Kickstarting the cheetahs
One of the skills that have always been required of documentary filmmakers is fundraising, and in this digital landscape that’s become both easier and harder: Technology allows documentaries to be made well and significantly lower expense; the documentary filmmaker, however, competes against far more other documentary filmmakers to gather support. And as part of that, crowdfunding is a tool that evolves by the day.
Marilu O’lyaryz, a Miami-based filmmaker, dropped me a line to tell me about her efforts currently to run a Kickstarter campaign to fund her film, “The Cheetah Conservation Project,” which aims to document the efforts of the The Hoedspruit Endangered Species Centre in South Africa to breed cheetahs and regenerate a population decimated by poachers.
She and her husband, cinematographer Brian O’lyaryz, have set a crowdfunding goal of $8,000. In that goes the nature of this particular fundraising beast. Marilu, 28, has been into film since she was a teen in Florida Film Institute’s Children’s Film program. She’s worked on various films for such places as Warner Brothers and MTV.
“I began working with Zoo Miami on various education programs,” says Marilu. “I decided that 2012 was the year I wanted to make a film, and so I reached out to (Hoedspruit).” They work primarily from fundraising. They are a nonprofit accepting donations from outside sources, but much of it was funded out-of-pocket.”
Crowdfunding as a business model turns the typical transaction on its head: Rather than purchasing a completed product, the funder works on some faith, some risk, and generally a belief in the larger cause the project entails. Saving cheetahs would certainly seem something to get behind.
“I heard about Kickstarter through my husband, who was shooting a web series they were looking to fund with Kickstarter. They had completed the first episode and were looking to fund additional episodes. I can see how a project like mine is riskier to support, because I haven’t shot the documentary yet.” But, she says, “I think the Kickstarter terms and conditions also protect patrons a little better than some of the other funding mechanisms.”
“I think people who believe in the cause will see we aren’t people who just picked up the camera.”
The fact that the filmmakers already have had two HD cameras (EOS 60Ds) donated, and have an editor who will donate time, means the donations would be more focused on time at the Centre. Having endorsements of one sort or another helps as well: “We just got the African Conservation Foundation on board,” she says.
I’ve seen a share of Kickstarter efforts throw out wild figures – $50,000, $60,000 – and fall far short. I’ve also seen more-established filmmakers jump in and use Kickstarter. Gary Hustwit (“Helvetica”)surprised me when he went the crowdfundng route for his new film “Urbanized,” and came back with $118,000. I’d have thought he’d have gotten more traditional funding, but there you go. Nonetheless, Kickstarter seems firmly a tool for the aspirational, and need to show their project is a labor of love. It looks as if filmmakers are seeing that setting a fund goal of “just enough, but not too much,” is their best bet.
“I do think this is the future of filmmaking for the independents,” Marilu says. “Social networking has been really interesting in this. Word of mouth is the missing item in the recipe to get you funded on Kickstarter.”
‘Indie Game: The Movie’ Rides $100,000 in Kickstarter Donations to Sundance 2012 Premiere
Back in July, I interviewed Canadian documentary filmmakers Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky, who were at work on their documentary Indie Game: The Movie, about independent video-game designers. They had high hopes for their film, and this week, those were realized when they got word the film will premiere at Sundance 2012. Theirs is one of 14 selections in the World Documentaries category, out of an estimated 800 entries.
What is notable about the film is not just its subject matter, but the fact that this is a DSLR film that raised its financing through crowdfunding on Kickstarter, making short demo pieces that would build toward the final film but serve as selling tools for financing.
According to Pajot,
We basically started with the Kickstarter campaign in May 2010, and we just had one piece, and we put out that slice of the film, and we made our goal in 48 hours. We asked for $15,000 and we ended up with $23,000.
As we continued making the film, we just kept building the audience. We’d put out lots of videos while we were shooting — which might be ill-advised. We put out 80 minutes of content while we were shooting, separate pieces and things like that. It was really helpful creatively to help us figure out what we were doing, and show people, and get a response. People would pass around those videos, and that would lead us to new stories, and to gaming sites, and it just kind of grew from there.
As this was happening, we just kept finding out that this doesn’t just apply to people who are interested in indie gaming or making indie games themselves, but to general gaming people, or people that just want to make something themselves.
