One man’s take on Kickstarter, and another’s

Joey Daoud at Coffee and Celluloid writes about his experience trying to raise funds on Kickstarter, with the basic thought being “People don’t want to pledge money on something that isn’t a sure thing.”

He was planning a documentary on high-school students making robots for a competition, and set a goal amount of $9,000. He didn’t get the money.

His post lays out some wise advice: Build a fan base first through social media, create a high-profile blog and (most importantly) set a reasonable goal amount.

It’s also harder to build a fan base and raise money in the early stages of a project, before you have something to show and spread. That’s why there’s so many finishing grants – they want to put their money on something that has a high chance of seeing completion.

But he doesn’t address what is probably the key to trying to crowdfund: Have an absolutely brilliant idea that someone else can’t steal.

That’s nearly impossible. Imagine putting out into the ether an idea that is so obviously good that funders can’t help but want to put money toward it. Now imagine someone out there seeing that and thinking, “That’s something I could probably do better than this person.”

When you lay out your idea on Kickstarter, you’re depending on someone saying “that project could really work!” in all the right ways. Ideas aren’t copyrightable, nor should they be. So here are some added observations on approaching Kickstarter.

1) I have an idea that is sufficiently broad that it will attract both funders and a wide audience. Funders mathematically represent a very tiny subgroup of all the people who’d want to see this film. Projects that involve a very narrow topic might attract a smaller, deeper cohort, but now you need luck working for you. For Joey’s project, I’d guess not that many people are that interested in robot building – or at least think they’d be that interested -  but if you can get the idea to that rich tech guy who remembers fondly building his own robot in high school… but then you’re probably back to looking for individual backers.

2) I have a project in which I am the only person who can do it properly. What gives you, the filmmaker, a monopoly on this idea? Why can’t someone else do it better? Hollywood is in the idea-stealing business, to a large degree, and we assume documentary filmmakers are more… pure. Ask Regina Kimbell about that. So to crowdfund without giving away the store, it can either be that you’re in a highly unusual position (“I’m living in the Amazon with an indigenous group of natives who have never before seen an outsider and have come to trust me”), or it can be that you’re a unique talent with a serious track record (“I’ve won major awards for my uniquely insightful approach to stories and my tireless work to realize it on film”). Roko Belic crowdfunded $36,000 for his new documentary “Happy,” which is a great idea. He also was an Academy Award nominee for his film “Genghis Blues,” in which he traveled to Mongolia to document a blind American participating in a Tuvan throatsinging competition, shot on Hi-8, and lived over an auto repair shop to afford to make the film. That’s a fundable guy.

3) This idea fills a gap that people want to see filled. As much as it seems like there is no stone unturned in the current documentary climate, there are always gaps in topic areas you’d think would have been done. Don’t try to crowdfund a documentary about the environment, the current darling topic of film festivals everywhere, try to find something where when you say, “No one’s ever done a film on this,” the response is “Really? You’re kidding.” That kind of film may not appeal to Sundance and The Academy, but it will appeal to the audience who’d like to see that as-yet-nonexistent film.

4) I will finish this film no matter what, but your money will help make it better. Kickstarter has no way of knowing how many people, when they don’t reach their funding goal, just give up, but that’s the last person I’d want to fund. Show me no one can stop you. Show me you already figured out how you’ll sacrifice and fight through adversity before you ask me to give money to a stranger. Make me, in essence, part of a cause, a story of triumph over adversity – not only in the film, but in the story of making of the film. A trailer will help a lot in showing this.

5) I’m not greedy. Remember “It’s a Wonderful Life,” when there’s a bank run, and everyone’s trying to cash out? George Bailey asks people, “what will it take to get you by for now?” Meek little Miss Davis says, “Can I have $17.50?” When you’re crowdfunding, you’re Miss Davis. You will get by on the least amount possible. You will ask for nothing more than you need. And how much do you really need? I once met a couple of guys who wanted to do a documentary on gerrymandering in Texas politics. They lived in Boston. So their funding needs involved airfare, hotels and so on. With Joey, I presume the high school where they’re doing the robot building is very close by (so he can be there all the time at no expense), that he’ll work the project after his regular job he uses to afford his own living expenses, and that he’ll choose equipment that is the minimum to do his project correctly – REDs need not apply. But a crowdfunder, IMHO, is wise not to let me presume that, but to be clear on that. With grants, you’re obligated to report back your expenditures and sign a legal document saying you’re telling the truth. Crowdfunding is all about trust.

Finally, and most importantly, some of the best documentaries ever would not have been crowdfundable. “Grey Gardens,” “Hoop Dreams” and “The Thin Blue Line” were likely too dependent on luck and serendipity to have drawn donations. So for Joey and other unsuccessful crowdfunders, what may happen in that outcome that you can’t guarantee may be the very thing that makes the film wonderful…

Will the DIY movement encourage more grants for documentaries?

The New York Women in Film & Television are offering a $7,500 grant for a film by a woman with a disability, or by a woman on the subject of disability. The Loreen Arbus Disability Awareness Grant deadline is September 8.

Grants have never been as numerous for documentary filmmakers, and even more scarce for makers of fiction/feature films. The reasons have always been simple: Even a decade ago, $7,500 was a drop in the bucket given the costs and challenges of making a film that would ever see the light of day.

