Note From Tongal: "I Used Kickstarter to Fund My Feature Film, and You Can Too!” is part of a series of Tongal Community-written blog posts that were originally sourced in the In Your Own Words Tongal Blog Project. Read more Tongal Community-written posts here and stay tuned for more opportunities to Pitch a topic and write for the Tongal Blog!
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Later this year, we will be finishing up our first feature film titled Boy Band. It’s the story of a Boy Band who got old and fat, and yes, it’s a brilliant piece of art.
But BEFORE we dealt with the casting and filming and post-production and ABUNDANT product placement, we had to deal with the meat and potatoes of getting a movie made: raising money. And while we always thought about going the Kickstarter route, it just seemed that the movie we wanted to make and the amount we thought we could raise on Kickstarter were fundamentally incompatible.
Now, we had read a lot about what makes a Kickstarter campaign tick, and how to make them successful, and tons of advice from people who had failed or succeeded. One piece of advice that kept coming up was, “Figure out how much you need to make the project, and make sure you’re asking for at least that much - and then a little more to cover fees and the giveaways you’ll be offering.”
But I’m here to offer you what I think might be a better way. Or at least, the way we did things - and every human being thinks whatever way they’ve done something is the best way to do something (I LEARNED THIS ON HIDDEN BRAIN! GREAT PODCAST! Go subscribe... I’ll wait...)
Because it worked for us, and I hadn’t heard anyone else talk about it, I thought I’d tell the world.
First of all, we went out to investors. This has been happening for generations, but it’s worth mentioning - if you want to make a movie that is slightly more involved than 6 sexy co-eds in a house being slashed to bits by zombies, you might need more money to make your movie and make it right. And investors are a great place to get that money...because they have money...to invest. Obviously.
But after we had raised enough money from investors to create what we thought was the base level of quality for our movie, we turned to Kickstarter to get a little MORE.
That means the following awesome things:
1) Our movie was not dependent on us successfully completing our Kickstarter campaign.
2) We were able to choose an amount that we thought was something we could raise, not what we NEEDED. We picked a number that we thought would be absolutely helpful to our movie, and absolutely possible for us to get - because the idea of raising 90% and leaving the rest on the table was mind-bogglingly scary.
3) Every cent we got from the campaign was able to go to some extra stuff for the movie we weren’t otherwise going to be able to get.
4) WE ALREADY HAD THE MONEY WE NEEDED IN HAND - so when the Kickstarter came through, and finished, and was successfully funded - we were able to start posting pictures of our project in production within WEEKS.
You should donate to other campaigns - at least a dozen - before you try to do one for yourself, so you can see what works, what doesn’t, what’s awesome, and what sucks. I've found when they meet their goals, and you wait months or even a year or more to see any results from the campaign, it’s terribly uninspiring.
And of course, we finished our campaign a year ago - a movie takes a long ass time to make, so of COURSE there’s going to be a delay before people get what they were hoping for - but at least you can minimize that by being ready to go right out of the gate, the second the campaign ends. You can streamline the process and go from the schnorring for cash into the blowing of that cash in RECORD TIME!!!
BUT... you probably don’t give a damn about that useful advice. You want a list of ten things you can do when it comes to the actual campaign itself, ok fine. Here are 19 things we found useful.
The Levinson Brothers Kickstarter Dos and Don’ts
1) Prep big donors. Go to people who can give at a higher level, tell them before the campaign starts, ask them to confirm an actual dollar amount they’ll give on day one, follow up with them the moment things go live.
2) Don’t share links before you’ve tested them. We’ve seen a ton of people share what turned out to be useless links in their first email only to write back ten minutes later and say “WAIT! USE THIS LINK INSTEAD!” Terrible waste of momentum.
3) Make a video that’s entertaining, and heartfelt, but most importantly that fits the tone of the movie you’re making. If you’re making a romantic comedy, prove you can do romantic comedy by incorporating a similar sensibility into your appeal video.
4) Make an appeal video. If you don’t, and you ask for people’s money, you’re an asshole.
5) Build out a team. It can be exhausting to try to get press and have conversations and respond to emails and post on Facebook all by yourself - make sure that you’ve got at least 2 other people who are ready to contribute their time and energy to your campaign.
6) Have fun shit ready to share. We made some infographics like “What’s the tallest boy band ever” and “great things to come out of Dayton, Ohio” with people on Fiverr for five bucks here and five bucks there - so that we had things that were entertaining for people to share and were more engaging than just begging for money every day for 30 days.
7) Facebook Live didn’t exist back when we were campaigning, but I’d use that for the countdown to the start of the campaign, and the countdown to the end of it. Live parties have been suggested - those are great if you’re super regional. If you’re asking people from all over the country for money, a live video feed is a good way to go.
8) Be adorable. If you’re not adorable, find someone who is to put on camera. The internet likes cute things and pretty people. Or, failing that, be funny. Or failing that, stick some cats in there. This is not a joke. If you’re a 55 year old with a goiter making your first film, and you want to ask the internet for money, figure out someone else to be the face of your project. The internet is not nice.
9) Schedule tweets, Facebook posts, and Instagram posts in advance - there are apps that do that stuff. Google it. They change every 6 months because they get bought out by other apps that do that.
10) Don’t be annoying. I’m not going into depth here, you’ll figure it out when you support 12 other campaigns (SEE ABOVE) and experience firsthand who’s annoying and who’s not.
11) The vast majority of your money is made in the first three days and the last 3 days. Don’t worry when not much happens in the middle - keep things going, but save some good shareable materials for your final sprint.
12) Use it as an opportunity for press coverage - even if you don’t actually get press coverage. We reached out to every single person we knew or could reach in the press world to pitch our story. We only got local Dayton, Ohio coverage during the campaign, but the groundwork we laid while DOING the outreach, led to us getting written about in Newsweek when the movie was actually filming.
13) Pick a marketing angle that’s unique and appealing to people you can reach. You should also have this for your movie in general because otherwise no one will ever watch it and if you are making movies for no one to watch then make them on your own damn time and stop asking the rest of us for money for them.
That’s it, a ton of good advice, and some obnoxious advice. Have you got other suggestions? If you’ve run a successful campaign, add your advice below! And if you’ve got a campaign you’re about to launch, make sure to include the link so the rest of us can see it and judge you (and maybe give you some COLD HARD CASH!!!)
Good luck!
(PS - I never talked about why Kickstarter vs IndieGogo or others. You do what you want, I wanted to go with the platform that was easiest to use to get the most possible money from old relatives who get confused by websites. Kickstarter ticked that box for me.)
