How to Crowd Fund Your Film: Rewards, Video, Marketing & More

Join strategist/author Stephen Follows for current statistical trends.To learn more about Carole Dean and From the Heart Productions please visit www.FromtheHeartProductions.com.   

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

Log Talk Radio.

SPEAKER_03 0:13

Hi and welcome to the Art of Film Funding. I'm your co-host, Claire Capan. Along with Carol Dean, author of the best-selling book, The Art of Film Funding, Carol is also the founder and president of From the Heart Productions and the host of this show. Stephen Fellows is a writer, producer, and storytelling consultant. His work has been featured in outlets such as the New York Times, Times Telegraph, and Guardian, and he's taught at institutions such as the National Film and Television School, Met Film School, NYU, and Film Base. His website, stevenfollows.com, features a variety of filmmaking resources, including a crowdfunding inspirations tool. His production company and leading online video agency is named Cat Snake. And that would be at Catsnake.com. Located in Somerset House. His new book, How to Crowdfund Your Film, is available on Amazon.com. And Carol, I understand you are a very big fan of Stephen's work.

SPEAKER_04 1:32

Yes, Claire. His blogs and mostly his statistical articles. These articles are major contributions to the film industry. So thank you for joining us, Stephen.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_04 1:46

Well, you've written so many great informative studies, and um we're going to cover those. And we want to cover this book, How to Crowdfund Your Film, because it's an excellent book. So it's it's shocking how much you think you know but you don't know. So uh but I want to get uh let's get started. I want to cover some of the important sections today on the critical issues for filmmakers. But to start with, I want to know how you got into the business of doing analysis for the film industry.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

Well, I I think like most good jobs, it started in the pub, um, in the sense that I uh I'm a producer by trade and I became a writer as well. And my production company, we would make short films and videos for charities and you know, viral videos and things like that. And um I always used to be the person who I can't let something go. If someone if two people are disagreeing about something, I want to check it out. Um I want to find out what the truth is. I, you know, I care about the truth. And um also I think that uh because there are so few people talking about data and statistics in the industry, it tends to be a good route to tell people things that you could just say to them, you know, you should, you know, hard work pays off, but if you have a graph, it tends to be more effective. So I always used to do that on the side. And then as my work became less and less about the film industry and more about making videos online and doing storytelling consultancy, I kind of missed the sort of cut and thrust of the film industry and the excuse to get a can and do nothing. And so uh I decided to start sharing these articles. And so about five years ago, I thought, well, I'll just put them on the blog. And I I didn't really think anyone would read them. Um well, not many people, I just uh it was kind of an excuse so that I could write them and I wanted to do it anyway. So that happened, and then I started doing it regularly, once a week, and it just caught I got into a routine and it's a lovely um outlet. You know, it it gives me all sorts of things, it's fun. Um, it's nice to look at something and investigate something afresh, and sometimes I find evidence of something I believed, sometimes what I believed was wrong, and ultimately it's so nice to see um that the things I find can be used by people of all levels in the industry. You know, it's there's it's free, everyone can use it. You don't have to go to a three-year film school, you don't have to pay a consultant. And I can't use most of this stuff, and partly because I don't work enough in the industry, but also even if I did, I'd only work within one genre or area of the industry. And um I get emails from people saying, Oh, that was so useful for our business plan, or we've changed what we were doing because of this. And and obviously crowdfunding being a great I'm not crowdfunding anything right now, but I love the idea that the research I do can help other people who are at that critical point in their career, and it could really help them. So um yeah, I get a lot out of it. I really, really enjoy it.

SPEAKER_04 4:52

Well, and you've written so many great informative studies. What statistic have you uncovered that you find the most surprising?

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Um, the most surprising. Well, I think honestly, what I what I was most surprised at was early on I did a big um investigation into film festivals, and um it wasn't designed to sort of expose anything, but I certainly, as a filmmaker and as a short filmmaker who'd submitted films to lots of festivals, had a an idea that you know it's expensive to submit film festivals to films and um to festivals, and quite often you don't see anything for that submission fee, and and over because you submit to lots of festivals, you end up spending hundreds, maybe thousands of pounds, and you kind of get a negative view, and you you think, oh, they're just in it for the money. And so when I did this study, I spoke to many, many different film festival directors of huge and tiny festivals and everything in between. And when I looked at the economics of it and I sort of sat back, they look just like filmmakers. You know, they're they're exactly the same as us. Sure, there are some really big ones that you could say is more like Hollywood or the studio system where they're more like political machines than they are just for cinephiles. Um, but then most of them are uh are ones that are really work on the backs of passionate people who work far too hard for far too little money, and every year is a stretch to make it work. But when they do, they get to find and celebrate and screen amazing pieces of art, and they they like nothing more than doing that, and they will work so hard. And I just saw in their eyes and in their in their model business models, that's what we're all doing. You know, we're we've all got an idea and a joy and an art that we want to share, and we all work far too hard and for far too little money, but ultimately that's what we've chosen. And I I kind of uh it's so funny because you I didn't think of them as any kind of festivals as any kind of enemy, but I certainly saw them as uh and I was antagonistic perhaps, and maybe um the way we may see lawyers or accountants. Uh and uh I discovered after meeting with them and listening to them that they're exactly the same as us. And if if the film if films don't do that, I don't know what films do. You know, tell us that our problems are other people's problems and we can help everyone. And uh I just it was the first time that doing data truly took me to a different understanding of something and a better one as well.

SPEAKER_04 7:09

Oh my goodness, that is so good to hear because I haven't met too many people that run festivals, but the few have met, I've have found the same thing you just reported, that if they were overworked and underpaid, and they loved it. And it was a gift to uh to back to the industry in their mind. This is good. Well, what was the most depressing thing you found, Stephen?