Their second Kickstarter campaign, which raised more than $71,000 of a $35,000 goal, included a digital copy of the film for people donating $15 or more. For $35 or more, the donors gets a DVD of the film, but for $75 or more, a special-edition DVD, which Swirsky says makes use of the volume of video they shot in the process. Swirsky said,
The neat upside is this: We have two movies, really enough footage for three movies, really. So what we’re going to do is make this special-edition version of the film, which will have that original movie and that original intent kind of deconstructed into a series of 10 or 12 three-to-five-minute pieces. The stuff we shot of everybody else that that didn’t make it into the film is really good stuff. But in order to do justice to the dramatic arcs that really excited us, it needed more time in the film. We wanted to keep the thing under 90 minutes.
Filmmakers usually guard their material carefully. Pajot and Swirsky raised close to $100,000 in donations by being transparent, flouting conventions of filmmaking.
As for equipment, more films are showing the efficacy of light, mobile equipment. Last year’s Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner, Danfung Dennis’ Hell and Back Again was shot with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II, but one might expect that for a journalist embedded with infantry and shooting combat footage. But for Indie Game’s sit-down interviews, where there might be a higher bar for quality, the DSLRs were also fine.
Swirsky and Pajot shot the film on two Canon EOS 5D Mark IIs, with a set of lenses including a 70-200mm, 24-105mm and a 24-70mm, with a 50mm f/1.4 as the main interview lens. They traveled with two Cool Lights. “But we really didn’t use the lights all that much,” Swirsky says. “We mostly used them for fill, because most of the places we shot had huge banks of windows.”
For audio, they used a Zoom H4N, with Sennheiser and Electrosonic mics. Everything was shot with tripods for the interviews. When they went off tripods they generally used monopods.
“We had a lot of sliders in there, too,” Swirsky says. “At the time, sliders were the new thing, so I went slider crazy on the first half of shooting this thing. We used a Glidetrack, then got our hands on a Kessler dolly.”
Here’s a video showing them traveling with equipment:
LA doc makers looking to move third-party pitches forward
We profiled Biagio Messina and Joke Fincioen for their documentary “Dying to Do Letterman,” and they got in touch to put the word out on a new venture. Biagio got in touch about their new venture, which seems in this age of hybrid distribution a kind of “hybrid producing.” He explains how he and Joke are looking to partner with nonfiction filmmakers:
When we were trying to break into television, no one would meet with us or take our calls. We had great tapes, real ideas, and the skills to make unscripted TV, but no one to pitch to. Eventually, we were able to get meetings with real production companies by “stretching the truth” and that lead to our career in TV.
Fortunately, our company has grown quite a bit. For the last four years we’ve been “third-party approved,” meaning that networks trust us to be the production company on television shows. We operate out of our offices near Universal Studios, and have about 7,000 square feet where we run our production company, and do all the post on our shows (with the exception of sound mixing which we take out of house.)On the development end, we’re pitching shows constantly, and have access to every major network. Since we signed with CAA, those connections have deepened further, and this year alone we’ve been the production company on two series (Commercial Kings and Caged) and three pilots.So we feel like we’re finally in a position to offer people what we wished we had when we were starting out: a place to pitch ideas to. People do have to sign a standard, fairly “non-scary” submission agreement (or our lawyers would have our heads) and have to have MORE than just a one line idea. They need to have shot some tape or attached some sort of “value add” to their idea.We like filmmakers who can earn their keep on a show, and think most documentarians would be a great fit for us. The reason is that there’s not tons of money on these budgets, and folks have to work for what they earn. For some, that might mean shooting, editing, or running interviews in the field (clearly, something documentarians tend to be skilled at.)Anyone who we team up with (and we’re being VERY selective) is guaranteed to receive a producer credit on the show, and if the network does not approve them for any positions, will receive a small fee per episode (that would depend on the budget and network, but could be anywhere between $1000 and $3500 per ep — just depends.)However, if they have real skills (as most documentarians do) our goal would be for them to drive the creative of the show, take a very hands on approach, and take a larger line item (that’s the case with our current show CAGED, where the young guys who came up with the idea earn far more field producing and editing than they would had they not worked on the show.)Our hope is that we can help many filmmakers launch a career in TV, and nothing would make us prouder than to see them launch their own production company some day.Those who sign up for our newsletter will get tips from us on making pitch tapes to sell shows, and we’ll send out updates from time to time saying that we heard “x network is looking for x kind of shows.”Further, many documentarians may be sitting on tons of great footage that can be turned into a TV show, or used to pitch one. Now, they just have to download the submission agreement, and if it works for them, send it back, and we’ll get them the info about how to do a formal pitch with us.Filmmakers from all over the world are welcome…we just teamed up with filmmakers in Ohio, Kentucky, and Los Angeles…everyone is welcome.Of course we’re not doing this just to be nice people! We want this to be a win-win for everyone. We’re still grateful to companies like 44 Blue, 3 Ball, and Actual Reality for teaming up with us when we were starting out, and now hope to return the favor, launch some careers, and grow our company in the process.
