What You Need to Know to Know About Crowfunding Your Project

Have a passion project you need to finance? A film or a web series you've been anxious to get off the ground? On Thursday, October 10th, New York Comic Con 2013 hosted a panel titled, "Crowdfunding Your Vision: How to Achieve the Results You Want " which offered great information for all you budding filmmakers and artists out there who are looking for alternative ways to help your projects come to fruition.

John Burman was kind enough to send over a few notes about the panel and tips suggested to the audience:

The topic of crowdfunding and ways to navigate the process took center stage Thursday evening. The panel opened with a 2-scene teaser of First Look of Prey: The Light in The Dark.

The panelists were a team involved in the new production company, Reinventing Films (RF), which uses crowdfunding and a singular investor to raise funds to produce high-quality short “live action treatments” they can present to studios to attract feature-film financing/distribution.

Those appearing from RF were: Nathan Reid (co-founder and CEO); Jodie Bentley (co-founder and COO/CFO) and Jason Robinette (senior director of marketing). Joining them were Tyler Mane (Halloween; Troy; X-Men); who stars in RF (and Reid-created) comic-book-inspired Prey: The Light in the Dark and Prey executive producer Michael Hemmerich, the project’s sole (traditional) investor. Vivian Mayer (associate producer, Stan Lee’s Blood Red Dragon and veteran studio entertainment marketer/publicist), moderated.

Some of the takeaways from the panel:

Be very clear on your campaign’s goal for the project.

“Our goal was to do teaser films,” Bentley noted. “To do short films as teasers to get them to a (feature) film vs. saying, “We’re doing a web series for our reels.” (Bentley and Reid are also actors). “Know your purpose or goal of the campaign – not just monetarily. Is it to feed your artistic goal or to make something and get it out there?” It’s all about accountability and building a win-win team. Bentley noted: “It doesn't have to be a go-it-alone process. Sometimes we think it is. What we urge you to do is build a team. We had 17 members on our first project crowdfunding for us. Build a team that shares in your vision for your project. You train them how to pitch for you. Give people a compelling reason to fund it. Not a command. No one wants to be commanded to do something.”

For Prey, they had team members literally on a commission structure with signed contracts holding them accountable for their funding goals, giving them different responsibilities in the film’s production (crew; producer titles; roles) depending on the dollar amounts they were going to raise.

Social media? Of course. Social media. 

Reid underscored the importance of deploying a thoughtful social media strategy and how to do it so that it’s easier for the team.

“You have to look at your project as your product. You have to put it out in different ways,” Reid said. “Give them Facebook and Twitter posts that they can use to put up multiple times a day. Use humor. One time, I threatened people with lap dances to cross a dollar figure. We crossed it in three minutes.” 

“We’re all salespeople,” he pointed out. “You’re selling people on your vision, your comic, your film. Train yourself for sales and how to do it from an authentic place. If you can talk about your passion and train others to do that – that is key.”

Look at other campaigns, participate in them, and find out what worked for them.

“Your best thing is to participate in it,” said Robinette. “If you have never participated, say, in someone else’s Kickstarter, you should. Or if you’re in one that fails, you can see why that happened. It’s good karma to help someone else with their dream and they can turn around and help you.”

It’s a business. 

“If you have a crowdfunding campaign, have a decent business person who can talk about those elements,” said Hemmerich, whose experience includes being a real estate executive, federal securities lawyer, and a dean at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

“I’m kind of a left-brain guy, so I’m a bit, ‘Show me the money.’ So if you have a solid business plan, that’s one of the things I look for. And what are some of the comparable stories similar to your film? What can you do for an even better return?”

Also critical: “Have a compelling vision and compelling personnel. And then, in terms of a large investment, it’s essential to have a compelling exit strategy for an investor. It’s more than just a poster. I’d like to get a good return on my money.”

Enthusiasm is currency of a different kind. Be prepared with your pitch. Be ready to do the hard work.

Mane and Hemmerich noted a large part of their choice to be involved in Prey had to do with Reid and Bentley’s enthusiasm and they’re preparation as they pitched the project.

“I get approached by various people on a daily basis to be in things,” said Mane, “I don’t want to put my name on a project that’s going to go down the sh**ter. There’s a lot of companies that will throw crap against the wall. If you’re looking to approach an actor or play your music, whatever – you better be excited by it and follow through.”

Added Hemmerich: “I had a phone conversation with Jodie and Nathan. Their enthusiasm was great and I thought, ‘God, I hope they’re strapped in.’ They didn't do all the talking. They let me ask questions. You want to make sure the investor asks as few questions as possible. The more they ask, the less likely they probably would invest. They had great chemistry. They weren’t reading from a script, but they were polished and very professional.”

Candice Frederick is a former editor for Essence Magazine and a NABJ Award recipient. She writes the film blog Reel Talk and serves as co-host of “Cinema in Noir”.