SPEAKER_00 7:34

Well, it's funny you should say that. My um my wife uh is a director and she and I she joined me one year at Cannes, and um because my my photo is not all over my site, because it's not really about me, people didn't really when they meet me in a party or whatever, they don't really realize it's me for a little bit. So I was chatting with her and this filmmaker we bumped into, and and after a few minutes he said, Oh, you're that Stephen Followers, and I said, Yes. And he said, Oh, I read your stuff, it's it's really depressing. And my wife said, Wait, what do you what what do you mean? You don't seem that depressed, you seem fairly happy. And and why why is it depressing? Like she hadn't quite worked out what was going on. And uh the guy explained it really well. He said, Look, uh, most people don't tell you how what's happening, and they don't tell you how it actually works. And this, you know, though whenever I look at something, I try and be honest, and in most cases, I'm not telling you the secret magic formula to make a lot of money because I don't think it exists, but what I am doing is sort of grounding people in the reality of how hard something will be, or how few films make it through to the final hurdle that they're dreaming of. And I I hope I do it with kindness, and I hope I do it in the pursuit of helping people uh make it more likely to reach their vision. Um, but yeah, so there I mean there are things like um the number of people who make a second film in the UK after having written, produced, or directed one film, it's only about one out of five that make a second film. Um initially that sounds terrible, but let me let me at least try and change your mind as to how you should view that. Uh, I would say that um that says that many people are making films, and many people, you know, the barriers to entry are far lower than they used to. I'd say that there are many people who are making a uh directing or producing a film or even writing a film because they want to star in it, or because they want to do one of the other jobs. And so the fact that they don't make a second one in the role they didn't want to do just shows that they did manage to attract uh another producer or someone so they didn't have to produce it. Um and also making a film is staggeringly hard and it's an impressive endeavor, and to make it a good film is even harder. And maybe some people do it and say, I'm glad I did that, that was great, but that's not something I want to go and do again. And they go and work in television or in somewhere else where they can actually get paid. Um and so you know, the the the one in five that make the second film are the tenacious ones, the ones that are and are probably gonna go and make far more after that. So every depressing stat has the reverse side of it, you know, the reverse viewpoint.

SPEAKER_04 9:59

Right. This is incredible. Well, what made you decide to focus on crowdfunding? Where where did you come up with that decision?

SPEAKER_00 10:07

Well, I mean, what I study is a mix of how easy something is to get the data and also how how rarely it's studied by other people. And there are other people that were studying crowdfunding, but no one had done what I would want to do, which is gather all the data they could uh about film and then answer questions to filmmakers rather than making general comments about all of crowdfunding. Um, film is quite a big part of the crowdfunding universe, but it's not the only one. And if you've invented a new 3D printer, your experience with crowdfunding will be very, very different. So I felt that there was a need. And then once I gathered the data, I realized how much uh learning there was in it. And I ended up making it three or four blog posts, uh, which is quite a lot for me. I tend to put things out in one. Um, and I there were so many different avenues of looking at what people were doing, what were what was correlated with success, and then how that links to other things, and then pitfalls that people commonly make. And there was lots of things like that. And I I just found that every the more I turned over the data and the more I looked at a different aspect, the more interesting I found it, and the more interesting I thought my audience would find it. And if I find something out, I want to sh you know, I want to share it. I want it to get into the hands of the people that can help. So that sort of started my journey, those sort of three or four blog articles uh three or four years ago, however long that was.

SPEAKER_04 11:28

There's just so many parts and moving parts, they say, and bases to crowdfunding. And uh and you've certainly covered them well. I love it with all the pie charts and the graphs and all this stuff. Because nobody gives us that kind of information. Uh there's some good books out there on crowdfunding, but not like this, because this has got to a lot of visuals and uh st and stats that I've never seen before. And y I've been dying to know things. So we're gonna learn a lot in this uh in this call. And I thank you for all the filmmakers out there for the work you've done. This is what stupendous, I would say. Because see, do we teach crowdfunding? Our job here from the heart is to promote and support filmmakers. Uh and and education is number one on the list and and it's open to everyone, whether you're physically sponsored by us or not. Um so I started in uh 2011 as a partner with Indiegogo, and I really thought that I knew a lot. But I learned I learned so much from your book I was shocked. So I want to start with the average success rate of Kickstarter. What did you find there?

SPEAKER_00 12:53

So I looked at it and and and with all of these um figures, you can always go in deeper or subdivide the data. Um, but I found across all of the films about 40, I think it was 43% uh was successful. Um but obviously that's not that's not the end of the story. That's not enough to think that it's a uh a lottery where you can roll the dice and you have a 43% success, you know, chance of success. Um some things were um unsurprising. You know, if you ask for less money, there's a there's a greater chance that you will succeed, which you know makes sense. Um, but also there were things that were correlated to do with how you write your campaign and whether you include a video as part of your, you know, the headline cell of your campaign and things like that. And so what was interesting to me was the breakdown of all those these little correlations. Um, and I think the big thing is also that I try and impress upon filmmakers is that it's not a random 43%. You know, it's not a four out of ten chance. It's that those 43%, some may be lucky, but the vast majority of them have done their research and they're asking for the right amount of money and they've put work into it, and they've probably done a lot of planning, which is sure something I'm sure we'll pick up later on in this in this interview. Um, and so it's something that we can affect. Um, but one thing I would say is that um your experience is is very, very typical to other people in the sense that uh there are I can't think of almost anything else that uh in the filmmaking process that is this critical that we as filmmakers would learn on the go for the first time we've ever done it, would be on the project where we need it to work. And it's a one-time thing in the sense that you do the campaign and you get the money or you don't. When we use a new camera, we might shoot test material beforehand. We'll review the rushes, we have a chance to iterate. You know, can you imagine if you were shooting on 35 mil for the first time ever and you said, Oh, I I don't understand why it doesn't come out. And it's because it's we feel like we all, I mean, I'm exactly the same, we all feel like we should know crowdfunding, but actually it's a whole um it's a skill and it's an art and it's something you can learn. And I I really want to sort of encourage people to do very basic research. You know, look at other campaigns that are similar and see if they succeeded and make your own judgment as to why. Look at ones that are current, if you can advise or help or support somebody else who's running an active one, because a lot of these things that people learn in the first time round, uh, and especially the people who are in the sort of 57% that don't make it success successful, they've learned so much. Um, and they could probably have a good chance of of succeeding next time, but they're also burnt by the experience. And they now move on and decide that crowdfunding doesn't work. That doesn't work. Um and the truth is uh you you know you've got to put time in there, you've got to learn it.

