Tag: Secret

7 Actionable Tips To Get Your Film or Web Series Crowdfunding Campaign Launched & Avoid Your Soul Being Crushed

by Anthony Ferraro, posted in BLOG

You are chomping at the bit to make your film or web series. You have no money, no track record and no shortage of drive. Very quickly you come to the conclusion, I’ll crowdfund. And very quickly after that, you come to the conclusion, crowdfunding is overwhelming. Coming to grips with just how much work crowdfunding will be, you consider hiring someone to do it for you. You will quickly learn no one does that.

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The next logical step is to frantically Google How To’s and that is probably why you landed here. I’m glad you’re here because I’m going to help you. Breathe, only one thing we need to get straight right out of the gate. If you are an unknown filmmaker with no track record, your project is going to be funded by your friends and family. You are not going to raise one hundred thousand dollars. Ten is more realistic. If you are a successful content creator with a following you will certainly already know all this information. It’s a lot of work to be sure but it’s all very doable so let’s get you started.

  • Determine the amount of money you can realistically raise. You and everyone on your team actors, DP, etc who are invested in the project need to comb your personal email lists. Go through your contacts and create a list of people you are very sure will donate to you. Go through that list again and be conservative. Now take that number of people who will most likely donate and multiply that number by $70. That is a very good estimate of what you will raise. If you come up with 100 people that is $7,000. Even if everyone gave you $200 which is unlikely that’s $20,000. My point is crowdfunding is not going to get you a $200,000 budget. It will get you $10,000 to make your short film or web series.

 

  • Choose a Platform the two majors are Indiegogo and Kickstarter. For a first timer, I recommend Indiegogo because you get whatever you raise regardless of your goal. With Kickstarter, you need to raise 100% of your stated goal to get the funds. People will say by not committing to something scary like an all or nothing proposition is setting yourself up for failure. Which to me makes no sense because of course, you don’t want to fail. You will be working on this for over a month you do not want to walk away with nothing. But in the end, it’s up to you I would just recommend you use one of those two. There are many others but it just confuses people. Keep it simple.

 

  • Start seeding social media. As soon as you start planning and before you launch create social media accounts around the project. Twitter & Facebook are best because you can have actionable links. Instagram is useful but not as good with links. Make dedicated accounts for the project or if you already have a personal account with a large following start making your crowdfunding a part of your daily feed. Replace your Banners and Avatars with something relating to your project. Post daily about the process. How you are starting to gear up for our crowdfunding. Post about production meetings and, always include photos. Post a concept drawing or storyboards in progress. Shoot behind the scenes pics of a reading or rehearsal. Document the process to make people aware that you are up to something extraordinary. Social media does not guarantee engagement with your content but people are always watching the stream. And Remember your friends and family are guaranteed engagement.

 

  • The Pitch Video. The pitch video is very important. Video and audio quality are paramount. You are asking people to give you money to make a film. Subconsciously if your pitch video looks bad you look bad as a filmmaker.  Don’t try to wing it, write a script. Humor is always good but don’t force it. Keep it under 2 minutes.  Don’t forget ‘the ask.’ A sincere, authentic message is the most effective. A concise clear video is crucial so I’ll share a road map  –  Intro with emotional hook / briefly explain your project / What’s special about it / How much backing do you need / what will the budget pay for/ Timeline to completion / What rewards are you offering / Call to action.

 

 

  • Tell them three times. Tell people you are going to tell them, tell them, tell them you told them. A week before you launch you will send one of three emails to your master list of likely donors. In your first email you will keep it short, talk about what you are about to do and what day you launch. Ask them straight up if you can count on their support. On average, campaigns that reach their goal raised one-third of their funds within the first quarter of their campaign lifetime. In your email say something like “ If we can raise 30% of our goal in the first 72 hrs we are well on our way”.  Ask them to commit to donating on that 1st day. Make a list of those who say yes. The second email you send on the launch day you remind them they said they’d help get things started. And restate the importance of the 1st 72hrs to your entire list. The third email is on the third day as the reminder to people who have not donated yet.

 

 

  • Rewards Don’t make T-Shirts or printed things. They just cost you money in production and shipping and most people don’t want chachkies. Make your rewards something you can tie into the actual project. Offer a shout out on social media for a few dollars. I’ll explain why that is important later. Provide a digital download of the completed project. For larger amounts of money give associate producer credits. If you have fun or interesting props offer those as screen used items. Let them choose a character’s name for a generous donation, they can be an extra, etc. You get the idea.  

 

 

  • Social Media Thank You Nobody will be too happy if you hijack their social media feed with your crowdfunding promotions. However when someone donates you immediately thank them on social media tagging them in a post. You say something like a big thank you to Tom, Mary and JoJo for supporting our project XYZ with a link to the campaign, the link is key. Since you tagged them everyone in their feed will see your info and links. They will see a friend of theirs deemed this a cool project so maybe they should check it out.

 

Launching a crowdfunding campaign is a big undertaking. I just scratched the surface here but this information certainly will get you started. It’s good form to run a campaign for at least 30 days. The first and last 72 hours will be the most fruitful. The other 24 days you will be grinding it out, one person at a time. You have to imagine yourself a politician running for office, shaking hands and kissing babies. You will succeed one person at a time. In the big picture, the larger benefit is building your audience. Everyone who donates is saying they are interested in what you do. Be sure to collect all the emails and start building an email list around your work. You will have a support base for when you launch your production and a head start with an established base for your second production. The further you go down this road of DIY filmmaking you will realize just how valuable that email list is. Which is why I’d ask you to please join mine. Just take the first step and before you know it, the crowdfunding mechanism will be in motion.