How much money does it really take to make a documentary?
Longtime documentary filmmaker Kevin Knoblock has a set of tips in Script, the online magazine of Final Draft, and says this about funding:
Yes, you can make a documentary for $20,000, but unless it’s a labor of love, I would strongly recommend a realistic feature-length budget where you and your co-workers get paid industry standard rates. Most of my feature documentaries range from $300,000 on the low end to slightly over a million dollars.
You can write an entire book on funding sources. It always comes down to someone sharing your vision, whether they are individuals, networks, or nonprofit organizations. Remember to ask yourself this when you pitch: What’s in it for them?
On the day after the stock market dropped 634 points, it’s worth considering how much value this advice has. Not to say it wasn’t valid at some point, and that Knoblock hasn’t earned the right to say it through his significant experience in the business. But like the world economy, the documentary-film economy is changing rapidly. Some thoughts:
1) Scarcity is gone. In the beginning of Knoblock’s 30-year career, you needed serious up-front funding to even make a film, because it was being shot on film. 1981 video quality was OK for TV news, but was still what separated “film” from “video.” Without big up-front money, you simply weren’t in business, and therefore few documentary features got made. The competition was generally at the funding level and not at the exhibition level. Now, legions of young filmmakers with DSLRs are just out making “films.” The competition is now at that level, and ones who earn money are more likely going to do so after the fact (an exception that interests me greatly is crowdfunding, in which investors buy in at the idea stage, but more of the flmmakers we’ve spoken who’ve had successful crowdfunding efforts say you still need to present finished work that shows where you’re headed).
2) Abundance diminishes investment certainty. Imagine yourself an investor in documentary films 30 years ago. You’re most likely a television network. Or you’re a production company that works with networks. You need material, and filmmakers need money to get their projects going. You know if you put money into better projects, the relative competition is slim. Even film festivals in 1981 generally took submissions in the form of reels; the number of films submitted to Sundance in 1987 was 60 (yes, 60) as opposed to 6,092 last year. If you are an investor these days, the opportunity for return is not as narrow as it once was. There are still certainly networks that fund documentaries up front, but that’s diminishing. The model may well be toward HBO Docs, which tends to acquire completed works at a high price. And if you look at what they’re buying, there’s not always a direct correlation between money being put into the film by investors and money returned at the end.
3) The market has broadened. In 1980, there were a very limited number of markets for documentaries. Television was only entering the cable-TV age, and PBS was a prime spot for documentary work. Theaters, particularly art houses, were more individualized and willing to do short runs in large cities. But videocassettes were still dawning and digital projection was as distant as hovercrafts. That meant that a documentary filmmaker had to play for a very specific type of market, and if the funding and support could be secured, there was a clear target. Now, filmmakers are able to create their own market anywhere there’s projection capability, and there’s projection capability everywhere. That, however, creates more abundance. Money can be made, but it’s against more people with the same opportunity to make money.
4) The economies of scale are diminishing. On this site in the last month, we’ve profiled two two-person filmmaking teams, the makers of “Dying To Do Letterman” and “Indie Game: The Movie.” Two-person collaboratives seem more and more common in documentary filmmaking; anything more than that is increasingly a luxury (although the Maysles brothers did fine as a two-man venture four decades ago). Documentaries no longer need to have rolling credits at the end that rival feature films. It doesn’t take a village of specialists any more; technology has made it possible to do more.