SPEAKER_04 15:34

You have to learn it. It's a skill, it's an art. Those are that's what you said, and that is so true. I say it's a different animal. You've never done this before. Oh, I've raised money, Carol, for years. I know I'm doing. No, you don't. This is it's it's this since twenty eleven I've been trying to open their minds. This is a whole new concept. But now I just go buy this book because it's in there.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

Sorry, you're absolutely right. People think that they that that because they've raised money in other forums or because they've managed to sell other people on their films, they can do it here. But it it's just a whole different space. It's not impossible to learn, it's not it's not even that hard if you put the time in, but it is different to what you've done before if you've not done crowdfunding.

SPEAKER_04 16:22

Right on. Um okay, so now if uh w Indiegogo falls in that 43% uh range, you said that's where you got that number.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

Yeah, well, that was Kickstarter. I mean Indiegogo uh they were a bit more cagey um about and I and I it's harder for me to get the data. So I don't have an easy answer for Indiegogo. When when I spoke to uh their head of Creative at the time, he said that the success rate for film projects is around 30%, which is lower. But again, I w I do want to say that it that doesn't mean that you have a great greater chance on Kickstarter. That's probably got a lot to do with the fact that Indiegogo are a lot more liberal about what you can do and how you can do it. And so there may be projects that wouldn't survive on Kickstarter that would on Indiegogo or you know what I mean? That they're not yes it makes a difference what platform you're on, and platforms attract different types of filmmakers who put in different amounts of effort. So I I don't think there is a good platform or a bad platform.

SPEAKER_04 17:23

Well, agreed. But I uh I want to know uh what you think about Seed and Spark because uh they say they have an 80% success rate. Have you checked that out?

SPEAKER_00 17:37

I have, and and and it's Seed and Spark are one of those uh an experience I had with them was really uh joyful because it initially it fit fitted into a negative perception I had, and then it sort of turned it all around. So I got an email from a PR company who were working for Cedon Spark, and they emailed me one of these emails that you imagine is written by a PR person that said uh something along the lines of, you know, I represent Cedon Spark and we are uh twice as good as any other site. And uh, you know, we're so amazing, and you should write about us. And and I was I don't know whether I was in a particularly good mood or bad mood, but it was definitely one of the two. And and I guess I I think I've had an ex- I I've had a nice interaction with Emily Best, who who founded and runs the site before, and so I I thought yeah, I actually have a lot of respect for her, and I thought, okay, I'm gonna reply to this PR company and CC Emily in and say, look, you can't, and I what I said was a very polite version of you can't go around making these claims. You know, I've heard good things about Cedar Spark, but now I think less of you guys because you're just creating false claims. You're not twice as good as anybody else. Um and uh or the success rate's not twice as good, or if it is, you need to back it up because if it's that impressive, you can't just claim it because you've got no credibility. And because you you know, PR people say that. Anyway, so Emily replied and said, Um, uh thanks Stephen. Uh some of the language was a bit, you know, uh PR y, but actually, if you want to check out our stats, we will give you access to all of our projects if you want to. And I and I I couldn't I couldn't say no at this point, and I didn't want to, but I you know, huge respect to Emily for that because she really uh fundamentally the claim they were making wasn't false, and she was willing to back it up. So uh they gave me access to all of their projects and their internal dashboards, and there was nothing hidden from me. Um and I could also verify it because I could see what was public and like they just they didn't they didn't try and control what I could see or what I could do, and they also didn't have approval over what I would write. I promised not to reveal anything that was private, you know, no one's email address or you know, the kind of concerns people would have. But fundamentally, I could write any article I wanted based on their data. And when I crunched all the numbers over the period of time that I looked at, which was up until I think um April last year, uh, it was about 75% success. And uh so what they were saying was was right, broadly. Um, and the detail was fascinating, and and how much people people uh pledged on average slightly more than on Kickstarter projects are much more successful. And uh, you know, I would say that they've had much fewer project uh far fewer projects than Kickstarter or Indiegogo, so they're more boutique y but I don't think that's the main reason. I think um they attract good filmmakers. I think they uh work with filmmakers before the the campaigns are launched, so they help weed out problems. And I also think they really get and understand filmmakers and they want to they they they do training and they've done a series of training um uh events which have been I haven't been, but from what I've heard, rather impressive. And their commitment seems to be really to the film community. And uh by the way, I I didn't get anything to say any of this stuff and I still don't. I just really respect their uh their approach and their openness. And um you can't knock that. You know, the they're the the people we were talking about earlier on the who run film festivals who do it from their soul, and um Emily and her team they run Seed and Spark from their soul, and that's why it's you know one of the main reasons why it's so successful. So it was a very pleasant experience for me to call think I was calling someone out for for exaggerating and find out that they were spot on. It was I was delighted.

SPEAKER_04 21:17

Oh, that is fun when that happens. I like it. Well I think um I think they take control, which is what is needed. I mean, I've tried very hard to tell filmmakers, you know, you're not gonna raise a million dollars with three three thousand names. I don't think that's gonna work. But they're they're not in the reality. They say, well, Mary did, or John did. So uh when Stephen Spark works with people, they make them come back to reality. They get really in control with him and say, No, from what I see with your database, don't run now, go raise more names and come back. You're ready, but you're only going to be able to get fifteen thousand. So this is the realistic number. And you're going to have to work very hard to do that. And they listen, you say, this is the key in this because it's a new field. And you do have to listen, but you can walk away with that fifteen because it follows you, Stephen. Everybody wants to know, did you have a campaign? And you say, Yes, I did. I I did. They say, Well, did you hit your goal? And you say, No, because no, they don't want to hear. So no. And that's it. Stays with you. Well, let's get into the book, because I'm just really chomping at the bit here to get some of this information for the filmmakers. I really want to go to the five Ps of pre-launch crowdfunding.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

