the past I have always just scrimped and saved and used the almighty credit card to pay for my film projects, and I've always done my films on the cheap, and when I say cheap I mean the sub 500 dollar cheap for everything. I generally would shoot, direct, write, edit, and any other rolls that needed to be filled.

And I know that by saying this, I might have just scared a lot of the people who might read this, because shooting films for under 500 dollars seems almost imposible, but on an almost anual basis I shoot a film for my own enjoyment in this range, and almost all of that money goes to craft services aka feeding the entire crew, and I aint just talking about cheese sandwiches, though if that's your thing you might want to try and join up with Lloyd Kaufman, and work on one of his films, because according to his book Make your own Damn Movie that is what he feeds his crew.

There are some alternatives though than just using the credit card method to make your money. You could ask your family and friends for money, they might just give it you. You can go around and try to find one of those rich people that I was talking about above, and though I've never done this, everything I've read about financing says that dentists have a lot of money laying around to invest in film projects, which means the next time you are in the dentist seat being freaked out by the cleaning, grinding, scraping, injecting those cavities with metal, you could maybe try to mumble something about that film idea you have.

If this doesn't seem like your thing or desire, I was recently introduced to this idea of community donating/funding platforms by a couple of friends who were raising funds for their individual video projects and I think the idea is pretty cool. The two sites that they turned me onto were Kickstarter and indiegogo.

Both of these website rely on the community of the world to support your project and through supporting your project, you generally give them something at different price points, things like posters, CDs, DVDs, meeting the cast and crew, T-Shirts, a smile. The item/object is really up to you, but there are differences between the two websites.

Now Kickstarter, is a website that deals exclusively with art based projects, and the raising of money through those art based projects. They have a set up that says that you have to raise a certain amount of money for your project, whatever that amount is and if you do not raise that amount then you don't get any of the money and it gets returned to the owners. This can be a good thing especially if say you need a thousand dollars to make your movie and if you don't get a thousand dollars you don't have to worry about half creating your film. The downside to this is that if you could in theory make the movie for 750 dollars and you get that 750 dollars, but not the thousand, then you are out of luck.

Indiegogo, on the the other hand is a community fundraising program that can include anyone for anything. There are people on there who just want to have fun and thus try to raise money to try and have fun. This is a website that is for anyone that has an idea and is seeking funding for whatever their lifestyle is. Indiegogo is different from Kickstarter because you can set it up so that even if you do not reach your goals you can still get the money that was donated through the program and put that towards whatever your project that you are creating. The downside though is that if you didn't get enough money to make the project you were selling to all of your supporters you could be in a very bad place, because you have other people's money and you are expected to try and produce a piece of work for them. So be aware of that.

Personally, after looking at the two choices that my friends suggested, I decided that I was going to try and raise some real serious funds for an upcoming webseries I wrote that I would like to see produced. I thought it over and decided that I was going to go with Indiegogo, because I could set a goal for finances that I would like to reach, as well as being able to look at the money aspect and say that if I didn't reach that amount I would still be able to produce this show, but with a lot less frills. Again, I am someone who generally has created movies for 500 dollars or less in the past.

If you would like to check out my Indiegogo account and see how the fundraising aspect works, I would encourage you to click on my link below, give it a look over and possibly donate to help this project become a reality.