There’s a great post today by the hugely talented indie filmmaker Gary King (follow him on Twitter here) on the Multi-Hyphenate blog.
In it, he espouses the pros and pros of crowdfunding for his upcoming flick HOW TO WRITE A JOE SCHERMANN SONG, which he’s doing via Kickstarter. The interesting part for me was the following:
One no longer has to worry about the return-on-investment or making money back to recoup costs. Although I’m sure the majority of filmmakers do want to turn a profit with their film, it is not a looming cloud above their heads.
At first glance I paused: surely the people donating want to see the film do well even if there’s not the profit-participation of traditional funding models? Then I realised exactly what Gary’s getting at: it’s about freedom.
What crowdfunding allows is for independent filmmakers to make the film they want, the way they want, without having to worry about who’s breathing down their neck for returns. And the Kickstarter model also means that you have to build your fanbase for the flick ahead of time to get the funding in place.
Gary is now just short of the 25% mark on funding his new project, which is well worth a look. Kickstarter‘s own stats show that once you pass the 25% funded mark, 94% of projects hit their funding deadlines.
Crowdfunding has been a revolution in the US recently and I’m now looking into ways of bringing the concept over to the UK so that British filmmakers don’t have to rely on American sites to run projects, where they suffer at the hands of exchange rates. More on that to come later, but for now check Gary out and contribute if you can.