Grantsmakers always needed to justify their disbursements, and films were always a bad bet. The number of $1 million-budget films (most fictional features) I know that were made in the 1990s that are still sitting on dusty shelves is staggering; the filmmakers (and some of these films are very good) not only had to contend with the costs of film and equipment, of expensive editing facilities, and of pricey delivery formats, but then they hit the bottlenecks of both the traditional forms of getting visibility – film festivals – and of indifferent distributors. Investing in a film was a longshot wager, and grant agencies tend not to be reckless gamblers.

What would the Arbus grant get you ten years ago? Some 35mm film and processing? (Note Albert Maysles comparison of film vs. video here.) Some time at a postproduction facility that bills $300 an hour? The expensive prospect of paying for DVDs to be authored from glass masters at a replication facility?

Now it can fund a good deal of your film. Shooting on a DSLR and editing on a MacBook Pro, you could do something good. And more importantly, with digital platforms for delivery, the film festivals have become more of a vehicle for publicity (and fun) than to ensure your film gets to a larger audience.

That’s especially true for documentaries, which find their audiences in ways that fiction films never will. Your doc may not go to Sundance and be up for an Oscar, but well-chosen topics have audiences, and distributors aren’t really about connecting to them in the way DIY does now, be it Facebook, a website, or getting the right coverage in sometimes not-so-obvious places. (My own current project already has 30 paid theatrical and university screenings set up for 2010 and 2011, largely based on publicity we got on a variety of blogs and from one article on the project in Publisher’s Weekly, all this before we even sent the completed film to a festival. We’ll make all our money back, and a good deal more, before even selling DVDs or determining digital distribution. Being in a festival doesn’t really seem that important at this point, although it would be enjoyable. I’ll post more on that process later this year. And of course, all this will be made known to the granting agency who helped fund the film when we apply for another grant from them).

I suspect that grantmaking agencies that see their funds result in a definable outcome, and who see it done mostly on their money, are going to start feeling good. Whomever gets the Arbus grant has a better chance to complete a film that goes to a meaningful audience than ever before. While it’s my opinion that fictional films remain the longshot bet they always were, documentaries may find more funding with organizations that traditionally avoided funding films.

After ‘The Day’ of ‘Life,’ what’s the future of crowdsourced documentaries?

The day of “Life in a Day” is over, and uploading has begun. Videos of July 24 are being moved to the project’s producers, Ridley Scott and Kevin MacDonald.

While those who shot have had some problems uploading to the project’s YouTube site, there will be no shortage of footage for the filmmakers to choose from. Whether the finished product will be something good, or just a good publicity stunt, is also something we’ll have to find out.

Some things happened on the 24th that were newsworthy, and some of the “Life” participants were there: One video was to be fun shots of the German Loveparade 2010, but documented the chaos that left 19 dead.

“Crowdsourcing” is the name of this endeavor, and crowdsourcing can either be looked at as an effort to harness collective talents, or a way of getting people to do stuff free for you. Getting people to do stuff for free comes with some implicit promise, and here it’s getting your footage in a film that shows at Sundance. In five more days, when the uploading window closes, we’ll see how many total videos and how many total participants there were.

But even now there are some observations to be made:

The gap between professional and amateur gets smaller. Rapidly advancing technology allows people to have in their hands equipment capable of producing images close to those of “professionals,” which may terrify the latter. You could not have done this project with Hi-8 without it screaming “home video.” With minimal working knowledge, amateurs can get really good footage, which shows the groundshift. Some older cinematographers are horrified with younger ones who don’t know how to tape-measure shots or follow focus using lens markings, but the younger ones see no point – they just watch the HD monitor. In a smaller iteration of that, cheap handheld equipment is pumping out 1080p. Hollywood, of course, always tries to widen the gap, be it through widescreen or more recently 3-D. The crowdsourcing venture acknowledges that shrinking gap, and to some degree allows amateurs to be closer to what professionals do. Would you consider these contributors whose shots are used to be “Sundance filmmakers?” Professionals won’t; bet a lot the amateurs will, and won’t really feel they’re stretching it.

Crowdsourcing only works with some worthy achievable goal. YouTune began with a slogan, “Broadcast Yourself,” which is both true and not. “Broadcast” once stood for the selectivity that came with the extraordinary costs of making that happen; if you were “broadcast” you were of a select few who had access. Now everybody can “Broadcast,” which means the task of selectivity falls to the viewers, which can be overwhelming and often leads to the lowest common denominators – shock value, or foolishness – rising to prominence – an 11-year-old girl ranting into a webcam about using a 9 millemeter to blow your brains out, for example. So to be “broadcast” in the way it was originally defined, amateurs still depend on those with influence and access, such as Scott and MacDonald. Expect to see a lot of copycat projects, but don’t expect a lot to amount to much.

Crowdsourcing works better with a shared interest at hand. “Life in a Day” is as broad as it gets, but shared work on a subject in which a group is deeply interested in a subject. Harnessing a group of people to express about a more defined subject or approach is likely to make for a good project. Crowdsourcing a film on a narrow interest, subjectwise or even geographically, can work, and will work better when the participants have an interest in filmmaking.  Why do I expect a “Day in the Life of Brooklyn” film to be coming soon?

Curation is a matter of talent and commitment of a different kind. The “filmmakers” Scott and MacDonald are unlikely to be able to look at everything that gets uploaded; the larger the pool of video the more that crucial task is delegated. How many deeply sublime moments will be missed, like trees falling in a forest, as an intern or production assistant buzzes through videos looking for the obvious? And in order to effect some measure of organization, these underlings may be given specific sorts of instructions on what to look for. How many will be discarded because they might not fit the bill? Crowdsourcing discards one talent/effort – in this case going out and shooting – for another, sitting at a computer watching dizzying amounts of video.