5) The math is changing. OK, imagine a budget circa 1980. Film and processing for a feature doc, even in 16mm, is hundreds of thousands of dollars. Cameras and lenses worthy of shooting that, and lighting to do it justice, tens of thousands. Editing facilities, thousands if not more. Separate sound equipment, thousands and thousands. Transporting this raft of equipment and the many people needed to set it up and run it, thousands. Printing and color timing, thousands and thousands. Then the personnel: An editor who will take hundreds of hours cutting and splicing. A lab to run the negatives, answer prints, color timing and final printing. Add it all up…. Now look at 2011. Cheap cameras. Cheap hard drives. Little need for external editing facilities. Digital output. Time-saving technology such as Avid and Final Cut. It comes down to this: Other than paying yourself a salary up-front, this stuff just isn’t that expensive anymore.
6) It will always be a labor of love. I suppose if George Clooney were giving advice on acting, he might say “never take less than $10 million a picture, up front,” because he is one of those fortunate anamolies who has reached such a point. But the majority of people who enter acting do so aware of the financial folly. Most support their acting ambitions doing other work. So it seems to us that documentary filmmaking is what you do when you’re not focused on financial security, and Clooney’s hypothetical advice does not apply to 99.999 percent of actors. Same with documentary film. Kevin Knoblock isn’t George Clooney, but he’s clearly someone who’s had success in documentary filmmaking under the old economics. These days, with competition that simply did not exist 30 years ago, filmmaking has to be the labor of love that makes you want to do it despite the financial headaches. The trash truck is coming down the street as I write, and those guys are not, I suspect, engaged in a labor of love. But most of us, in whatever profession or pursuit we choose, should be if we can.
Making ‘Indie Game: The Movie,’ Part II
In Part 1 of our look at “Indie Game: The Movie,” we looked at how Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky had put together their look at independent video-game designers, an effort that started with a Kickstarter campaign, then went back for another one.
As James had related in the earlier post, he and Lisanne shot 300 hours of footage as they worked to find their story, something that ended up with a more focused look at three designers trying to bring out their games.
Kickstarter, which seems to have found its place largely as a venue to pre-build audience and sales, has worked well for them.
Lisanne says, “We basically started with the Kickstarter campaign in May 2010, and we just had one piece, and we put out that slice of the film, and we made our goal in 48 hours. We asked for $15,000 and we ended up with $23,000.”
The intent was more general then, what James described as doing a broader look at the game designers, in the vein of Gary Hustwit’s films “Helvetica” and “Objectified.”
LIsanne says,
As we continued making the film, we just kept building the audience. We’d put out lots of videos while we were shooting – which might be ill-advised. We put out 80 minutes of content while we were shooting, separate pieces and things like that. It was really helpful creatively to help us figure out what we were doing, and show people, and get a response. People would pass around those videos, and that would lead us to new stories, and to gaming sites, and it just kind of grew from there.
As this was happening, we just kept finding out that this doesn’t just apply to people who are interested in indie gaming or making indie games themselves, but to general gaming people, or people that just want to make something themselves.
That all led us to the second Kickstarter campaign, which has of this writing has four days to go and has already raised $60,000 from 1,353 backers. That puts to rest some concerns they had, according to Lisanne:
We were a little worried about people saying, “You already did one, why are you asking for more money?” but the film just turned into something different. It’s a film that’s dramatic, and we wanted to do something good with it. We wanted to get some really good music, and some audio mixing we’re not comfortable doing, and mastering and all that. So we asked for $35,000, which was the exact number we needed to finish it. We got that in 25 hours.
Like the first campaign, she says, “I’m pretty sure the people who have backed us are people who make games. There are a lot of people who make games, and a lot who appreciate indie games.” But James notes,
I feel that was true more for the first Kickstarter. I think the majority of that was the indie scene and the indie community. The second one seemed to cast a wider net. That core of indie-game developers and aspiring developers is still there, and makes up a huge part of our audience, but I think it’s appealing more to people who just like the creative process – and that was always our dream. Like people who frequent design blogs, even though they are not designers themselves.
