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.

A look at DIY: ‘The Way We Get By’

Truly Free Film has a first-person account of the making of “The Way We Get By,” a film by Gita Pullapilly and Aron Gaudet. The account, written by Gita, will be in five short parts.

A synopsis of the film: “The Way We Get By” is an intimate look at three of these greeters as they confront the universal losses that come with aging and rediscover their reason for living. Bill Knight, Jerry Mundy and Joan Gaudet find the strength to overcome their personal battles and transform their lives through service. This inspirational and surprising story shatters the stereotypes of today’s senior citizens as the greeters redefine the meaning of community.

Gita notes that while the filmmakers thought they had a good project, getting support early on nearly made them thing they were wrong.

We wanted to make a quality film and get it in front of an audience, but we also wanted to establish our careers as filmmakers. This meant some of our choices would be made because it was the best move for our film, and some would be made to help our careers.

But all of it was a moot point if no one else thought our film had potential. We knew we had to find someone to help champion our film.  So for three years, we had applied to grants and fellowships and we were rejected from everything. Our confidence in us—and the film—were starting to diminish.

They did eventually get selected at “filmmakers in residence” at WGBH, and the project moved forward. Part 2 continues the story…

‘Happy’ ending as Belic doc crowdfunds finishing funds

“Happy” is a documentary exploring mental health and the attitudes toward it, and it has successfully raised $36,238 in finishing funds on Kickstarter.

The film, made by Roko Belic of “Genghis Blues” fame, had set a goal of $33,000 in finishing funds. Belic and his team went to 14 countries examining the notion of being happy. In the “Happy” Kickstarter page, which had set a goal of $33,000, Belic laid out the idea:

A friend of mine told me about a New York Times article that said that while America is one of the richest countries in the world, we are nowhere near the happiest. Then I learned that the Western scientific approach to mental health and well being focuses more on treating sadness and depression than it does on cultivating strengths and happiness. But that is changing. There is a new field of psychology called “positive psychology” being pioneered by many of the leading psychiatrists and neuro-scientists around the world.

So for the past 4 years my fellow filmmakers and I traveled the globe to 14 countries, from India to Namibia and all across the US, on a journey to uncover the mysteries of our most coveted emotion. We interviewed leading happiness researchers and spoke with amazing people we met along the way in order to demystify the role that happiness plays in our lives and to learn how to cultivate it for ourselves.

This film is a non-profit documentary on happiness, and with your generosity we will be able to share our experiences.

Happy – A Documentary Trailer from Wadi Rum Productions on Vimeo.

David Lynch wants donations to crowdfund documentary on his life

So far director David Lynch (“Dune,” “Eraserhead,” “The Elephant Man”) is getting some grief for his attempt to crowfund a documentary film – about himself.

Crowdfunding has been used mostly be independent filmmakers with projects outside the studio money machine. According to The Independent in the UK,

The latest high profile director to sign up to this method is David Lynch, famed for such cult films as “Eraserhead” and “Mulholland Drive.” Lynch, who was a trained artist before he turned to making films, has produced a self-portrait which any fan who is willing to donate $50 (£33) to a documentary about his life and work, will be sent as a gift.

Don’t be surprised if he is only the first of “name” directors who’ve been spun out of the Hollywood establishment to got his route.

The Independent continues that,

A growing crop of websites offer anyone willing to donate money to film projects an “executive producer” credit at the end of the film. One example is the collective effort in fundraising for the big-budget Spanish film, The Cosmonaut, a sci-fi movie that used online crowd-funding methods.

Rob Fletcher, a British film producer who is in the process of making a documentary called Driven, is employing a “people powered” form of funding. The film focuses on a couple who first fall in love in the 1950s, travel around the world in a black taxi cab and have a son, only to separate and reunite decades later. The film focuses on an eccentric 2,500-mile trip that the man, now in his 80s, makes with his estranged son. Fletcher said his production team was offering film credits for donations received in the shape of miles, so for $25 (or one mile), donors are given a film credit; for $100, they are given a credit and a T-shirt.

Lynch seems to be getting hit harder because he once worked more within the Hollywood system.

AV Club has a post called “Do you have $50 the makers of a David Lynch documentary could borrow? They’ve got this damn landlord…”
Scott Tunstall at Flicksided.com writes,

What’s next, organ donation? At least those gracious enough to pony up some dough will get something in return. No, not a role in Lynch’s next film. How does an abstract self-portrait of the man himself sound? Awesome, right? I mean who wouldn’t want their very own creepy David Lynch painting to hang above the bed? Okay, most of the population, but still, it’s David Lynch. Help a weirdo out.

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.

The Film Collborative looks to crowdfund nonprofit distribution

The Film Collaborative, an Los Angeles-based nonprofit, is crowdfunding at IndieGoGo with the current goal of $2,000, saying, “We want distribute films that studios won’t touch, and bring American audiences diverse filmmaker voices from all over the world.”