Crowdsourcing has elements of serendipity, if allowed. Will one piece of work uploaded be so compelling it essentially becomes a signature moment of this film? Will a handful of would-be filmmakers be launched with this project? The opportunity for any one or two submitters to become stars remains in the hands of the producers, and it will be interesting how much they allow that. The firm hand or open mind of the so-called “curator,” sifting through submissions, still shapes the film.

Crowdsourcing isn’t exactly collaboration, but suggests it. By working with many others, Scott and MacDonald give up the control filmmakers have in making a film. It also potentially leads to a greater opportunity for what might be called “thoroughness.” A “Day” is better chronicled by 10,000 shooters than by 10. But there’s a middle ground, and it may lead filmmakers to greater collaboration. The best example right now is the upcoming “Freakonomics” film, in which an all-star lineup of documentary filmmakers including Alex Gibney and Morgan Spurlock contribute sections based on chapters of the book the film is adapting.

Crowdsourcing may have limited success if the rewards are too limited. As much as crowdsourcing gurus such as Jeff Howe (“Crowdsourcing”) and Clay Shirky (“Here Comes Everybody”) preach its virtues, I’ve always wondered whether it represented a bit of the “Tom Sawyering” of creative communities. Remember how Tom got all the other kids to whitewash his aunt’s fence, by convincing them how much fun they were missing? A lot of “Life in a Day” hopefuls will come home empty handed, and the question for them is  “Was it fun to do the work? Can you make it into your own project? Was the opportunity justification enough to make the effort?” That is for them to decide; it would be nice if someone’s one-day effort for this project leads them to pursue something bigger on their own.

The film will have a high degree of novelty to it when it’s released; that alone will get it watched. A few months up the road we’ll have a better sense of how it may influence future documentary filmmaking.

Why documentaries will crowdfund and self-distribute better than fictional films

Filmmaker Magazine has a piece by Anthony Kaufman that questions whether crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter, or distributing DIY, are the salvation of independent film.

Kaufman writes,

While social media’s cheerleaders are many — Scott Kirsner, Lance Weiler, Ted Hope, Peter Broderick, Jon Reiss — the solvency of an Internet-enabled DIY filmmaking-and-distribution model is far from guaranteed. At this early stage, the successes are few and far between (Tze Chun’s Sundance drama Children of Invention; Franny Armstrong’s eco-doc The Age of Stupid), and some are calling a sustainable indie-film infrastructure built around crowd-funding and social-network marketing a naïve proposal.

I’m not sure how “few and far between” successes are, when it comes to documentaries. I also think crowdfunding can be a very successful approach for nonfiction film, as can DIY distribution. Here are some reasons why:

Fictional film is an art, documentary a craft. Art is more of a mystery, even to those who create it; one’s last successful work doesn’t assure future success. Even once a screenplay is written, add into fiction film the artistic vision of a director, then actors. When it all comes together, it’s wonderful, but anyone who invests in art knows the result is not always return. Even a patron of the arts, whether it be a granting agency or a microfunder, never is sure of a finished product being worthwhile. Craft steps away from art’s pretensions and its aspirations, but it also then settles itself into workmanship as well as intrinsic value.  A craftsman such as Alex Gibney or  Errol Morris is likely to repeat successes more than an artist such as Kevin Smith or Kathryn Bigelow (for those of us who are a bit older, think Michael Cimino and Peter Bogdonavich, who both followed early success by nearly disappearing from the grid). The more “journalistic” the documentary, the more craftsmanship trumps art.

Fiction films are personality driven; documentaries are subject-driven. With the exception of names such as Werner Herzog (“a documentary about Antarctica? I’m there!”), audiences seek out documentaries based on topic. Find a topic of high interest to a core audience, particularly a topic that has been underrepresented, and you’ll get interest. Years ago I sat in an Atlanta theater watching the 1977 Danish documentary “A Sunday in Hell,” about the grueling Paris-Roubaix cycling race. The place was jammed with cyclists, many wearing their team jerseys and caps. It was all about their interest in seeing a topic for which they had passion. A great example of that are Gary Hustwit’s films, “Helvetica” and “Objectified,”  which are about typography and industrial design, respectively. Hustwit has built a core audience out of the design community, a group that likely has read scores of design magazines that cover much the same terrain. But a documentary lets us hear the people, and more importantly distills all that material into a perceptual value.  And that core audience that wants to see that film done will chip in to make it. Which leads to the next point.

Documentary filmmakers with a track record are safer future bets. Hustwit would likely do well with crowdfunding a design-related film, because he’s established himself there. I remember years ago going to Denver for my interview with The Denver Post, where I consequently worked as reporter, and sitting in the hotel bar with every television in the place pumping out Warren Miller ski documentaries. Welcome to Colorado, Dude! Miller was synonymous with ski and surf films, and therefore with Colorado and Southern California, and each successive film he made had a built-in audience. If crowdfunding had existed then, and you couldn’t wait for a new Warren Miller film, you might well have gone to Kickstarter and sent your $10.