The second Kickstarter includes, for people donating $15 or more, a digital copy of the film. For $35 or more, the donor gets a DVD of the film, but for $75 or more, a special-edition DVD, which James says makes use of the volume of video they shot in the process.
The neat upside is this: We have two movies, really enough footage for three movies, really. So what we’re going to do is make this special-edition version of the film, which will have that original movie and that original intent kind of deconstructed into a series of 10 or 12 three-to-five-minute pieces. The stuff we shot of everybody else that that didn’t make it into the film is really good stuff. But in order to do justice to the dramatic arcs that really excited us, it needed more time in the film. We wanted to keep the thing under 90 minutes.
The fact they may by the end of the process have raised $100,000 in funding goes, they believe, toward a transparency that tends to flout the rules of filmmaking, in which material is guarded carefully.
“We feel we were very open in the whole process,” Lisanne says, “in telling where we are and what we’re doing, and it’s just the two of us. On the day of our (second) Kickstarter we got 2,000 emails.
“In terms of the rewards, we basically wanted to do things we could fulfill ourselves. We didn’t ask designers in our film to give game codes or figurines or things like that. We felt like they had already given us their time, and that was enough.”
The next step is getting the film out. Lisanne says,
So we’ve gotten a lot of response, so it’s a matter of what we want to do now. We want to show it at a couple of festivals, and we have interest from festivals, but festivals don’t tell you when you’re in or not when you need to know that. But we’ve applied to Canadian festivals that happen in the fall, and we’ve been invited to some in the States.
We want to be in some festivals, but not because we want to try to make a deal. We just want to have that little bit of exposure in that world, but mostly we’re going to do our own screenings.
Some Kickstarter success stories
The whys and wherefores of Kickstarter, and crowdfunding in general, is an idea that for the moment is having its successes. Kickstarter has been a proving ground that has circumvented the standard investor/producer models, and has rewarded some people especially well.
Anthony Kaufman at IndieWire has some tips and some tales, listing three Kickstarter strategies espoused by filmmaker Jennifer Fox (her documentary “My Reincarnation” explores Buddhism), and then listing a “hall of fame” of successful appeals. The seven success stories includes four documentaries.
Kaufman writes that having focus – both in what you’re doing and to whom you’re appealing – goes a long way. Fox says having something to show backers, and giving them more than DVDs and T-shirts in return, seem to be where it’s going. On some level, such Kickstarter campaigns are not that different from public-television funds drives, in that a donor gets something that not everybody else gets. Kaufman writes,
Like most Kickstarter participants, Fox also offered special incentives to donors—and not just posters or DVDs, but limited-edition prints of paintings by a famous Buddhist teacher, original art and artifacts from Fox’s personal collection (“I raided my home,” she admits) and a gold ring and Tibetan statue donated by the father and son shown in the film, which went for $5,000 and $7,000, respectively.
“Those two donations tipped everything,” says Fox. “We probably raised $50,000 in four days.” In the future, Fox suggests, to bolster the value of incentives, “I’d ask people who believe in the project to donate precious objects. You have to know who is your target market and what do they want.”
Keeping on with the keeping on for funds
Leah Warshawski guest posts at Hope For Film, and beyond singing the praises of her dad, funding expert Morrie (whom we’ve featured here), she gets down to the simple task of grinding along for money to make your film happen.
In her case, it’s a documentary “Film Festival: Rwanda,” which of course creates funding needs just by virtue of travel to that African country. Leah notes that beyond the ongoing grant writing, which by its nature is going to produce low percentages, there are other ways to roll.
A few main highlights include the use of social networking.
Make a Facebook page for your project and spend 10 minutes a day recruiting new fans. Post to other people’s walls, ask everyone on your mailing list, and keep it simple and useful. Thanks to the magic of Facebook, I made a friend for life when a woman noticed our project and offered to host a fundraiser without ever meeting us in person first!
“Switching it up” involves changing one’s attitude about rejection, the idea espoused by Murray – an “expect nothing, be surprised by anything” attitude. And have ongoing work that shows your ability to do the job you set out to do.
As filmmakers we have an abnormal sense of perseverance and somehow believe that if we work harder it means we are also smarter and better than everyone else who applies for the same grant. Switch up your thinking, and understand that nobody owes you anything – we are all in the same boat.