Uh yeah, so I um I I'm a writer and I like alliteration and puns. And so no puns here, but there is alliteration. And I I um was trying to think about the simplest way I could explain um the things that are the most critical. Um, and this is all in the pre-launch phase. So this is in the, let's say your campaign is a month long. You should be spending about a month, um, pretty much full time preparing for it, because I think that's a good rule of thumb. Is uh the minimum would be as long as your campaign is, spend about that long beforehand really working on it, um, because it will take time, but it will pay off, as you said. Season Spark helps in this pre-launch phase, and that's why uh they have a better success rate. So I've sort of put together the sort of five things that I think are key, and um the first two could happen in either order. So the first two are the pitch and the people. So you might start with your pitch, so you might understand what your unique compelling thing that will you know delight your audience. You might know, okay, I know that it's about the rewards or the idea for my film or whatever it is. You might start with your cell, you know, your pitch. Um or or you might start with your people. You might say, I know that my film that I'm gonna make is about you know, horses, and I and I know that the audience for horses like these kind of things, so I'm gonna build my campaign around my audience. Um, but whether it's your pitch or your people, and you tend to start with one of them, and you have to fill in the other one. So, you know, if you know what you're unique is unique about your film, then you need to identify who are the people who will be that will speak to the best. Um, and if you start with your audience, you know, I have a community that will probably back me, then you have to think about what would be a compelling pitch to them that would be unique and you know something that really gets them going. Um so once you've got your pitch and your people, you understand uh who you're gonna sell what to, uh, then you've got your planning uh and you do as much research as possible. So this is where you try and this is even before your pre-launch phase. So this would be in the month or two leading up to your month before your campaign, where you're just in the evenings and the weekends and your lunch break, you noodle around looking at other crowdfunding sites uh who asking similar amount of money, um, maybe films on the same niche or niche that you're doing, uh, and again to your same audience, you know, who else is uh, you know, go on to the Facebook pages of the people uh of the uh pages that um your your your audience frequent and see what who else is pitching to them and what's successful. Um so once you've done that sort of plan, then you've got process. Uh this is the penultimate one where you're building a team and working out who's going to do what with your tasks, and you're sort of building a machine. This is definitely the sort of pre-launch, and you can think of it as pre-production. You know, you start pre-production with a budget and a script, and maybe uh the director and a few cast members, but that's all you've got, and you end pre-production ready to shoot. Well, off hopefully. Um, and that's the same here. You start with your how much you need to raise, and you start with your uh idea for your film, and then you end this month-long or however long it is, this process, by knowing uh you've got a load of people, some will help you very directly, some that will be more tangential, but they all know what they're doing and they're all primed. Um, and then finally the last P is promote. And I think this is something that's quite tricky for filmmakers. You know, m most filmmakers see themselves as artists and don't want to be salesmen and don't have a lot of respect for a lot of salesmen. And I understand that, and I'm not asking filmmakers to completely transform who they are, but they do have to acknowledge that the things that tend to work are things that are promoted. And so you've got one of two choices. Either you can be the main salesperson for your film, uh behind the scenes planning and also in front, which is fine. Maybe if you're not very rehearsed with this, get some people to help you or you know, read a book about marketing or sales. Um, and if you're not, then that's fine, but find somebody that is. You know, if if you're uh a director by trade, then you've got somebody else to be your costume designer on set. You know, if you're a producer, you're not going to direct the film necessarily. So if you're not a salesperson, find somebody that can come on board who believes in your vision or is willing to do it for some money or whatever the deal you strike is, but somebody has to really be thinking about the promotion because it's not true that you can just put up your site, you put up your page and the money comes in. Um, in the same way you don't just write your script and then the budget appears or the final film on DVD coming through your door. You know, there is a whole process. Um, but what I would say is that whilst we may not be salespeople, filmmakers are storytellers. Uh and we are we do like compelling stories and we like entertaining people, and we certainly have to bring uh recruit and bring a whole load of people on board our project, and independent to money. You know, when you're pitching to people that might become your DOP and there's not enough money, or your first AD, or someone like that, you say, look, this film's gonna be great, it's gonna be a fun shoot, it's gonna be tough, but we're gonna do it. And look at this story and think about this moment, and they read the script. And you know, we are used to selling, we just don't call it sale. Um, and so you might want to call it enthusiasm or from you know, just sharing your passion. Um so there's there we go. So we've got there the three the sorry, the five P's. You've got pitch and people, one of them you is first, and then you fill in the other one, and then in order you've got planning, process, and then promotion.

SPEAKER_04 28:05

Oh my gosh, they're so important. Well done. That's excellent. Now, what are some of the reasons that people give to crowdfunding campaigns?

SPEAKER_00 28:15

Well, this is a that's a really good question. I was thinking about that when I was starting to look at the gifts that people give, and I was thinking about why do people give? What's the the reason? And and I guess it's a sort of a spectrum. If you think on one end of the spectrum, you've got people who are basically using uh Kickstarter or whichever site you're using, like on Amazon.com, you know, they they see t-shirts and they see gifts and and experiences and unique things they can't get anywhere else, and they're purchasing them. And and that's fine, you know. That that um if you have a unique t-shirt or something that they can buy, then actually that's great. Um on the other hand, you've also got people on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, you've got people who are totally invested in you and what you're doing. And if you went to them and said, I want to build a house, I want to new jet ski, I want to do something because I believe in it, and they would say, You're my nephew, I'll give it to you, or whatever it is. Um these are people who are backing you. And then in the middle of these two extremes, you've got people who kind of want to be part of something but don't necessarily know you. You've got people that feel like this is an important project uh artistically, or if it's a documentary, then maybe it's the cause. Um, and then you've got people who actually want to watch your film, who are kind of interested in the end result. So then it's not quite an Amazon.com situation, but it's also not about you. And I think if you think about the Amazon.com and the film people as more of a transaction, you know, you're selling something for a price and they're gonna weigh it up and think about how exclusive or unique it is, and if it's worth it, they'll buy it. And then the people who want to see you succeed or they want to be part of something, that's more of an emotional reason. Now, those emotional people, you probably know a lot of them already, and they're probably gonna give no matter how good your pitch is or how good your campaign is. And so that's great in the short term, but they don't scale very well. You know, you have a certain number of aunts and uncles already, you can't make any more. Uh whereas on the other hand, if you're able to offer things that are more transactional, you might make less money on each donation because they'll give you$20, but you have to spend$10 sending them a t-shirt. But that could, in theory, scale quite far. So these are things to think about. You know, what do you have to offer that's unique? Who might back you, and can it scale to whatever your budget level is? If you need$500, you can probably rely on the people who just want to be involved for emotional reasons. If you need$500,000, you probably need some transactional people as well, and you need to have uh rewards that can scale.

