What I Learned from Crowdfunding a Film (+One Tip for Donors!)
Alt title: an extremely long explanation for why I've been busy
This week, I am back from the ashes and doing a retrospective on the project that caused me to be MIA: crowdfunding the $15,000 budget on my short film.
After 30 consecutive days of hounding literally every person who ever knew me, I apologize deeply to everyone on this email list who thought they were done hearing about my short film. But in hopes that this is helpful for someone else––or simply a place for me to reflect on the journey––here are some of my major takeaways for crowdfunding a creative project.
Why crowdfund?
Before answering this question, let’s ask the question behind it: how much does it cost to make a movie? The answer varies, but as a first time filmmaker, I want to be as economical as possible. So LET THE MYTH BE will be shot on one location over one long weekend. I ran the numbers and from equipment, travel stipends to our shooting location, and salaries for the crew, we ended up with a number around $15,000.
SHOCKER: I don’t have $15,000.
So what are my options from there? I explored grants, but many are incredibly competitive or require examples of prior work (which I simply don’t have as a first time filmmaker). I’ve seen grants that offer $1,000 for a single short film project, but they receive 400 applications for one or two grant winners. In other words, that’s a 0.25% chance of receiving 6% of our total budget. Not the best odds if you ask me. After applying to several grants and getting rejected across the board, I derived the path forward…
Crowdfunding. I took matters into my own hands, fueled by fellow filmmakers who told me that raising $15k was absolutely doable. Not a single fellow filmmaker doubted my ability to raise that money. That’s the energy I’m talking about!
What makes a project worth donating to?
Of course, people like a good story. Even more than that, people like a short pitch. They like pretty pictures. And they like leaders who seem like they have their shit together. So with that in mind there are really three pillars that make a project seem appealing to donors: Concept. Visuals. Team.
CONCEPT
Having a good concept is half the battle (but only half). The other half is how you present it to people.
I am (obviously) obsessed with my script. I love the story and I want to tell every single person the ins and outs of it, but sometimes (most of the time) that’s just too in the weeds. It’s easy to overwhelm people and confuse them with too many details. So I dumbed it down to five words: “Black female led supernatural thriller.” You don’t know what it’s about, but you get the vibe instantly.
I also explained my concept by using other projects that already exist. For example: if you took Bonnie Bennett from The Vampire Diaries and made her the star of Supernatural, but set in the spooky farmland of Pearl or X, you’d have LET THE MYTH BE. There, I’m taking ideas that are well known and putting them together into something new––and something that people will easily understand.
Know your project so well that you can sell it to someone in one sentence––or even five words.
VISUALS
Film is visual. People want to imagine what my short film might look like so (along with my team) we created moodboards, pulled references, and made original art to showcase the vibes of the film and its major set pieces.
In our case, Lauren’s Wall is the most visual and intriguing set piece. My incredible production designer Ariana Dideban made an awesome draft of what the real life wall will look like. We used that to set the suspenseful, spooky tone of the film.
Don’t just tell people what your film will look like. Show them.
TEAM
One person with an idea is awesome. But six people united by an idea is 10x stronger. I assembled my partial team long before crowdfunding. It allowed us to create those enticing visuals together, to bounce ideas off each other, to share references, etc. My production designer curated such an awesome aesthetic that easily translated the atmosphere of the cottage environment in my short. My costume designer created a costume journey for the character, contrasting where her outfits would begin and end (in line with her character journey).
This short film concept quickly becomes more than just an idea, when multiple people build something with it. It becomes tangible and actionable. And then donors believe you actually have the capability to go make this movie.
What platform?
As I was researching grants and opportunities, I stumbled upon the concept of Fiscal Sponsorship. I didn’t fully get it until I was having breakfast with a friend and he directly asked me: have you considered Fiscal Sponsorship? Here’s what it means: my short film project gets umbrella’d into an organization’s nonprofit status and then every donation to our film counts as charitable. Ergo: every donation is tax deductible.
We went through Film Independent’s Fiscal Sponsorship program, which has been awesome. It enabled us to fundraise at our own speed and keep everything we raise, regardless of if we hit our goal or not. That is the difference between a platform like Film Independent and Kickstarter or Seed&Spark. Those two platforms have an “all-or-nothing” aspect to it. If you don’t hit your goal, you don’t get the money (although Seed&Spark lets you take home everything once you’ve hit 80% of the goal).