Probably the most important thought. With equipment so cheap and accessible, why should anyone hand money to you? The answers of course, are that 1) they believe the topic is important, 2) they have a vested interest in seeing the topic covered, 3) they believe (from your work and proposal) that you are a qualified person to do that, if not the best, 4) they believe that you will make a film that will be seen, which goes toward your plan to disseminate it, 5) they believe you will make the most of the money.
The fact is, most filmmakers don’t meet more than one or two of these. Inexperience, poor planning, unrealistic prospects, and reckless spending all contribute toward being a funding risk. I’ve sat on my share of grants committees (and will sit on another next month), and it’s not uncommon to find yourself looking at a grant app for huge money thing, “Really? Are you serious?”
I always believe you should start out with two films in one: A) The film you’ll make with your own money, and B) the film you’ll make if you get money. And while it may seem that the proportion of quality is driven by money – i.e., the film you make with more funding will be lots better, I think that if you’re thinking hard, it’s the opposite: The extra money you get adds value, but with a law of diminishing returns. People might tend to think that with twice the money they’d make twice the film, but with twice the money they might actually make a film that’s 10 percent better. Of course that’s not to say the extra 10 percent isn’t crucial.
Leah is in the midst of a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, and has raised $20,000 of her sought-after $29,000 with 20 days to go. She says,
It has not been easy, but the challenge and process have been worth the struggle. People always assume I have a clear path to funders and grants because of my Dad’s connections, but I can tell you (after 2 years of rejection letters from almost every major documentary grant organization) that is far from the truth. The reality is that I’m still applying for grants and still being rejected, but our film has brought my father and I closer through our mutual understanding of how difficult and rewarding the process is – and that is priceless.
Are you an amateur or a pro?
James Fair guest posts at Hope for For Film about the difference between being an amateur or a professional. His distinction is both economic and psychic; are we making money, but also:
Within filmmaking the common belief is that you are professional if you are paid and make a living from it, you are amateur if you don’t. But, working in a university, I meet many people who would argue that LITTLE of the film industry is ‘professional’, because it rarely requires examinations or formal training to work in many of the roles, which means that it isn’t strictly a profession at all, it is a ‘job’.
In other words, does it feel like a real job. But the economics of film are changing, especially documentary film, and thinking about what makes a pro is worthwhile. And being a pro, at anything you love, seems a worthy aspiration. Starting strictly on a balance-sheet perspective, and moving to the abstract, the questions might be such:
1) Am I making revenue directly from my films? Two key words here – revenue and directly. Business is a matter of revenue versus cost; if any money is coming into your account by having made the film, then you might make the case you’re a pro, even if it’s modest and the cost far outweighs it. Example: I spend $50,000 on my film and sell $30,000 in DVDs and screenings. I lose $20,000 – am I a pro? Does that change if my film costs $1,000 and I make back $100? On the other hand, if I spend $20,000 on the film, get into five film festivals, but then don’t get distribution, am I an amateur? This last question is moot, it would seem, because everybody can sell their film on DVDs or on the web. But the question remains how direct revenue determines whether you’re a pro.
2) Am I making a profit directly from my films? Profit, of course, is a whole ‘nother ballgame. Profit requires business sense and acumen that might be considered the mark of a true professional. Therefore: Let’s say I use my skills and experience to make a film for $20,000 that makes back $40,000 in revenue. Am I a pro now? I’ve just made $20,000. I must be – I’ll declare income on my tax return and by the IRS’s standards, I’m a pro. Now, let’s say I spend 2,000 hours making the film. That rates out to $10 an hour – babysitter money. Am I less of a pro because my hourly? Well, the fact is that if filmmaking is going to be your real deal, part of being a pro is making a film that has a cost/revenue structure that keeps me in business. On my most recent film, we are solidly in the black, having made the film inexpensively and having found an enthusiastic audience, mostly right now at paid screenings at universities, libraries and museums across the country. In the end, we’ll recover our costs and a healthy hourly rate. But if we’d been more daring and not thought as carefully about how we’d make money, does that make us less professional, even if less profitable?