SPEAKER_04 30:44

Rewards that can scale, that is so true. I've seen that. Really, really work. Right. Um now, can you uh in your book you mentioned that getting press coverage is essential to raising large amount of money. Now, tell us some tips on this. How can filmmakers do this? Because they're usually on limited budgets.

SPEAKER_00 31:07

Absolutely. And I think the you've got to remember that it's not a linear scale. If you double the amount of money you want, you're not just gonna double the work, you might change the work you're doing. So if you need to raise$1,000, you probably don't need the New York Times to have you on the head, you know, front page. You don't need necessarily print journalism to follow you. Not that it wouldn't hurt, but you know, that's probably not what you need. But if you're trying to make the biggest ever crowdfunding campaign, you're trying to raise$10 million, you almost certainly need the the fog horn, the you know, the really wide net of traditional press or of uh of other outlets. And so think about like that. Think about uh how wide and how broad do you need to go. But whatever it is, unless you already know everybody who's gonna donate to you, you're gonna need platforms and you're gonna need people who can amplify your message and reach new people. Uh you can't rely on knowing everyone, otherwise, you're just gonna email everyone you know and and piss them off with a thousand please donate money to me emails. Um, so if you think about it, we've got like email, you can email people, you can join in people you do know, or or you could uh talk to people who have email lists and sort of do deals with promotion, or maybe they just want to support you. Social media is very, very powerful, but you've got to have something to say. Uh I want your money is not a good thing to say, and you can only say it once or twice. And if your campaign's a month long, you need new things to say. So it might well be that you have to create a compelling story as to why your film should exist or why you need the money. You know, maybe you're the first person in your tiny town to ever make a feature film and that matters, and therefore you're gonna spend the crowdfunding month sharing stories from your town and you know, that that kind of thing. Find something unique. Um, you also can think about uh whether it's um like outreach where you're trying to reach out to other organizations that already have a big community. So uh uh if you're doing a um uh a project about science, you might go to the there's a huge Facebook page that's got millions of supporters called I effing love science. Uh and those people, if you can can convince the one or two gatekeepers there that you you've got something that their audience are going to love, then they might be able to amplify your message way further than you could yourself. Um my main tip with those ones is that that takes a lot of time. So if you're intending or you're hoping to get a lot of big pages or sites to back you, go to them early, give them exclusive information, talk to them. You know, it it's the same as meeting a person. If the first thing you say to somebody when you first meet them is give me something, they won't get to know you. Whereas if you're able to go and talk to them and share your passion and help them with something, they're much more likely to help you. Um and then the last one, which is very big, um, but is probably it's more of a risk and it's probably only needed for very large campaigns, is the idea of putting some money behind advertising. Now, this may sound strange to a lot of filmmakers, partly because we don't really do the advertising, exhibitors and distributors do, and also because why am I paying to try and raise money? That may sound antithetical, it may sound strange. But if you need to reach new audiences, there may be ways of whether it's simply paying a email list to include your you know your campaign, or whether literally you want to do various kinds of advertising on Facebook or I mean I I I go to Kickstarter and Indiegogo a lot, and so whenever I'm logging into Facebook, I see lots of adverts that people have paid, usually for technology, usually there's a new kind of toaster or something, and they they they've decided that it's worth spending the money to reach people like me because I I have a apparently higher chance than average to to buy whatever this new item is. Um I don't see too many filmmakers doing this, but I also don't think that it automatically wouldn't work if you've got a compelling story or compelling rewards. So um treat that carefully. It's very easy to spend money, and the last thing you're gonna do with crowdfunding is lose money. But it's it's worth investigating all of this in the months leading up to your campaign and just investigating it, you know, just having a look, is it worth doing a partnership with a company that will take a chunk of your money but will amplify your voice? You know, are there websites and journalists that you can talk to early on and get them interested and and work out why they might support you and and you know get that to work? So I think it's a lot of this is about preparation and understanding your options before you start.

SPEAKER_04 35:35

Absolutely. And um a lot of times there are local uh places, you know, that uh local newspapers that will grab an ad and run it for a filmmaker. You've got to go in as a filmmaker. And uh because people we all love filmmakers. Uh so that's another idea. Your local newspaper could be very beneficial to you. Uh well what I want to know next is uh what did you find is the best length for a campaign? How many days?

SPEAKER_00 36:08

Well, it's it's interesting because um people often think of crowdfunding purely as sort of it's 30 days and that's it. And uh often some sites do restrict you to 30 days, and also it's what most people think of. Uh and and there are a large number of campaigns that do run for 30 days, but you can run them for a lot shorter or a lot longer. Um and I I on Kickstarter I think you can run them between one and sixty days, which is the same as Indiegogo. Um, Stephen Spark, I think, require you to do 30, 45, or 60 days. Um, and so there's lots of different uh options. And it's interesting because uh your instinct, once you know you can run it for anywhere between you know one and ninety days, or one and sixty days, uh, your instinct might be saying, Okay, 50, 60, you know, give the most amount of time so that people can come on board. Um, but I found something really interesting. Um, that was true for projects that were trying to raise over a hundred thousand dollars. You know, there is a slight uptick with the ones that last longer than thirty days, but they have a slightly higher success rate. But interestingly, for all projects under uh under$100,000, and what I'm about to say was most pronounced for projects under$5,000, the shorter campaigns, the campaigns under 30 days had higher success rates than the ones that were 30 days long, and the ones that were 30 had higher ones than the ones were over 30. So what is going on here? Well, I think it's about urgency. I think the idea uh well it's two things. One is urgency. One the idea that this is something that's happening now, it's really important, whereas 30 days is a long time to hear the same story from your friends or colleagues who are trying to raise money. And then I think the other thing is that when you look at the curve of over the let's say you run a 30-day campaign, when does most of your money come in? Well, it comes in towards the very beginning and it comes in towards the very end. And in the middle sort of days, days 13, 14, 15, you might have days where you raise almost nothing, maybe nothing if your campaign's small enough, because you've got nothing new to say, it's ongoing, there's no urgency, no news. And so when you compress your campaign and change it from say 30 to 20 days, you don't lose the beginning and you don't lose the end. You lose those middle days that weren't actually bringing much in. And so there could be a very strong argument. If you're not trying to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars, it may be a good argument to run a shorter, louder campaign, you know, put more energy into it, and but you'd be able to ask more favors of people. Because rather than saying, I need you to manage my social media for 30 days, you can say, look, we're doing this for 10 days. It's going to be, I mean, you know what it's like when it's a film set, a film shoot, it's the same thing. It's much easier to get people to work for free or lower rates on a shorter period of time. And, you know, it'll be more tiring per day, but maybe um you'll be able to use that energy, drive it out, and see people can see that something's happening. It'll make everything feel more real, and you uh the days that you've quote unquote lost from going down from 30 to 20 weren't valuable days anyway.