Low cost means greater chance for success. Because a documentary budget can be siginficantly less than an actor-driven film (even if actors defer payments, they are still contracted payments), I’m more likely to believe my donation toward a documentary will actually lead to a documentary. It doesn’t have to be pitch-perfect, either: Watch Jonathan Nossitor’s “Mondovino,” a doc about small estate winemakers in France and elsewhere fighting big, bad Mondavi, and you’ll see low production value but great story. I think where some Kickstarter documentary projects have failed to get funding is where the funding goal seems out of whack – I want to know the filmmakers are sleeping on friends’ couches and not at the Hilton when they’re on the road. The famed Brazilian photojournalist Sebastiao Salgado documented the South American backroads in his book “Other Americas” by traveling in third-class buses, carrying a sleeping bag, and loading his own film from bulk reels into reusable cannisters, a “roll-your-own” aesthetic that allowed him to do great work. As Ben Franklin said, “Be Frugal, Be Free.” Documentary filmmakers who can squeeze the most out of the budgets they have beget more support. And, of course, the lower the production costs, the sooner you’ll actually make money.

As in funding, documentary distribution is topic-driven. The documentary “Beyond Biba,” detailed at this site in April, had a very successfully DIY distribution based on finding that small audience with passionate interest in fashion. Director Louis Price found theatrical distribution all over Britain and beyond for his film about “Biba” fashion doyenne Barbara Hulanicki. I’ve always thought of a film like this as being the ones distribution companies like First Run would never even bother watching, because distribution companies seem stuck in the old-school notion of all-or-nothing success. Sure, Magnolia found a winner with “Man on Wire,” but for people passionate about their topic, their all-time favorite documentary is the film the rest of us never even heard of.

In the end, no project is assured of success or interest, but it goes back to skillful craft having staying power in the market, for many reasons. Kaufman’s article is thoughtful, but makes the mistake of speaking of “film” as if there is really a strong affinity between fictional and documentary films. I think his perspective may be right and wrong, and that in the areas of crowdfunding and DIY distribution, documentary and fiction films may take greatly divergent paths to success.

The Film Collaborative explores nonprofit distribution

Orly Ravid says that she began The Film Collaborative after becoming acutely aware of the layers of middlemen who can, in the name of “distribution,” be the buffers between a filmmaker and his or her chance of making some money.

Ravid, who studied film at Columbia University, had spent a decade in the world of traditional film distribution, even as the world of traditional film shifted significantly.

And so was born TFC, Ravid’s effort to create a nonprofit distribution company that can help filmmakers move their work to deserving audiences and still come away with some compensation. She is founder and co-executive director (with Jeffrey Fabian Winter; David Averbach serves as creative director).

Based in Los Angeles, TFC works with two assumptions. First, that the traditional distribution pipeline for independent films has largely collapsed, and second, that filmmakers deserve to retain the rights on their work.

In some ways, it’s an oxymoronic phrase – “nonprofit distribution.” We did have a for-profit company that we did operate as we do the Collaborative, which is not taking rights, taking very low fees, and being in partnership with filmmakers and not owners of their film. As a nonprofit we can be up for a grant, to do a series of films that are not inherently commercial enough to get traditional distribution. We can help filmmakers make their money back if a lot of the money isn’t going to a middleman, or lawyers who are charging more than the filmmaker can afford. We can justify it in a way that we’re not charging a lot from the filmmakers, but we’re making up for that through donation and sponsorship.

TFC takes donations through Paypal, has done some funding efforts through IndieGoGo and has members ships ranging from “contributor” to “conspirator” to “teammate.” The films on the roster include shorts, fictional features and documentaries such as Kimberly reed’s “Prodigal Sons.”

We’ve been officially launched since March, and right now we’re waiting on a grant to do, theatrically, a film series of films directed by women, so that’s the kind of thing we do to find money to allocate to films that wouldn’t otherwise find distribution, so that filmmakers don’t have to finance distribution themselves.

We do a whole bunch of different services. Sometimes it’s a consultation. Sometimes we’re doing the festival distribution, talking to people about having films screen in their festivals.

The way TFC works with film festivals is an interesting example of the groundshift in the way films move into the world.

We do charge rental fees from festivals. The A-list festivals don’t pay, but the way we see it is that your film might have a big brand of its own, if you the filmmaker, or the subject of the film, has its own brand. But the brand gets more elevated and gets more publicity when you show it publicly – if either the festival or you do the job of making that happen.

A filmmaker needs a festival as much as a festival needs a film. It’s the cheapest way to see how audiences react to your film, to get publicity and marketing around your film, and frankly as a standard of legitimacy to separate your film out from other films. Certainly, digital platforms and cable look for those signifiers.

TFC takes a 15 percent cut of digital distribution (and encoding and marketing costs that are negotiated in advance with the filmmakers).

We’re constantly expanding the digital platforms we’re doing direct distribution to. The way we function is we play a lot of different roles, and wear a lot of different hats depending on the needs of the film. Sometimes we behave as a producer’s rep. We’ve done some films where there’s a traditional deal going on, but we’re doing it very nontraditionally. And then there are other times when we’ll do direct distribution, inclusive of digital, which is obviously emerging for us.

While the big theater chains are the stuff of studio films, more attention is paid to the many art houses and independent cinemas.

I’m meeting with one theater that has an initiative about connecting with other theaters; Emerging Pictures has done that and there are other companies looking at that. AMC has its independent initiative, and Landmark. Then there are organizations like the Northwest Film Forum that don’t have an official linkage between theaters but book with a cluster of theaters.

To me, the most important next step is that the theatrical concept of getting book for a week with four or five shows a day and trying to get a crowd in, is just silly. We’re looking for ways of getting the benefit of theatrical, which at the end of the day can just be getting reviewed and getting awareness of your film, but for a fraction of the cost.