3) Am I making money because of my films? Does making films that might not directly realize profit still bring in money from other sources? For example, my first documentary filmmaking effort (after years of magazine writing) was done for a budget of $7,000; I got a $3,000 grant during the process, got a $5,000 grant toward the end, and saw it play in a half-dozen festivals. It had a number of paid screenings, and a number of unpaid ones. And then afterwards put the DVD on Amazon’s Createspace for anyone who wanted it. Over four years I’ve sold a couple of hundred DVDs (I consider that OK for something that was a learning effort and for which I no longer spend any active time marketing) and my share of that has been about $2,000 more. So I made money directly. But at the university at which I’m a professor, I got a merit raise based on my non-academic work (the university has that fund to encourage us to do things such as make a film, then to bring that knowledge back to the students). And my teaching job leaves me 22 paid weeks free per year to do as I please, so the case might be made that my filmmaking is compensated at good pay as such (as are the books I’ve published, etc.). But my friends Doug and Susan run a film company in New York City that has an office, equipment, interns and so on. They sold a documentary to HBO and have had others in major film festivals. Are they more pro than I? Undoubtedly so.
4) Am I earning money as a result of my filmmaking? A friend forwarded me, for my opinion, a quote for a corporate-identity video her company was having made. The quote – $3,500 for about three day’s work, seemed reasonable, but also delivered the filmmaker a rather generous fee (about $100 an hour, I guessed). I told my friend that this quote seemed the going rate. “I could get somebody cheaper,” she said, “but these guys make documentary films and they’ve won awards at film festivals.” Therefore, the work that hadn’t likely made them money had gotten them the bid on the corporate work. To borrow some marketing terms, professional filmmakers often use their personal work as a “loss leader” to create a “cash cow” of corporate work that keeps them going. Even if they made nothing on their documentaries, you can make the case they’re pros. The documentaries become their professional calling card (and if their bloodbath/horror/goth film that made the midnight show at the local film festival is their calling card, I doubt they’d get the job – that stuff, to me, screams “amateur”). Now, keep in mind that a “pro” used to be defined as “someone who owns the equipment.” A lot of jobs used to go to less-than-professional characters who had at least invested in the gear. Now anybody can get the gear, so the pro sells skills and outcomes. The results of one’s own filmmaking efforts have a lot to do with sustained income from other sources. That might include being a cinematographer, or editor on somebody else’s project, but it goes toward being a pro. That includes weddings, events and other work that derives from the skills – there’s no shame in honest work, and pros know that.
5) Do I feel, act and talk like a pro? I remember when I was a young reporter at The Denver Post, the top pay rate was referred to as “journeyman” rate. I liked that phrase, the notion of moving past one’s apprenticeship and finding some level of professional knowledge and comportment, of how one “goes about his business.” I think a person becomes a pro when one abandons pipe dreams and best-case daydreams and just does the work, and does so with a level of confidence, control and purpose. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be open to great things resulting, but when the work becomes the value rather than the outcome, it seems to me that this is when you really can call yourself a pro. That, in the end, f goes toward a state of mind and a self-perception, and not strictly toward dollars and cents.
I’ll leave you back with James Fair:
Ultimately, I believe it is our human nature to want to classify things and identify our position within society. It is a way of understanding both others and ourselves. I am a ‘nobody’ filmmaker creates a distinction from a ‘somebody’ filmmaker. Therefore their situations are different. I am a ‘professional’ and you are an ‘amateur’ means you are not qualified to understand me. The titles position us within society and even within this community that Ted has created. Even worse, the connotations of these titles have the potential to divide us – the ‘amateur’ thinks they makes films for the ‘love of the art’ whilst the ‘professional’ is a ‘sell-out’. Andrew Keen’s book ‘The Cult of the Amateur’ attacks amateurism for being sub-par quality, unpaid and unqualified. However, I’ve seen great quality stuff from unpaid people and I’ve seen sub-par quality stuff from qualified people. Our lives are more complex than these labels give us credit for.
Hustwit goes to Kickstarter…hmmm
A few months ago, in an interview, documentary filmmaker Gary Hustwit said he was funding his new film, “Urbanized,” with proceeds from his previous two documentaries, “Helvetica” and “Objectified.” Well, he’s now on Kickstarter looking for $85,000 in donations.