SPEAKER_04 39:10

Wow, that's a whole new take. I've not heard that. That's great. Now, but what about this 30%? People that raise 30% of their goal in the first 48 hours have a much greater chance of reaching their goal. Do you have any statistics on that?

SPEAKER_00 39:27

Yeah, that's really it's a really interesting statistic. And it and it does really underline how how much of the uh you need sort of the news and the buzz and you in perhaps an existing audience. Um so I think there's a few things going on there. I mean, one, there is a uh and and uh people have I I haven't had anyone from the from Indiegogo or Kickstarter officially tell me this, but I do, and I've had let plenty of filmmakers tell me their theories, but I can't give you the the exact factual answer on this. But there is definitely an echo effect where if in the first few hours you raise uh a lot of money, which obviously might only be a few percent of your goal, but let's say you raise five or ten percent of your goal in the first few hours, uh then it goes it looks more successful than some of the other campaigns that have just launched, and it increases your chances of being put on the mailing list or being uh returned higher in the search results of new campaigns, and then that has an echo effect where when you're easier to find, more people back you. And so if you can, in the same way that in the opening weekend, if your indie movie can can outperform expectations in the first, you know, Friday night or the Saturday, you're much more likely to get a bigger and wider run in the second week. Um, so think of it like that. If you can earn a lot of money early on, you tend to get into a virtuous cycle, an echo chamber of more people increasing your popularity, which increases more people donating. Um and I would say also that there is a PR uh battle about how successful a campaign is. You know, nobody wants to back a loser, and nobody wants to back something that doesn't look like it's working. You'll you you know, you'd be you're scared of feeling foolish, and also you feel like your money couldn't help. So sometimes filmmakers also chip in a bit of money themselves when they start. So they can say it's only been 48 hours, but we're a third of the way there, that's super exciting. Thanks everybody. Um and there is a little sneaky little thing, which is not strictly against the rules, but it's definitely against the spirit of things. But I have heard of filmmakers doing, which is when you pledge to give money to a crowdfunding campaign, you don't your credit card isn't charged until the very end. And uh with Kickstarter, only if the full amount is reached. Which means that if you say I'm gonna give you a thousand dollars uh at the beginning of the campaign, it's you'll nothing happens until the end of the campaign. So filmmakers who are trying to raise, let's say, ten thousand dollars, they might chip in two thousand dollars on their own card at the very beginning, because nothing actually leaves their card, and then it looks like it's hugely successful, and then over the coming days, you can edit the amount that you've pledged. And so behind the scenes, people are edit changing it from$2,000 to you know$1,500,$1,500, and they're slowly taking back their donations. Now, as I said, I'm not recommending this, and I'm not even saying it's morally right, it's but it's not against the rules. Um, and so this can give you the illusion that things are a huge success uh whilst at the same time you know recouping the money. You just got to remember to change your bid, otherwise you'll end up donating your money to yourself and um losing the the transaction fees and the five percent for the platform keep.

SPEAKER_04 42:31

Exactly. Right. And if you have a a nonprofit, losing that fee too, absolutely. Okay this is all so exciting. Uh, but I want to just take a minute, I want you to give us your website again and let us know about more about Cat Snake. What do you do there?

SPEAKER_00 42:50

Definitely. So uh my website is stephenfollows.com. Uh and um that is my name, by the way. I I I had a strange email exchange with somebody not that long ago who kept asking me what my surname was, and I kept saying it's follows. And she said, No, no, no, your real surname. I was like, I d I don't know why I'd make this one up. Um I think it's social media and followers and things, but no, that's that's that's me. Um I'd like to think I'm more creative than this if I was gonna come up with something. Um uh anyway, so yeah, so and then CatStank, my my company, we we are a storytelling agency. So we um we work with lots of charities, uh big charities and small charities, to help them sometimes make TV adverts um and sometimes to help them understand how to communicate with the public. Um we've worked with uh all sorts of big we're doing a lot of work at the moment for UNICEF, we've worked a lot with um uh uh Amnesty, we're doing work with Compassion and World Farming, and we do lots of different charities and we try and bring a store uh filmmakers storytelling um approach to, you know, filmmakers know that stories can change the world and can inspire people, but bring that to the world of online communication um for the good guys, you know, for charities to try and encourage people to make change in the world, raise money, uh, leave money in their will. That's something we're working on a lot with at the moment. Um and so it's really rewarding work. It's really uh fun to be creative for the right people. Um which is and also it leaves me free to say whatever I want about the film industry because I'm not going to lose any gigs. Um which I think has been a real blessing. I don't tend to publish bad things or I and I try very hard not to disparage people or projects uh unnecessarily. It's not my that's not my interest. But i if I see a problem or I see nefarious business practices, I'll be the first to say it. And uh I can only do that because um I have nothing to lose and I and there are many people who in the film industry who would love to be able to do something similar but because they're wrapped up in their films they can't speak out of turn. And that's you know so I I I speak for some of those people sometimes. They'll they may tell me things that I investigate and then publish as if I found them but I was definitely tipped off a few times.

SPEAKER_04 44:58

Oh wonderful this sounds like a lot of fun for all of us. We all get the reward okay so and you're and so it's spelled S T E P H E N F O L L O W S dot com.