Publicity is key, as more films flood the market. In particular, documentaries may have a solid audience interested in the topic; letitng them know about it in the shifting media landscape presents difficulties and opportunities.

The journalists are few and far between unless your at Cannes, and the space they have to write is shrinking, and online there’s just too much noise for that kind of press to mean as much as you’d like it to. Everybody wants a New York Times or Los Angeles Times review. Even the New York Times doesn’t want to cover a film that’s just opening in New York; they’re mandated to cover films that have wider releases.

The emphasis is on community, including a page called The Film Collaborators,” which TFC would like to see become a “Facebook for Filmmakers.”

Funding a film one frame at a time: Can it work for documentaries?

With independent filmmakers, the road to fruition is paved with good intentions, but often somewhat lacking in funds. Whether it be borrowing from friends, maxing out credit cards, or slowly building a savings account in extended pre-production, the dollars often seem to some one at a time.

Australian filmmakers Enzo Tedeschi and Julian Harvey are doing so in a fairly novel way. They’re asking people to buy single frames of their film, “The Tunnel,” which they plan to release on Torrents. Carlo Ledesma will direct.

Now, “The Tunnel” is not a documentary, but rather a thriller, but I spoke to them about their so-called “135k Project” because this fundraising technique is actually tailor-made for certain documentaries.

“The Tunnel” has yet to be made (The film’s site describes it thusly: “In 2007 the New South Wales government suddenly scrapped a plan to utilise the water in the disused underground train tunnels beneath Sydney’s St James Train Station. In 2008, chasing rumours of a government coverup and urban legends surrounding the sudden backflip, investigative journalist Natasha Warner led a crew of four into the underground labyrinth.”) The 135k project seeks to rise $135,000 Australian dollars to make a 135,000-frame (93.75 minutes at 24p) film. As of this writing, Enzo and Julian have  sold 8,265 frames.

Enzo says,

There’s a certain warm and fuzzy feeling in which people are liking the idea, of our not clamping down in a “you can’t share our film” vibe. There’s kind a community vibe, a kind of “We’re creating something with the assistance of the internet as a way of giving it back to the internet.” You’re also creating a way for the rest of the world to see the film for free, and not just you.

So the question is, Why would I do that?”

With “The Tunnel,” the answer seems to be novelty, an excitement about the concept not only of the film (teasers are on their website to whet the appetite of viewers) but of the fundraising. The buy-a-frame approach has gotten good press in Australia.

It’s also a fun way to go, and unlike crowdfunding, it’s a definable transaction. Payments go through PayPal; each donor will get the specific frame purchased as a high-res image (which in itself sounds like a time -intensive undertaking meant to cultivate donors). Enzo says,

The film was always written as a feature, and always written in a way that we could make it for a low budget, and we went through a variety of possible funding models, from throwing the cash in ourselves to trying to get private investors. But despite our optimistic box-office projections, based on some discussions with a consultant, it just wasn’t going to work. There’s not enough money trickling back down the chain.

The answer for any filmmaker looking for donors, rather than investors, is simple: Find people who want to see the film made. It may be that they want to see a particular actor or director’s next work; in documentaries, it’s usually that the potential donor wants to see the topic explored.

For documentarians, a $135,000 budget would not seem necessary. More like $13,500 would be enough to come up with something decent. But for those looking to budget on the larger side, these general guidelines might make sense:

1) Set a price that is likely to make. Will “The Tunnel” really reach $135,000? Possibly, but the question of what happens if a funding goal isn’t met is important to determine. Crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter premise an an all-or-nothing approach. Either you make the full amount or none, which forces filmmakers to come up with a kind of “low-bid” approach. Being too ambitious with your funding goal can lead to no funding at all. People are more inclined to support you if they know what happens to their money in all contingencies.  Also, what’s the dividend, if any? The Australian filmmakers Tedeschi and Harvey also promise a 1% share back to funders; in the USA, just bear in mind that gets into a Securities & Exchange Commission issues because, in essence, you’re offering stock now.

2) Have a bit of a track record. People are most likely to donate to a product they think will turn out. Have a resume. Make small films that speak to your abilities. Bring things in on deadline. Selling frames is less likely to work for a student film, first-time effort, or untested company. Tedeschi and Harvey have worked on a variety of films (including the successful “Food Matters,” profiled at this site) and run a production company thathas had some visibility.

3) Tease and Tantalize with trailers. People are more likely to keep the ball rolling if they see tangible work underway. The Tunnel site has samples meant to drive interest; with documentaries a snippet from one interview or another can help

4) Use social networks to get the word out. Twitter and Facebook tabs adorn “The Tunnel” website, and that’s even more effective when there are definable groups or networks with passion about a topic.

5) Make the topic truly fundable and transparent. Personal works, self-indulgences and even well-thought-out pieces that appear to funders to be too narrow seem less promising for such funding; projects that seem to double as a personal vacation or free ride to exotic places will tend to land flat. The topic has to support its own funding for this approach. Nobody wants to throw money away… even a dollar.

6) Make the project cost effective. The biggest money burners on documentaries tend to be rights to archival or copyrighted material. People may not want to fund the purchase of ridiculously expensive footage from some media giant. Show them the dollars translate directly to hard work by the filmmaker.

7) Make the funding the payoff. It seems that the Tedeschi-Harvey approach has had some success because the message isn’t “Give me your money, but if the film takes off, we keep the profits.” That would seem to be trying to have it both ways. Instead, make the funding from this approach cover all the work, and get it out there.

