A Few More Crowd-Funding Thoughts

Crowd-funding is becoming a bigger and bigger concept and conceivable way of raising money to create/make/help people move closer and closer to their dream. It's definitely a much more popular way of raising money than even twelve months ago and more often than not, you have a conversation with an emerging filmmaker and they're either thinking about, have completed or are in the process of running a campaign to crowd-fund their project.

I've already talked about the crowd-funding campaign for With A Little Help From Our Friends here and here. They run through most of the things that I've picked up on that you can do for yourself to give you the best possible chance of hitting your goal. Nothing is ever guaranteed, but there are definitely things you can do to put together a fantastic campaign.

The main thing I've noticed recently, as more and more campaigns get launched every day, is that often people underestimate the power of the internet.

The internet is a huge, international being. Social media - the main way that word of projects and campaigns is spread these days - is a worldwide phenomenon. A crowd-funding project launched in Australia, can hit people who are on their computers in America, Ukraine, the United Kingdom. These people also have money that they can give to your campaigns. They also have friends that they can pass your campaign on to.

Don't alienate them.

More frequently, I'm seeing projects that have perks that are restricted to particular regions. A perk reward of a ticket for a local event in Brisbane is less likely to interest a contributor who is based in Denver and has no chance of getting to Australia for the dates. And yes, there will be some people who give money for the sake of giving money, but more often than not, the average person would like something for their money.

Make your perks accessible internationally.

Why cut yourself off to additional members of your audience? You spread the net as wide as you can so that you give every single person who looks at your campaign an equal chance of contributing to it. That doesn't mean that you can't have perks that are local - but make sure you have a range of perks that are accessible on an international scale.

And open yourself up to dollars, pounds, euros, rupees, roubles - all of it!

Tick Tock

Time is something that we can never get back.

That seems like a poignant statement, but it's designed more to highlight the fact that when you get the time to do something you love, you should seize the opportunity with both hands and go for it like there's no tomorrow.

I've been freelancing since I got back from the UK and I've just finished up a job last week. I don't really have any idea where my next lot of work will come from yet, but I'm relishing this chance because it gives me an opportunity to throw myself back into writing - something that has fallen by the wayside over the past few weeks.

So I've decided I'm going to be disciplined with it. I'm realistic in that I'm not going to be able to spend all day, every day writing - as much as I might want to. But I'm definitely devoting a big chunk of my time to writing each day. I'll start each day with a target list of what I want to get done - but I won't make myself feel guilty if I don't get through it. It will just mean that I'll have more to get through the day after that. And the list will be flexible - if I plan to work on my feature and then my sitcom, but when I hit sitcom hour and I want to keep going with my feature, why would I stop?

And by 'writing', I don't mean just writing the script. Writing isn't just scripting. Writing is planning. Sculpting the structure. Exploring story possibilities. Nailing characters. Writing the script is such a small part of it - never discount research or planning as 'not writing' because it definitely is.

I know I'm going to start out rusty. I haven't written seriously in nearly four weeks - there's going to be a bit of squeaking as the wheels get back into motion. But I know that I love the worlds I've created and I want to spend time in them getting them right on the page so that anyone reading them can love them like I do. I know that when I get going, I'll be flying. I just need to work on my take off.

Today is deconstructing the structure of my feature to see if it is serving my story well enough. Then this afternoon is sitcom central.

I'm off to make a cup of tea, then I'll be heading off on the first of many writing sprints.

Wish me luck!

End Of An Era

It's with intense pride, relief and joy that I'm happy to announce that the With A Little Help From Our Friends DVDs have been posted (and hopefully most arrived by now)!

They were posted out last week and I've had some people telling me that they've shown up on their doorsteps, which is really wonderful to hear. It was a bit of a process putting the DVDs together - designing the covers, printing, trimming, fitting the sleeve; designing the DVD menu; burning each DVD individually and trying to work out what design to put on the DVD itself. In the end, I was inspired by my sister who joked I should draw stick figures on them, which made me realise that I'd saved the figurines from the Indiegogo campaign pitch video.

The Indiegogo pitch video

The final DVDs

Once they were all packaged up at ready to go, I had to work out the best way to distribute the 40 DVDs around the world. I figured out that to send all the UK parcels individually to the UK would be the same price as sending them in one hit to Craig to post out again, so I decided to post them all from Australia. Some needed scripts, some were solely DVDs, all were hand addressed and packaged with lots of love and care by yours truly.

With several bags packed full of these, I trundled down to the post office to send them out. And ten minutes after I arrived, they were gone! Off to all corners of the world - from Moonee Ponds to Maidenhead, from Denver to Pontypridd.

It's a strange feeling, having done everything now. The film is officially finished. The perks have all been sent out. I've had some wonderful emails, tweets and phone calls congratulating me on the film - some even with favourite quotes included, which does wonders for your self esteem as a writer and your appreciation of your wonderful actors who can deliver a line (Markus, Danny, Carolina and Victoria, I'm looking at you!).

So now, as ever, the next step. The next step in this case is to have a look into festivals that might be options to enter the film into. This is alongside writing other scripts and also toying with the idea of the next short film, one that I want to be bigger, better and stronger than With A Little Help From Our Friends. But right now, I'm going to focus on writing my comedy feature film and co-writing my television sitcom pilot and continuing to blog about random things that occur to me along the way.

Thanks for being a part of the With A Little Help From Our Friends journey. I can't quite believe it's over, but it's been absolutely incredible!