They also have stricter time limits, as in projects must fundraise the budget in 21 or 30 days. In all honesty, I do understand putting a ticking clock on the endeavor. If you can’t raise it in 30 days (or at least get close), I don’t think you’d raise it in infinite days. Generally speaking, I think people don’t donate money unless there’s a ticking clock attached. Which is why we gave ourselves a self-imposed 30-day deadline. But unlike those other platforms, it’s very easy to keep donations rolling through Film Independent beyond our 30-day fundraising sprint. If someone texts me today (more than a week after our self-imposed deadline), they can still donate through our page without issue.
Above all, the tax deductible aspect gave us a unique pitch: Donate if you’re looking for a tax write-off. Quite a few folks donated $500 or above and I think the tax deductibility aspect of it played a huge role in those donations.
Lastly, because all donations were routed through Film Independent, we were able to claim double (or sometimes triple) donations from friends who work at businesses with company matches. That was HUGE.
How does one market a short film?
I have a background in politics and I really fished into my grab-bag of organizing techniques for this crowdfunding campaign. When I worked on the Ossoff-Warnock campaign in Georgia in 2021, I learned very quickly on the phones that people do not want a spiel. I got hung up on quite a few times. People want a one sentence pitch and concrete reasons to get involved.
So applying that to this fundraising sprint, I picked three concrete reasons to donate:
Support a genre film with a Black female lead
Support a full production team of women of color
Every donation is 100% tax deductible
The first two reasons are moralistic, but then again this is a charitable donation! So it makes sense to be moralistic. As our pitch went, every donation helps combat systemic Hollywood problems by creating a space for projects by women of color with leads of color.
Beyond that, help people understand why you need donations to fund a creative project. The barriers to entry are real. Knowing how much it costs to fund a short film (which is basically the only way into becoming a feature film director), it then makes sense why there are so many white male directors. I used different TikToks and social media posts to highlight these systemic issues, but also highlight the successes of other film crowdfunding campaigns.
On a more tangible note…
Persistence is key. We posted on social media everyday, including Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. And I found that my posting abilities got stronger as I stuck with it. My TikToks in Week 3 were better than the ones in Week 1.
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I ran an email marketing campaign targeted to about 300 emails in my personal network (friends, family, acquaintances, professional connections, etc). In the back half of my fundraising, I started directly calling and texting those who hadn’t yet donated.
I have a friend who recently did a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter that caught fire on social media. She said that 50% of her donations came through Twitter. I didn’t have viral success on any platform, but was pleasantly surprised by how many people donated or interacted with my IG stories.
All that to say: While the idea of going viral is oh-so appealing, don’t discount your personal network. I never went viral. The most views we ever got was around 5,000 (and the majority of my videos landed in the low hundreds). HOWEVER! A family friend told me that he donated because of a TikTok he saw. And he donated $250. Even though we never went viral, our TikToks still brought in donations.
One Tip for Donors: If you can’t donate, say so upfront.
This is a game of sales. As soon as you show interest in my project (follow the account, tell me something nice, etc), I will hound you for that donation––even if it’s just $1. I know it’s so uncomfortable to tell a friend “No I can’t support you,” but it actually saves everyone time. Because then I can move onto the next person or the next lead, instead of repeatedly texting and calling someone who never would be able to donate but is just too timid to admit it.
Even if you can’t support a crowdfunding project financially, reframe it into what you can do! Can you share the posts on social media? Can you forward a fundraising email to two friends or family members who might be interested? Can you even offer a skill of yours to help out on the production itself?
Moral of the story: don’t be afraid to say no if you can’t donate. Feel empowered instead to say how you can support a friend’s crowdfunding campaign in other ways.
The Bottom Line
Our strategy worked. We raised over $16,000 (blowing through our $15k goal) across 223 donors. Huge success if you ask me!
If you haven’t donated yet…
You can still donate here (if you want the tax write-off) or directly via my Venmo (@Carrington-Walsh). Donors will get to see the film long before anyone else. If you think about it that way, you’re kinda just paying for a movie ticket but in advance!
That’s the skinny on how and why I crowdfunded my short film. Now comes the big fun task… of actually making the film.
Until next time,
Carrington