Crowd Funding For Independent Films

How do you find funding for an independent film?

How to raise money for your film project? My guidelines:First, get your script done. Write a titillating synopsis and treatment.Make an impressive trailer, if you can, with the actual actors. You want your male and female leads to be gorgeous-looking. They must also have screen magnetism, like Elvis and Ann Margaret, and great acting skills. Absolutely no compromise on this!With the script and trailer, pitch to anyone you think will sponsor, or invest in, your project. Start with family and friends. Use social media. Approach companies, eg, KFC and Pepsi. You can offer to feature a shop, restaurant, etc, in your film for a few seconds in exchange for sponsorship or the free use of their premises. Also tell contributors their names will be in the credits. For the star investors or sponsors, they will get the associate producer title in the credits.Do crowdfunding at, say, Indiegogo. You need to reward contributors with gifts. If your short-film project is attractive, it's not difficult to get about $30K to $50K. For a feature, you can get more.Pitch to production companies, including Hollywood studios if it's a feature, for partnership. A Hollywood studio partner will help you meet most, if not all, of your budget needs. Let me illustrate. Hollywood A-list director James Wan was just a film student in Australia when he and his course mate pitched their “Saw” script to a Hollywood studio. They loved it. And they got James to direct and his course mate had a meaty role in the film. The movie was a box-office hit. James went on to make a few more films successfully for Hollywood. If you don't have a script, you pitch your film concept. If it's original and awesome, you may get buyers or partners.Apply for a grant from your government’s film commission, if there's one.Submit your script to as many established film festivals that have a screenplay category as you can. At the marketplace, there will be film producers, executives, distributors looking for attractive films and screenplays to buy or to collaborate with the owners on. If you are lucky, you can end up with an awesome financial deal! Feature screenplays can be sold to big production houses for $1 million or more! If they want to partner you, your budget needs are met! Check out these two film-festival websites. Between them they have about 7,000 film festivals. You can submit to any film festival online at these two sites. Very convenient. 1) Withoutabox 2) FIlmFreeway.

How do we get funding for an independent film? We need $200,000

There are many ways to find funding for your short film. A few are listed below :Government funding : Lookout for government funded plans and programs to secure funding.Crowdfunding : Approach crowdfunding platforms and organise funding campaigns. There are a number of crowd funding platforms available to get funds. One of the best platforms to approach is Shortfundly - A platform for creative filmmakers . (Click on the highlighted text for the URL).Shortfundly hitches you with a number of crowdfunding platforms like Ketto, Wishberry , Impactguru Bitgiving , etc. at one place. Join the community and let Shortfundly do the rest of the work.Self Financed : Put in your own money to finance the film.Deferrals : Get everybody to work and distribute the profits if any afterwards.link to download the app - Shortfundly - Free Shortfilms - Android Apps on Google Play

How can equity-based crowd-funding benefit independent filmmakers?

Having dealt with equity/capital raising in startups for some time, equity film crowdfunding will be a double edged sword.  Companies like Slated › Film Financing & Dealmaking are well positioned to take advantage of the market when the rules for ordinary investors are finally implemented and regulated.   Because you are dealing with financial returns, mom and pop investors or others who have never been in the movie business may jump at the opportunity for the next big blockbuster.  However after some time, investors will realize that the traditional and online distributors control much of the money flow and finding a good and honest distributor who plays fair is doable but tricky.  Like anything, there is lots of money to be made and loss.

How does crowdfunding for films work?

Personally, I feel that crowdfunding help filmmaker raise funds for project mainly by “building and interest in the audience”.It can also be seen as a marketing /publicity effort for the film as people start talking about it.The type of filmmakers that can most likely benefit from it:1. Filmmakers making films on important topic, such as gun in school , domestic violence etc. Important topic that are not mainstreamed and had been shunned away by others. People fail to realise that by not discussing these issues and tackling it , it will just stick around.2. new filmmakers in industry that are having a hard time building their own community/ looking for investorsMost platform I had read on, allow filmmakers to use their platform as a publicity tool in return that they put their work on it for free. But as filmmakers / directors/ editors/ scriptwriters or any behind-the-scene heroes, you would know how much time and effort is needed to produce one quality project. Should one sacrifice returns just for publicity? My answer would be no.Although there is existing crowdfunding platform like Kickstarter ,it is diluted with many other projects irrelevant to films.3. Short films / mini web series that have engaging plotsSuch as allowing audiences to have a say in the plot. By this, maybe you can check out PREMISE - coming soon! to have a better understanding.It is also a crowdfunding platform built solely for film, and ensures the creator are recognised not just from their hardwork but also from their film, therefore allowing the content creator to earn both $$ and build up the right audiences for their film or for their future work.

Is crowdfunding a good idea for film-makers?

Crowdfunding greatly helps independent film makers to save a small capital to invest in their movie making project. When an aspiring creator has no resources to start with, funding from various sources gives him support. Little drops maketh an ocean, and a little contribution from every supportive film maker will make him achieve his goal.Shortfundly like platform operates solely for independent movies and film makers. Such kind of platforms can be wisely to collect fund, create the movie and publish them to a wide audience.Download their app to know more about themShortfundly - Free Shortfilms - Android Apps on Google PlayShortfundly on the App Store

Is film crowdfunding still possible in 2018?

Absolutely - just not as much for feature films.I’ve successfully run about a dozen different short film crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter – two just last year – and I have friends who’ve run campaigns on Seed & Spark. Seed & Spark is better for ultra-low budget features than Kickstarter because you can solicit in-kind donations for a large chunk of your goal. I think you can have in-kind donations - meaning loaning of gear, services, locations, etc. - cover as much as 80% of your goal, and that’s something that Kickstarter’s massive mailing list can’t really compete with.Don’t quote me on the 80% part though. I haven’t run a Seed & Spark campaign myself yet, so it honestly might be 20% instead - meaning the funds would have to be 80% instead - but in either case, that can help a lot. Feel free to comment if you have personal experience and I’ll add corrections later.

How do I raise money through crowd funding to produce/make a hindi film?

Now a days, the independent filmmakers turning to crowdfunding to raise money to make their feature film, documentaries, music video, short films and even web series. Filmmakers are using crowdfunding platforms not just to find small investors but also film festival attendance and publicity for their projects.Either you have to educate yourself about crowdfunding, process and the marketing techniques to be better crowdfunder so that you can start a crowdfunding campaign in near future too.  Else you can find an agency or a professional who can guide you through the crowdfunding process, offer best practice crowdfunding tips and share your project with our networks on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and help with email campaigns as well.Important things for your campaign: Build a team, have professionals who have good experience in film making.Get a pitch video of maximum 3 minutesGet a well written pitch text / Contents of 2000 words, at least.Get some graphics related to your film / story and even include those with the content. Create a story, why you want to make this movie, your experience, qualification, skills & mention a part in your content & Pitch video. Prepare a speadsheet about TO-DO-LIST, mention what to do before you launch your campaign and what do after you have launchedMake a list of rewards / perks for the backers.Set up your social media accounts specially be active on Twitter, facebook, LinkedIn and reditt. Have some money for Paid advertisements, Press Releases. The crowdfunding platforms, you can try: Ketto: Online Crowdfunding For Movies/FilmsIndiegogo: The Largest Global Crowdfunding & Fundraising Site OnlineKickstarter: Discover " Film & VideoDO NOT FORGET: Start working today, be active on social media, Get followers, start posting about project even if you are going to launch the campaign after 3-4 month.I hope, this helps!