We’re not sure how to feel about that, despite our admiration for Hustwit and his work. Kickstarter and such other crowdfunding devices seemed to be for projects that lacked commercial appeal or didn’t seem profit motivated. Since as far as we know Hustwit is not a nonprofit filmmaker, the idea of asking people to give you money in order for you to turn a profit (one which, given his audience base that includes 107,000 Twitter followers, seems fairly well-assured) might seem a reach.
He says in his Kickstarter appeal,
Urbanized is a totally independent project: we don’t get government funding or grants. And while we’ve been honored to have PBS and the BBC broadcast our films, they don’t produce them or help us make them, they license broadcast rights to the films after we finish them. So Urbanized is being funded mainly by revenue from my previous two films. Please join us in helping to finish Urbanized, and you’ll get some nice goodies as a reward. I’m especially excited about The Design Trilogy limited-edition box set, which will include the debut of Helvetica Neue. It’s the director’s cut of Helvetica (this time Arial shoots first).
So, by routing the appeal through the donation channel, we can buy his work but write it off as a charitable donation? Hmm. Still thinking about that. And instead of attracting investors who participate in your profits (and require SEC paperwork), crowdfunding is a one-way money flow. Hmmm. We’d feel better as well if Hustwit crowdfunded the film and released it for free on the web.
Hustwit’s films have been, in many ways, a model of economy. By focusing on visual elements that don’t require archival or licensed materials, he saved a bundle of money. His films seemed simple and free of fancy (and expensive) gimmicks, and are squarely interview-based. By turning the camera on the world of typography, product design and now urban design, he has ready material for the film. Travel seems to be the primary cost, as well as paying himself, which is certainly deserved, within limit.
The notion of crowdfunding will only last as long as people a) see the value of donating, and b) believe the project/artist really needs the money, and c) understand that the artist/filmmaker doesn’t have the traction to get investors or grants. We must admit that we like the Kickstarter model best when newbies, asking for limited amounts of money, throw themselves on the mercy of the crowd. Given that most big grant opportunities often go to people who really don’t need grant, crowdfunding seemed to have a sweetness to it.
We’ll be staying tuned on this….
A ‘nobody filmmaker’ speaks
Christopher J. Boghosian guest posts at Truly Free Film a rather compelling testimony, one that challenges the narcissism of so many indy filmmakers, and sounds in some way like a mantra uttered in a recovery group (“My name is Chris and I am a recovering director…)
The truths of his statement are compelling:
Living in LA, I’ve met countless filmmakers trying to raise thousands of dollars, even millions, with very little to their credit. Who do they think they are? What other business or profession operates like that? Like every other profession, filmmakers must earn the right to ask for thousands of dollars. They must earn the right to mass market and distribute their film. In the end, most of these filmmakers discover that only their friends and family are willing to invest in them, since that is with whom they have earned trust.
Indeed, the question of why new filmmakers enter a field they can’t actually afford to be in is, in itself, an exercise in hubris. Boghosian goes on to say,
The baker bakes, the architect designs, and the filmmaker must continually make films. What baker bakes one loaf of bread and asks for thousands of dollars to open a bakery? What architect designs one home and expects to have thousands of fans on Facebook? None. It’s ludicrous. As a nobody filmmaker, I have come to realize that I need to earn my right to ask people for their time and money. And the way to do that is by consistently making films, plain-and-simple.
In fact, even the desire to make a great film must be earned. An expert baker who has studied and worked for years would scoff at a novice attempting to develop a great loaf of bread. It takes years of trial-and-error, blood, sweat and tears to bake great bread. How is filmmaking any different? Why do so many beginning filmmakers strive to make a great film? It’s presumptuous and disrespectful toward the art and craft of filmmaking.
It may be somewhat different with documentary filmmaking – even less-than-perfect treatment of an interesting subject at least still has at its core an interesting subject. But what Boghosian says about the need for the filmmaker to learn the craft and not presume to demand others’ money is probably more true of documentary, with its economies of scale.
Boghosian adds,
Coming to grips with my nobody-ness as a filmmaker has set me straight in many ways. Rather than attempt to make a great film and attain thousands of fans, my focus now is to continually make the very best films I can within my means.
Ultimately, that is the attitude of the true professional.