Alli x

Crowd-Funding Thoughts

In the past few weeks, crowdfunding has become a hot topic once again thanks to the success of the Veronica Mars Kickstarter campaign. It's been a hotly debated subject - is crowdfunding now dead to indie creators as it'll start to be taken over by bigger studios who want to get a bit of extra money in their pockets? Or is it just the beginning of something even bigger? Who knows? But I think that every single person who is planning to or is running a crowdfunding campaign can learn so much from the way this campaign has been run and some of the reasons it's been so phenomenally successful.

1. Build your fanbase early.

Sure, Veronica Mars was on TV, with a pretty strong and devoted fan following in the years it was on. But they maintained the fanbase since the show has been off the air and when they put out the call to arms, the fans answered. And answered and answered and answered. There's only a few days left of the campaign, but I reckon that they'll still hit the five million dollar mark before their campaign is done. So get talking about your project. The easiest way to do stuff like this is to create your digital footprint. Tweet about it. Blog about it. Facebook page it. Make people aware of it. Give them as much access to the journey as you can so that when you need help, there are people there to give it to you. I reckon about 50% of the backers of With A Little Help From Our Friends were people that I'd met through Twitter since starting up the blog. They knew what was going on. And they were eager to help out when we needed to set up the budget.

2. Choose your limit carefully.

Think realistically about how much money you need. Think of the dream about you want. Then settle for somewhere in the middle. Be realistic but not cynical about the amount of money you think you can raise. If I was to do the With A Little Help From Our Friends campaign again, I've probably set my target a little higher. That's not being greedy either - we weren't asking for much in the first place. But because I wasn't expecting the support I got (in the end, we raised 132% over our target), we hit the intended amount in the first week. And often once you hit your target, people think that that's it and the contributions slow down a lot. In a typical campaign, you get most of your contributions in the last twelve hours as everyone comes together to help push you over the line. Rob Thomas of Veronica Mars obviously thought that two million dollars was a stretch (which would be rational thinking!), but looking at it now, if he'd asked for five million, he'd have probably raised that much by now too. Be hopefully realistic about your target limit.

3. Make your perks special.

Your perks are the things that are going to seal the deal. Honestly. If your project looks amazing but your perks are expensive and not thought through, people will hesitate. And you don't want to give your audience a reason to say anything but yes. Think about the logical steps of money. $2, $10, $25, $50, $100, $200, $500. Maybe with a few others in between. It's entirely up to you how you structure your perks. But think about giving people value for their money. Research other campaigns that have been successful. Veronica Mars is a great example. $25 for an exclusive t-shirt, exclusive pdf of the shooting script, regular updates and insights into what goes on on set. That's a banging deal for $25 - especially if you're a fan. $25 is often the most popular amount contributed to a campaign, so make it count. I remember a friend of mine once said that he's happy to give $25 to a campaign as it's like buying a DVD. This is a great point - if you haven't got DVDs or t-shirts or tangible products until the backers start to hit $100, that's a REALLY expensive piece of merchandise.

4. Make your pitch video count.

With A Little Help From Our Friends - Crowdfunding Campaign from Alli Parker on Vimeo.

That's what this is, after all. A pitch video. Keep it brief and to the point - unless you have super cool awesome imagery like The Underwater Realm or The Fitzroy. But if it's talking heads, get across your tone, story, what you need the money for and yourself. After all, you're asking people to give you money to trust that you'll deliver them a product. You need them to buy into you and your project - very literally. There's loads of space to explain more in writing and I'd really really encourage video updates throughout the campaign as it really helps build a sense of personality and excitement around the project. And by leaving them wanting to know more, they're more likely to read what the rest of the campaign is about.

5. Do your research.

I really think that this is the key to running a strong campaign. Do your research before you start. There are loads of crowdfunding sites now - which is best for you? Kickstarter? Pozible? Indiegogo? Look into territories - Kickstarter is very US based, Indiegogo is UK based, Pozible is Australia but some support multiple currencies. Look into the wildly popular campaigns that have raised loads of money - what about them worked? Look into ones that haven't worked and, sadly, failed - why didn't they reach their target? What is unique about your project that you can offer?

I think that crowd-funding is going to become a much bigger player in independent creative projects. It already has done in the few years since it's been around. With more projects out there competing against each other for attention, you really need to look at how you can make your work stand out. But it's not impossible to raise money this way - in fact, I think it's getting easier as crowdfunding becomes more prominent in the world. 

You've just got to be smart about the way you go about it. 

(I wrote a similar post to this as the With A Little Help From Our Friends campaign came to an end here.)

With A Little Help From Our Friends - Update!

I know what you're thinking. It's been a billion years since we shot With A Little Help From Our Friends, so why haven't we seen anything in awhile? I want to thank everyone for their patience and support whilst we've been waiting for this to come around.

And it has come around.

I'm very pleased to announce that With A Little Help From Our Friends is finished.

And, to prove it, here's a sneak peek of the DVD cover:

For all our backers on Indiegogo who gave us more than $10, look out in your inbox for the link to the completed film. For those who gave us more than $25, I'll be in touch soon to double check your postal addresses to send the DVDs out to.

It's been a long time in the making - but it does go to show that filmmaking is a long process. And I know for next time to schedule my post production a lot better so that it's not as time consuming the next time around.

And despite how long it's taken, it's been a fantastic process! I'm looking forward to doing research into festivals over the next few weeks, once I've sorted out sending out the last few perks from the campaign.

Thanks again to everyone who got involved and helped out - we could not have done it without you. Hopefully it's a little film that will make you laugh and you enjoy watching as much as we did making it!