Of course, if one does crowdfund while reserving the right to make more profit, a hybrid fee/paid release might make sense, too. Documentarians find that the age of The Internet cuts both ways, and so much effort is made to protect creative property, one irony may be lost in that: In a piece in The Australian about the film, it was noted,

Tedeschi discovered with his last documentary, “Food Matters,” that not only did the film pop up on illegal networks within a month of its release but, counter-intuitively, legitimate sales then spiked. They realised embracing the online audience, legal or not, would only increase viewers.

Documentary trendwatch: Must there always be a contest?

One of the somewhat disturbing trends we’ve noted in documentary filmmaking in the past decade is one we believe has been directly attributable to reality television: One in which the story culminates in a head-to-head competition among the show’s participants.

Julia Child has been supplanted by Iron Chef. “The Real World” is a fake world in which bogus contests reign. “The Apprentice” portrays the world of business as a series of foolish and often humiliating petty competitions (OK, well maybe that’s true).

Documentaries in that way have shifted on some levels from being discussions of a reality or a portrait of a world (“Fog of War,” “Harlan County” “Grey Gardens”) into a plotline that takes us to the championships of something (“Spellbound” about spelling bees, “Wordplay,” about crossword puzzles, “The Good Mother,” about a Mother of the Year contest, “Superhero,” in which a Superman impersonator takes part in a look-alike contest, etc).

Word from the Los Angeles Film Festival is that the top documentary prize goes to “Make Believe,” about a group of teenaged magicians competing for the title of Teen World Champion of magic.

In many ways, this film would not seem out of place on a television network. With an emphasis on the competition more than on the subjects’ inner lives, with the through-line building toward who is “the best,” and with  the emphasis on the visuals of the on-stage competition, it borrows heavily of the reality-show convention, as so many of these types of films do.

Competition documentaries have a fairly standardized format: We visit several contestants in their home environments, seeing them talk about the impending contest, then we shift to the competition venue, generally at midpoint. This makes for a very dependable production schedule and very clear structure: preparation/competition/reflective denouement. It’s a format that can be accomplished with minimal shooting days and with a dependable “moment of truth.”

Having the story build to a winner, and losers, can make for both an easy audience experience and perhaps one that loses the greater ingredient of documentaries, which is the open question. Watching Robert McNamara squirm and defend in “Fog of War” leaves one disturbed and uncertain; “Grey Gardens” give us “it is what it is” experience with no easy answers. Isn’t that a good thing?

The fact that it has taken the $50,000 documentary prize at LAFF may also indicate a certain legitimization of this form. Having the drama of the contest, mixed with the familiarity of the reality format for audiences, may may it more accessible for wider audiences, but is it changing the form?

The question may be whether that’s creating less space for the purely thoughtful documentary that examines, questions and contemplates. When one looks at “classics” as “Titicut Follies,” “Don’t Look Back” or “The Last Days,” one wonders if they would have a harder time finding a place in the new landscape.

Must there always be competitions? Monty Python asked that question years ago with “Philosophy Football”:

Blogging as a way of supporting your film

Film-marketing expert Sheri Candler says to “think of your blog as a publishing arm of your empire.”

Blogging as a way of extending interest in a film, particularly a documentary, can be a very useful”inbound marketing strategy.” It positions the documentarian not only as a maker of a film but also as a center of information for a given topic. Blogging your film can be narrow (focusing only on the film) or wide (focusing on news within the subject area the documentary covers).

Sheri has reposted some guidelines for blogging, and it’s a useful read. Some points she makes:

- Blog off a unique url you  have purchased, not off a free blog on sites such as Wordpress or TypePad. “You want a unique URL that is simple to remember and that you can move if you need to without having to get a new URL.”

- Blog enough (at least once weekly) to maintain or build audience. “It takes consistent work for a long period of time to build up readers. Same with the audience for your films.”

- Don’t overdo keywords, but rather focus on content that draws readers instead of just search engines. “Useful content keeps readers coming back, keep the keywords appropriate to your post.”

- Don’t use your blog strictly as a press center for your film. “Press releases are one way communication, announcements to the press about your company/film. Blogs are dialogs meant for conversation with your audience.”

Sheri also covers some ideas of how and what to blog.

My former colleague from Nieman Journalism Lab, Zach Seward (now covering social media for The Wall Street Journal) notes that blogs and social media can turn you from “pure marketer” to an “information center.” This is especially true of documentarians who choose a topic because they are innately interested in it and want to continue to explore it after the film is done. It becomes circular: The documentary speaks to the filmmaker’s knowledge base, and the continuing knowledge base in turn brings people back to the film.

Does directing documentaries prepare you for directing fiction film? Should it?

Angela Wu writes in The Independent about Emily Abt, who moved from documentary filmmaking to writing and directing a fictional film that went to Sundance in 2009, and whether being a documentary director can prepare you to direct fictional films, a question with about a million variables for which compelling examples can be found on either side.

Abt would seem a compelling example, although big directors such as Werner Herzog, Martin Scorsese and others have moved back and forth over the line for years. In the article, Abt offers tips regarding working with larger crews, understanding budgeting issues and “using your documentary work as a springboard to fiction projects.”

Working on a documentary throws you head-first into a world that might be unfamiliar to most others and requires you to get to know a topic or a community in great depth. Luckily, this experience—and access—could give you an advantage when pitching narrative features and writing screenplays. If you can use what you’ve learned on a given documentary as a foundation, “you’re going to be that much more ahead of the game in terms of writing material about it,” she says.