While they seem to be looking more at fictional films, their mission does not seem to exclude documentaries. The Film Collaborative says this about themselves:

As a non-profit film distributor, we count on contributions to maintain our educational and filmmaker support services that include:

1) Helping filmmakers get their films exhibited and distributed around the world.
2) Bringing important, award-winning, socially conscious films to a theater near you. Especially those that the traditional distributors overlook.
3) Our Digital Distribution Guide
4) To continue creating our Distributor report card (a “Yelp” for distribution).
5) To enhance our filmmaker community network so that filmmakers can share contacts and data (we call this “Facebook-for-Filmmakers”)
6) to develop an iPhone App and enhance our site to be a platform for filmmakers

Our next release is the SUNDANCE 2010 WORLD CINEMA AUDIENCE AWARD WINNER “UNDERTOW” (CONTRACORRIENTE) directed by Javier Fuentes.

We’re NON-PROFIT on purpose so that filmmakers can reap their own revenues for their next films. Donate to us today, any sum from $5.00 – $5,000 and enjoy the tax write-off. Our Advisory Board and Mission Statement and lots of other information is on our website www.thefilmcollaborative.org

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!

The Film Collaborative
www.thefilmcollaborative.org

By supporting and contributing to The Film Collaborative, you can help close the distribution gap between great films and under-served audiences. We will provide a service to filmmakers they do not teach in film school, or anywhere else. We can help filmmakers exhibit their films to the public, provide direct distribution options so that filmmaker can actually earn their money back and make another film. There has never been an entity that both educates filmmakers and provides distribution without controlling filmmakers’ rights, until now.

We don’t take filmmaker’s rights. We are here to help!

Some states will subsidize your film – if they approve it

The Times has a piece this week about state film subsidies, and the fact that many, such as Pennsylvania, reserve the right to deny the subsidy if the film does not put the state in a favorable light.

While that relates generally to big-budget Hollywood fare, and the article specifically to a film called “The Woman,” which portrays graphic cannibalism, one wonders if documentary films could be denied tax credits if it seemed to put a government or place in negative light, as journalism sometimes does.

Most notably of late, Michael Moore did a film attacking capitalism, but made sure he got his Michigan Tax Credit, which is no less ironic than anything about Moore, the wealthy filmmaker who dresses like the poor man he isn’t. The Mackinac Center For Public Policy  had an interesting position statement on the matter back in January:

It is baffling to see the state offer Michigan filmmaker Michael Moore a refundable tax credit for his documentary “Capitalism: A Love Story.” This subsidy should be rejected by Moore on principle alone.

Moore isn’t just any filmmaker. He is a current member of the Michigan Film Office Advisory Council, a state organ created to advise the Michigan Film Office, which is responsible for approving applications for Michigan’s film incentive program. I do not believe it strains credulity to suggest that Moore’s very presence on the council may have led to the film office approving special tax treatment for his work.

Money in hand, Moore was able to continue to attack a system for being filled with insider deals and special interests.

There examples in the past few years of documentarians making use of state tax incentives – in Maine, in Virginia, in New Mexico and others. So far, there’s little news of anyone having trouble with this approval process, but as money becomes tighter, we wonder whether states may see the films they want to give money to being ones that serve as a promotion for the state giving the incentives.

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.”

Documentarian Corra’s work-in-progress chases a ghost

Notes on Video has an interview piece with documentary filmmaker Henry Corra, who showed work in progress at the Boston International Film Festival of his film “Disappearance of McKinley Nolan,” about a Texan who disappeared into the fog of war 40 years ago in Vietnam, and may still be out there.

Corra is New York-based; his award-winning films Umbrellas (1995), George (2000), Frames (2004), Same Sex America (2005) and the Emmy-nominated film NY77: The Coolest Year in Hell (2007). His company is Corra Films.

Corra’s film began as a hunt for Nolan, who had reportedly been spotted recently by another war veteran visiting the country, but eventually became a psychological study on loss.

NOV’s Michael Murie details the interview Corra did at the festival’s panel “Discussing the Documentary.” Corra is looking to premiere his film in June and discussed not just chasing Nolan, but also funds to complete the film. In that vein, he talked about his trailer for the project.

When asked whether, when putting together trailers for incomplete movies to show funders, he feels any obligation to show an accurate representation of the complete movie he demurs:

“The early trailers are: ‘this is the notion, here are what I think the characters are, here’s what I think the story is going to be, and here’s the kind of feel I think that I’m going for at this stage,’ and again you’re kind of faking it.

“I show teasers or trailers or little works in progress, like that weekend in Texas on the Disappearance of McKinley Nolan. From those two days I cut together a six minute piece that I actually ended up being very similar to the first ten minutes of the film are now, but that’s kind of an anomaly.”

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