SPEAKER_00 45:13

That's right yeah. Okay, great. And there's a little tip actually if you put in it's go if you go into Google and you type in the word site, S-I-T-E, and then put a colon and then write stephenfollows.com and then put a space and write crowdfunding. What that will do is that will search all over my site for all the articles that involve the word crowdfunding. So you'll only get answers from my site and that might be the quickest route to have a look at the all the things I've written over the years about crowdfunding.

SPEAKER_04 45:41

Stephenfollows and then you do what?

SPEAKER_00 45:43

A backslash crowdfunding first of all you write site S-I-T-E because that's the instruction that tells Google only look at stephenfollows.com don't look at any other websites. So you put site and then a colon so the two dots and then stephenfollows.com and then whatever you write after that whatever you put a space and whatever you type it will search those keywords but only on my site and that's a sh I I I'll be honest that's how I navigate my website because I forget what I've studied. So if you put crowdfunding in there it'll bring up all the pages I've done and all the work I've done on crowdfunding that's probably easier than just clicking back over articles because I've done about 250 now. So it'll be a lot of clicking.

SPEAKER_04 46:22

Oh my gosh that's fabulous. Okay well let's follow the money here. So let's stay on that. What percentage of followers on social media turn into donors? I I know it's lower than the your database where you have an email but what percentage did you find?

SPEAKER_00 46:44

I didn't uh it's tricky because it's hard to work out exactly how many where these people came from. It's a lot lower than you think. I don't have a hard figure for everybody because it will also depend on how many people are connected to so my Facebook page my my Facebook personal page I only really connect with people who are friends of mine. Whereas my LinkedIn page I will accept anyone I am I am very um open and so that means that if I were to run a crowdfunding campaign tomorrow I would expect to have a higher conversion of people on my Facebook page because it's more filtered and considered than LinkedIn. And I think that people think well I have let's say let's say I have 500 people on Facebook. I have loads of people well if only half of them gave me a you know$10 then I've got two and a half grand. But it it doesn't really work like that because most of your posts on Facebook are not seen by most of your followers. Most you know look how quickly you squim skim past other people's posts because you're looking for the constantly playing that game looking the for the next um interesting post by somebody and even then some people might want to donate but they might be might not have any money or whatever whatever it might be. So people rely far too heavily on their social feed um and sadly it's not as it's not the same as if you had 500 people around for dinner. You know when you have them in the room you can shake the bucket but when they're online it's much easier for them to miss what you're saying either act on a uh by accident or on purpose.

SPEAKER_04 48:10

Very true. I say one percent don't it they I say it they're fickles. They're not going to give you money they love you but it's they just click you and go on by. Where those people on your database they care about you or you wouldn't have their name.

SPEAKER_00 48:30

Exactly and I think also if you give people very easy ways of um leaving the database the way you should anyway you know and unsubscribe at the end and that means that over time the people that that that that find you and stay on your database they're much more likely to actually want what you're giving and the idea is not to have the biggest ever database you could ever have. The idea is to have the kind of people that you want to hear from you and you want to talk to them. And so I think it's not about um size it's about the quality of it and and how many people will actually respond when you ask something of them.

SPEAKER_04 49:04

Exactly well what about the average donations? Can you give us any statistics on that?

SPEAKER_00 49:11

I can I'm just I'm actually if I'm honest I'm actually looking for them now. And because we I looked at uh all sorts of um things about how many people would donate to to campaigns and uh the average goal as well. So there was all sorts of things that I'm looking at I'm just trying to find it it's one of those things where on my own site I find it hard to find things. Well what I can tell you is that there was uh it differs a lot within each project. So um each uh genre so for example action films and television are asking for more money and so in some cases the amount of money that people would donate would be larger on that.

SPEAKER_03 49:46

Whereas when you're on smaller Oh Steven I think we've lost you yes it it looks like he may have uh the line may have dropped so it may take a moment for him to call and get back on the line. But in the meantime um Carol would would you like to uh oh well wait hold on just one moment it looks like he's already back with us.

SPEAKER_00 50:13

Here we go hi Stephen Hello sorry about that's okay we're talking we're asking about average donations yeah so it's it depends on it's different for each of the different uh uh campaigns and and I one of the things I found was that uh some campaigns you think well why have they got thousand you know hundreds and hundreds of dollars from a small number of people and other ones would have very very small donations from a large number of people and in that regard there isn't really an average that you can say you know even on things like Seed and Spark which had quite high donations in some months the average pledge was around$250. So that's the average so some must be a lot higher than that. And then other day other months the average across the campaigns would be$50. So that's quite a considerable difference. And so what I would say is that um the crowdfunding a film is not one thing that everyone sort of falls into the same slipstream in the way that perhaps the traditional recruitment model would be of how which windows you go to and how much you can expect. Here it's a l every project is different and you the what you need to do is research like your kind of project and see how they're performing now. You know if you're thinking of launching a campaign in a few months then spend some time on Kickstarter and have a look at what other people are doing and what's what's being successful. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:39

This is great. Yeah that's good advice.

SPEAKER_00 51:42

Now what did you find that filmmakers were doing wrong in crowdfunding can you give us um an overview of that yeah well what one of the things I wanted to measure I always whenever I try and measure something that is hard to measure I get really sort of focused and think how can I find a proxy? How can I find something that indicates uh that whether my assumption is true or false. And one of the assumptions I had was that planning makes a difference. You know uh the more you prepare your campaign and the more you do your research um the better your chance you have a success. But I didn't want that to be something I was guessing. I wanted to measure it. And I found a clever way of doing it in that I could I could have a look at when somebody launched the campaign on Kickstarter and then I could also look at when they first created their account because this is public information. So if you joined in January this year and then you um launched your campaign in July then you it's six seven months is how long you've been there. And I found a really strong connection between how long people the longer people have been on the cam um on Kickstarter registered the the higher chance you had of success. So this is evidence that the more research you do the more time you're considered about what you're trying to do the higher chance you're gonna have of succeeding. And so um I'd say the biggest single thing people don't do is prepare and research. But you know other things that people often do wrong um people expect money I think um we we don't like giving money and supporting people who feel entitled or demand money. You know we we like people who ask us and pitch to us. And we have to remember that the power is very much within the audience. In the past maybe 20 30 years ago you could argue that some filmmakers had the power over the audience but now audiences have so many different ways of watching so much different content that we as filmmakers need to pit make our pitch to them and ask them rather than tell them they should be grateful they have the opportunity to back you. And I you know we've all seen that sort of ungrateful expectation campaign and nothing turns you off faster, you know?