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Low Budget Filmmaking Costs An Astronomical Amount Of Your Time, It’s No Secret How To Be Successful

by Anthony Ferraro, posted in BLOG

The secret of low budget filmmaking is communicating effectively and taking the steps to be completely prepared. When you do not have money to invest the only option left to you is to invest your time. When embarking on low budget project you must lead by example. If you cannot communicate clearly and quickly what you want from your team you’ll have a very difficult time recruiting people at a low or no rate and you will quickly lose the people who are already on board. You have to do the work, all of it, all the time.

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If you are serious about embarking on a long journey of DIY, Low Budget filmmaking you need to learn a filmmaking skill. Sounds obvious right? But do not be that person who has an idea for a project and expects everyone else to do all the heavy lifting. When I first started out and to this day when I show one of my films someone will come up to me excited by what they see I created independently on a low budget and want me to help them make their half baked idea a reality. Low budget filmmaking is such an insane amount of work and time along with the utilizing of hard earned contacts, why in the world would I spend all that time and potentially burn my contacts for someone else’s project? But what I am more than willing to do is share what I’ve learned and help you get started making films for yourself.

As a Low Budget filmmaker most likely you are focusing on writing and or directing. Sorry to tell you, those don’t count. As the writer or director at the end of a project, it has your name on it and you will represent it. When you go to festivals you will speak for it and ten years from now it is a solid director or writer credit on your IMDB. That is your compensation for the time and effort you spent.  Everyone else just wants to get paid and if they are not getting paid they need to be excited about the opportunity your project provides them. They need to clearly see the value in offering you their time and effort.

Since writing and directing do not apply here I recommend learning editing. To begin to learn how to edit, you can subscribe to Adobe Premiere pretty inexpensively. Certainly, alternatively, you can learn photography, sound recording or sound designing which is great. But if you are starting from zero as a camera person there is a lot of gear to buy and understand. To practice that skill you need projects or need to schedule the time to shoot. With editing, you can just sit at your computer at home and practice. You can even hang out in the park or coffee shop with a laptop. Sound design is more akin to editing in that context but if your aim is filmmaking picture editing makes more sense.

But I need a project or source material you are saying. I hear you and this is what I suggest. A good exercise is to make a music video from the royalty free archival footage, I like the Prelinger Archives. Also, kill two birds with one stone, ask a local or independent band if you can use one of their songs. If you have a friend who is a DJ edit video to one of their tracks. That way they get a music video or projection video and will most likely share it. Your first credit as an editor. I made this music video for a band I really admire Vanish Valley for free, but it wasn’t free was it? It cost my time. But I loved the song and was excited to make something with the footage I found. Passion and drive are key because there is not money motivating you, in fact, it’s costing you money.

The most important reason for learning to edit is for practical reasons. You should learn to edit because you will spend the most money and time on editing. And as they say, a movie is made three times. First when you write it, second when you shoot it and third when you edit it. As a low budget filmmaker, I am guessing you are writing and directing so you might as well round it out. If you are just starting to write have a look at my writing article.

keep in mind you are just learning you do not need to master any of the skills but you should have a working knowledge of them. I stress editing because I will repeat,  it will save you the most money and in my opinion, give you the most fulfilling creative experience. When you do one day get an actual workable budget and you sit with your editor you will understand the job and know how to communicate your ideas. And now we get to the point.

When you are paying people little or no money you need to be able to communicate effectively to them what you need. Simply understanding what they do even if is beyond your abilities goes a very long way. Let’s say you are learning to edit but you are not up to speed when it comes time to make your project. I can guarantee you will have an easier time getting an editor if you just do the prep work yourself. With digital filmmaking, there is a lot of raw footage generated. If you hand over a hard drive with 1TB of raw footage to an editor you are not paying. Trust me he or she is not running home to dig into that. If you have a basic knowledge you can load your footage into an editing project file. Organize the footage and make simple selects of the takes you like. After that process, you have a very clear handle on what needs to be done or a very clear idea of what you are lost at sea with and need input on.  If you give an editor a project that is organized and all your best takes are selected they will go straight home and dig in. By taking the time to organize the project you communicated to the editor one, you do not expect them to do all the work you want them to contribute and two, you communicated what you are looking for in your edit by making the selects. Also, it is always good form to mention these are your suggestions nothing’s in stone and encourage them to try their own ideas. Now you placed value on their time.

Perhaps you have nothing but burning desire to tell your story as a movie. You still need to get people excited and interested in helping you. You have the most basic elements at your disposal right now, a paper and pen, well most likely a laptop and word processor. Paper and pen just sounds more dramatic. You write your story out long hand. Your characters are here they go there, he said, she said. Then you take your story and turn it into a script, exterior day, stage direction, character dialogue. Next, you make storyboards, draw in rectangles how you see the scene, stick figures and arrows are fine. This is your directing rehearsal, your practice for communicating with the camera person and actors.  Finally, do a paper edit, make two columns and in the right column put the dialogue and action in the left column put the description of what we see on screen. This is your editing rehearsal, your practice for communicating with the editor. By the time you do all this work you will be bursting with clear ideas and direction.  You can now get potential collaborators excited about your idea and clearly communicate with anyone who agrees to be involved in your project.

In closing, I will say always be gracious and never loose you cool. It is a process, one project at a time. With each project learn a new skill and build friendships with the people you’ve gathered around you. If they had a good experience they will always be up to working with you again. Which means on the next project that’s less of your valuable time you need to spend.

Be sure to subscribe and follow my video channel for more Sci Fi filmmaking How To.