But what’s largely missing from the piece is the most direct discussion: Are these two forms really at all alike, and does one talent lend itself to another?

As someone who has been a journalist and a fiction writer, and as someone doing documentaries but also with an adaptation from a short story that will both be staged as a play and shot as a fictional film this fall, I’ve been thinking more than ever about how one can try to successfully cross from one form to another. I think the question is a tricky one. It’s kind of like saying “Will being a good basketball player make me a good baseball player?”, something Michael Jordan once had answered disappointingly. It’s a combination of whether the ability (or talent) is there and whether work in one field makes you better in another. So I offer these thoughts:

1) Story is story, except that it’s not. Finding a story from all the stories out there is a journalistic approach; making one up based on the stories you’ve seen is another. Some people are good at both; some people are terrible at finding stories outside of themselves (what a documentarian would do) but great at morphing their personal experiences into a work of art (fictional filmmaker). Finding a (factual) story is about recognizing value; creating a (fictional) story is about seeing experience for what it can be. I often use the analogy that nonfiction work is like sculpting from marble, where you chip away until you find the essence within, while fictional work is like sculpting with clay, in which you add shape and form by the handful.

2) It depends on what kind of films you make. We wrote here about the Louisa May Alcott documentary that used heavy doses of reenactment. A reenactment-driven documentary must be better preparation that an interview-based one. A documentary with lots of visual or action value can make you better at a fiction film with visual or action value. A documentary with a strong personal through-story (such as Jonathan Caoette’s “Tarnation”), as opposed to ideas-driven docs (such as Gary Hustwit’s “Objectified”) probably draws on the same talent for focused storytelling that pushes a fictional work.

3) Documentary work should not be a means to another end. I’ve run into my share of students and young filmmakers who view documentaries as a way of “making a film” until they get the big budget to shift to fictional filmmaking, and it always makes me sorry. I’m a former newspaper reporter and magazine writer with two books of fiction out and now my second documentary, and I think that ever looking at one as a way to another is denying the essential value each form possesses. The documentary form is a wonderful thing, and I view it as being much more akin to magazine pieces I’ve done in print than to fictional films, which I view far more related to short stories and novels. To me, the idea that film schools attempt to cover documentary and fictional film under one umbrella, bound by the commonality of cameras, is a forced fit. Back decades ago, where so much of filmmaking was learning how to run expensive and complicated equipment, that probably made sense. But to me, the idea that “film training” has led to the oddity in which a documentary, a journalistic entity, has a group of people referred to as a “cast.” I think journalistic training is more important these days for a documentary filmmaker than the kinds of skills film schools, with their emphasis on fictional films, emphasize (although “nonfiction dramatized films,” in which actors play out true stories – anything from “The Blind Side” to “Gettysburg” – is more like “fiction films”).

4) Fiction film requires skills you’ll never develop in documentary filmmaking. Reenactments in documentaries often get a free pass that they’d never get in fictional film. But in my experience working on a low-budget film that I both wrote and shot (but did not direct), I learned very quickly that the biggest skill set a director of fictional films probably needs to have is the ability to cast and work with actors. You can get a good actor, hand him or her a less-than-stellar script, and often stand back and watch them make it into something unexpected and wonderful. Camera angles, lighting and sound don’t matter if the actors can’t deliver (although a director friend tells me the skill is not in casting, but in hiring a casting director). And, of course, directing fiction films means choreographing movement, then shooting it, while “action” documentaries presume what is filmed was as it really happened. Of course, this isn’t completely true – a documentary director may ask a subject to re-enact or replicate certain behavior or action. But an action-documentary director may be more akin to a still photographer who shoots essays. Tim Hetherington, the longtime war photographer who teamed with author Sebastian Junger to make the acclaimed war doc “Restrepo” is an example there.

5) It’s entirely possible working on both doesn’t allow you to be your best in either one. I love doing nonfiction and fiction, and while I’ve been encouraged by some friends to drop one for the other, it’s too much fun doing both. Could I be better at any one by not doing other work? Probably so. Simple logic would dictate that time away from an activity means you can’t fully realize your potential in it, and playing in multiple creative fields can go there. In the documentary world, I’m grateful for the wonderful filmmakers who stay firm in the nonfiction form, and don’t feel they need to prove something in the high-budget world of fictional filmmaking.

In the end, I suspect the skills needed for documentary and fiction filmmaking are really fairly discrete. You can be good at both, but one doesn’t make you all that much better at the other. But younger filmmakers who experiment in both forms may surprise themselves at what they’re good at, what they turn out to enjoy, and how documentaries may allow a level of control over your story that even a fairly autonomous director may never fully get.

On the road to make a successfully crowdfunded film, and lessons learned so far

Nathaniel Hansen is getting ready to take a cross-country road trip to find his film, a documentary called “The Elders,” but he’s found his funding for the journey through the kindness of both friends and strangers, and their belief, in dollars, in what he’s doing.

Hansen, an Oregon native living in Boston, and with a degree in documentary filmmaking from Emerson College, is one of those filmmakers who is inverting the formula for how it’s done.

One of the ways he has is by mounting a successful crowdfunding effort through Kickstarter.com,  which bills itself as “a new way to fund and follow creativity.”

Kickstarter allows filmmakers and other artists to propose a project, with a defined amount of funding requested and defined window of time in which to raise it. If the funding goal is not met, all pledges are wiped clean, a kind of all-or-nothing prospect that can be both inspiring and daunting, seeing if your idea is as viable as you think.

