Kickstarter

TED HOPE PICKS THE TRULY BRAVE THINKERS OF 2010

Perhaps my most pleasant surprise of 2009 was popping up along with 20 other folks on Ted Hope’s Truly Brave Thinkers list. It was the first list of what I hoped would be for Ted an annual tradition, and today is confirmation that it is. Visit Ted’s Truly Free Film blog for his 2010 edition, one that is even more mindful of film’s need to embrace new business paradigms and audience-development tools. You will find directors and producers mixing it up with executives from both the profit and non-profit/government-funding worlds. Indeed, the list’s swath is wide, encompassing people like Ed […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 14, 2010
TWO APPROACHES TO TRAILERING KICKSTARTER

Two worthy Kickstarter projects have uploaded new trailers illustrating opposite but effective approaches to fundraising. The first is an irreverent long take for Jocelyn Towne’s I Am I, a first-person address from the director aided by a bed full of guest stars, including Marianna Palka, Jason Ritter and producers Cora Olsen and Jen Dubin. The second is a new trailer for a project I’ve posted about before: Alix Lambert and Jill Peters’s He/She/He. Here, dialogue is withheld, and a beautiful piece of source music juxtaposed with the stunning images conveys the emotional power of the project. He/She/He is in its […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 2, 2010
Thoughts On Amazon Studios

As most of you know, I write a weekly newsletter that contains a letter that’s not usually posted on this blog. Sometimes it consists of thoughts that coalesce into an article or blog post down the line, and sometimes it consists of of-the-moment reactions to events just hitting the news. Often the newsletter poses questions that I’d like our readers to comment on. Yesterday I wrote about the newly announced Amazon Studios and solicited feedback. I hope to, in the next few days, write about the provocative new venture, which has good elements (a new financing source for independent filmmakers […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 19, 2010
“HE/SHE/HE” EXPLORES TRANSEXUALITY ON KICKSTARTER

Director Alix Lambert and producer Jill Peters have launched a fascinating new documentary project, He/She/He and are fundraising on Kickstarter. From their project description: Over the past decade, transsexuality and gender dysphoria have become hot topics, but what few Westerners realize is that in many parts of the world, a woman living as a man or a man living as a woman isn’t boundary busting – it’s tradition. A cinematic journey through the rituals of two very different cultures, He/She/He will change the way the viewer thinks about gender. Our journey begins with the sworn virgins of Albania, a group […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 21, 2010
SHERI CANDLER OFFERS CROWDFUNDING ADVICE

Marketing and publicity specialist Sheri Candler has a post up on her blog entitled “Five Ways to Fail at Crowdfunding” that is a good read for those thinking of kickstarting of gogo’ing their indie feature. She opens: I am prompted to write this post because I have been hit up many times lately about supporting, advising or donating to various crowdfunding initiatives. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t quite a complaint because I have been known to support many campaigns by doing any one of these things (ask anyone else offering their advice if they have done any of these […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 12, 2010
MOON MOLSON LAUNCHES KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN

One of my favorite short films of the last few years is Moon Molson’s Pop Foul. I loved it so much I put Moon in our “25 New Faces” list of 2007. Wrote Brandon Harris, “Short films are rarely as devastating as Pop Foul, the lyrically mounted, subtly acted debut of Columbia University’s Moon Molson. The film tells the tale of a confused young boy who struggles with his reaction to a beating his father endures at the hands of a local thug following a Little League baseball game. Pop Foul stingingly depicts the emotional violence that follows the physical […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 4, 2010
SPARROW SONGS LAUNCHES KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN

I was happy to see Adam Daniel Mezei on his new PMD for Hire blog respond to the work of the Sparrow Songs team of Alex Jablonski and Michael Totten from this year’s “25 New Faces” list. Like me, he found something special in the tone and execution of these monthly short documentary pieces. (Check out Mezei’s post for detailed musings on five of the episodes.) Now, Jablonski and Totten are launching a Kickstarter campaign to allow them to cover the expenses of the project and to shoot three particularly ambitious final episodes. Check out their work on their own […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 2, 2010
“THE BEAST PAGEANT” ON KICKSTARTER

Just because it looks kinda nuts… From an email I received: We’re making an independent film called The Beast Pageant, a surreal adventure with giant machines, exploding heads, and a tiny singing cowboy. We’re almost done and we’ve got a trailer up here. We need help getting the word out there so if you know anyone who might be interested pass it on! The Beast Pageant – Trailer from Albert Birney on Vimeo.
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 6, 2010
AMOS POE’S WHITE ALBUM

I thought I knew Amos Poe’s first film, but after reading his account of the early days of his career as well as Lower East Side film in general, it turns out that I didn’t. From his piece at Truly Free Film: My first Super 8 film, was a series of shorts made to the Beatles “White” album. I loved that record and came up with short stories or ideas for each song. My friends helped and “acted” in these films. With ”Rocky Racoon” I did single-frame animation, for “Dear Prudence”, I managed to convince the most beautiful girl in […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 11, 2010
STRATEGIZING YOUR CROWDSOURCING CAMPAIGN

I discovered a couple of excellent posts at the Coffee and Celluloid blog that will help you if you are contemplating or in the process of a crowdsourced funding campaign through a site like Kickstarter or Indiegogo. Written by Joey Daoud, the posts chronicle his experience researching and enacting a campaign to raise $9,000 for his documentary on high-school combat robots, Bots High. The campaign was successful — he raised $9,100 — but, as always, the devil is in the details. In the first post, “How to Figure the True Cost of a Kickstarter Project,” he breaks down not only […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 23, 2010

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