SPEAKER_04 53:53

Exactly exactly well in this section you have on how to crowdfund your film you tell us how to define your audience please this is so critical to expand your database share some of this yeah I mean I think the most important thing to remember is that uh as I touched on earlier on it's not about the size of your potential audience it's about how motivated they are because um you don't need like a million people to hit like or or come watch your video your crowdfunding video and say oh I like that person that if that's all they do they're no use to you.

SPEAKER_00 54:30

What you need is a small number of people that are going to get their credit card out are going to type numbers in and be committed to supporting you. And whilst they may only be giving you a few dollars um and it may only take a few seconds it takes a lot of mental effort and a lot of trust you know to to do that. And so I you have to think about motivation and you can sort of um put people into two camps your existing tribe of people the the people that you've met the people on your mailing list the people on your social media people that you're that already know you and then the potential new audiences. These are people that you don't know now but might be interested in what you're selling or what you're promoting. So I think the the the tribe that you already know they're gonna be quite reliable maybe not usually they're gonna be more reliable than the new audience. So you still might not convert as many people as you think but you're gonna have a higher success rate. So those people you might want to spend more time being a bit more personal. You know spending a bit of time to email some people that you think have the ability to donate money and might be open to it. Individually emailing those people may make sense. But when it comes to your new audiences people who've never met you it's not worth putting that much time into it. It's more worth it's worth reaching a larger audience for these new communities. And there are some really good tools that are available to everyone to sort of understand more about who your potential people could be and how how many of them there could be. So if you go into um facebook.com and you put slash ads ads um that's the you begin the process of being able to buy an advert on Facebook and anyone can buy an advert on Facebook. Now what I'm suggesting doesn't involve you spending any money or actually purchasing an advert but you go through a few of the steps because very early on it'll say who do you want to reach who do you want your adverts to reach and you can then start writing and filling in the boxes and you could say I want to reach people this age to this age men or women that speak this language or demographics. I mean there's a thousand things you can pick. And the key is there's an interests thing where you could search different interests. So if your film is about um horses then you might say okay I want to reach men and women who are 18 to 65 uh who like horses and what it will and in the in the UK or in the US or wherever you think your audience might be and it will tell you how many people roughly fall into that category. And then you're able to sort of say to yourself okay do I want to make this broader do I want to say everyone who's into animals, let alone horses or do actually because I need a motivated audience this is too broad maybe I need to make it more specific. So maybe I need to say people who are into a certain type of horse or into dressage or you know narrow it down. And what you're looking for there is to sort of to check that you're not going too narrows because you're not trying to find people who live in your street who like horses who are called frank that's too specific. But if you just say I need people then you can't really write a compelling um marketing campaign or pitch for them because you don't know enough about them. There's nothing that unifies them or not or not enough at least. So things like that will allow you to go and have a look at who uh how big your audiences might be and and you can sort of judge how specific you need them to be. And then the last thing I'd say is that you don't have to reinvent the wheel you know if there's been a crowdfunding campaign that's very similar to the one you're thinking of running and it ran six months ago, 12 months ago 24 months ago whatever it is and it was successful, I can almost guarantee you that if you reach out to the filmmaker they'll probably get back to you and talk to you in some way because we're all filmmakers we're all into the same you know the same thing. And ultimately you're not competing with them. So if you find this amazing you're trying to raise$10,000 for this short film about horses and you find this other campaign that ran six months ago$10,000 about horses similar area and creatively it's a sort of a similar sort of film if you reach out to that filmmaker and say first of all done well done for raising the money that's great you know we all support each other. But also what did you learn in the campaign and crucially you know is there can you help me give the you could give me any advice about how I could reach people or maybe even you know would you consider uh helping promote my campaign to your existing backers. They may or may not do the last one that's a big ask but if you're able to help them in some way as well maybe they have they're thinking of running another one in six months and you say okay I will pay you back that favor that might be a way that you could already find people that you know are into your topic and are willing to back things on Kickstarter. That kind of thing is not something I can say exactly it will work X percent of the time but I can guarantee you if you're willing to put the effort in to do the research and then reach out to some people you'll understand your audience a lot better and you'll reach far more people.

SPEAKER_04 59:18

Exactly oh my gosh the hour has flown by and I still have so many questions. Well I thank you first of all I just have to thank you so much for sharing all of this information and uh I hope that you'll come back on our show in the future and bring us some of your statistical analysis. That'd be fun. Anytime anytime I'd be delighted to oh thank you so much and thank you Claire great for helping us and bringing everything together we appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03 59:50

And so Stephen I want everybody to know that it's the book is called How to Crowdfund Your Film check it out on Amazon and thanks for joining us thank you so much thanks by and to our listeners I want to tell you how grateful we are for the donations you have given at From the Heartproductions dot com to support our podcast. Carol and I sincerely thank you and we'd love to hear from you with ideas or more shows. What are some topics that you would like covered who would you want interviewed and who are your who who are you interested in for films that you would like to hear some discussions on? We are always open to your feedback so just let us know and please join us next week for the Art of Film Funding podcast. Now in its second edition Carol Dean's popular book The Art of Film Funding has 12 new chapters to cover all areas of film financing and how to avoid expensive pitfalls. Learn how to start with an idea and end with a trailer how to make an ask for money create your story structure and your trailer legal advice fair use successful crowdfunding how to ask for music rights and what insurance you can't shoot without available on Amazon under Carol Dean and at FromTheheartproductions.com I want to remind our listeners that David Rakelin is a brilliant and talented award-winning musician who scores films and can compose music for a trio or for a full orchestra David is a very good friend to the independent filmmaker and comes highly recommended by From the Heart Productions. If you need music to help tell your story please contact him at davidwakeland david r-a-i-k-l-t-n dot com Carol and I want to thank you for tuning in to the Art of Film Funding please visit our website at From theheartproductions.com you can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. Good luck with your films everyone