Hansen says, “I’ve been following Kickstarter not quite since they launched, when a friend of mine sent me an email and said, ‘Have you seen this?’ I was a little frustrated because it was by invitation, and it was a bit of a mystery to me how you got invited. But I kept following it, and in the back of my mind I kept thinking, ‘What kind of a project would get me the widest possible support from friends, family and strangers?’

It’s not just the idea, it’s the execution, and it was a matter of both finding the right idea, and then proving he could manage it.

As a documentary filmmaker, you have this kind of “idea bag,” a grab-bag of potential ideas that you’re flushing out, trying to determine what’s feasible or not. Last fall I’d started a short exercise, to test out an idea I’d had a couple of years ago, which was to do a documentary project online that had a linear DVD film that accompanied it, that was interview based, and more portrait documentaries that were all connected by some narrative thread that I would try to establish. I interviewed five people I came in contact with on a regular basis, people I called “familiar strangers” who I saw on my walk around town or in my neighborhood. I created five portraits and found I got an overwhelming level of response from throughout my network, my friends and colleagues and family, and people on Facebook and Twitter. Over a couple months on Vimeo, my videos were getting over 1,000 views a week. That woke me up to the fact I was on to something.

Lilah – A Documentary Short from Nathaniel Hansen on Vimeo.

“The Elders” spun off that. Hansen, who has done a variety of commercial work including a spot that will run during the upcoming World Cup soccer event, had been giving thought to the sometimes-unnoticed bank or wisdom among the older people who are the same “familiar strangers’ in our lives.

“I morphed this into this idea of it being portraits of senior citizens or people who are elderly,” he says, “because I thought they have so much to give, but aren’t always afforded a lot of space to give it. So I wondered if I could effectively create some meaningful portraits that would show a whole range of human emotion. I wanted to condense that to a 60-or-70-minute film and also grow it organically over time to have this collection of portraits online with this wisdom.”

His idea was a combined web-film project. He set a funding goal of $11,000. And, of course, when what one thinks of as good ideas get put to the test, it isn’t always a formula for restful nights.

It was kind of nerve-wracking to pull the trigger on a Kickstarter project, because I’d been talking to my colleagues about it. A friend of mine whose project I’m co-producing was looking at a Kickstarter project, and I was encouraging him to get on it and he did get an invite and was successful. I thought “My reputation is kind of on the line, and if I go for funding and don’t get it, I’m going to feel kind of stupid.”

But it all went well. On May 26, when the deadline closed, he’d been funded in the amount of $12,520, from 166 separate donors. Some supporters he expected; others surprised him, and others were strangers to whom he remains grateful.

“These donors are not backers, but rather people who give of their own money, and with no definable payback, other than satisfaction and the a copy of the film (Hansen will send a video download to all donors who have $15 or more, and a DVD to donors who sent in $35 or more).”

He says for people thinking about looking at crowdfunding, there are some clear lessons.

I wanted to make sure first is that the project was really something I believed in, and that I would be willing to tactfully annoy my network about. You can’t just pick any project that comes to mind and say “I’m going to raise $10,000, and if it doesn’t work out it’s OK.” The passion has to be there, because your network is not so much investing in the rpoject as in me, and my ability to make sure the project is good. You can’t convincingly – or at least genuinely – reach out to people in a way that would make crowdfunding work. So I was very particular about the project that I chose.

I felt I had a lot of ammunition going in to make it as successful as possible. I think people are interested in getting behind projects they have some connection with, however loose that might be. I was surprised and overwhelmed at the beginning by personal emails people had sent, talking about their grandmother or their aunt or other relative, and because of that how much this project meant to them. I thought, “I haven’t even started, and people are already responding just to the idea.” There are a lot of touch points for people.

There are people I consider close friends, but I would have never expected they would donate at the level they did; the power of crowdfunding is you can get a little bit from a lot of people. I had a couple of people who were willing to fill the gap, but I didn’t have to call on them to do that. I had some people step in and donate in a big way I wouldn’t have expected – $500, or $1,000 – and that really floored me.

I was kind of shocked at the number of strangers who donated $50. That humbled me. They were people who were referred by Twitter, or by the Kickstarter homepage, where it was featured for a day. I was amazed by the generosity of strangers who came in and gave money was amazing.

Hansen will now set out to make the film. “I’m in the process of trying to plan my route – I’ll be driving this,” he says. “I want to get a good sampling of people across the country; I don’t want to have them all be from Boston.”

Finding subjects has come in several ways.

I have a friend who works in the senior-care industry, and he has reached out and said, “We have thousands and thousands of very interesting people who live in our communities, and could you help track down people in your community who might be interesting.” And within my network of contacts, people have come out of the woodwork and said, “You know, I have this interesting neighbor who has shared these amazing stories.” So I’m trying to amass this list of people who are potential interviewees, and then figuring out how to get permission, and in some cases figuring out how to get permission from their families or extended families. But one thing I learned is that not everyone I find interesting is interested in being interviewed – I kind of naively thought, “Why wouldn’t they want to be interviewed?” But I got turned down a lot.

He says he hopes over the next two to three months to get around 20 very solid interviews. And he’ll blog through the process to keep both donors and other interested people up to date. He believes that you can’t wait to get a film “in the can” before you get the word out.

“Documentary can’t just be the traditional release method, where you do the project, release to a festival, and maybe get theatrical or DVD. I think these days, to create a better audience, you need to engage them throughout the process.”

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