Alright, so we all know that independent features when they are completed, have a big movie premiere on the big screen where the entire cast and crew come out. The going rate is usually $10 a ticket. You go out and watch the movie, meet the cast and crew, and usually do a Q&A afterwards. Based on my numbers, if you book a large theater that seats around 1,000 people, you can do your split like this...
700 tickets x $10 = $7,000
300 tickets (reserved for cast, crew, press)
Then you can put something up on Kickstarter/IndieGoGo and pre-sell the tickets and if you can find 700 people in your entire city, to pre-order a ticket to your screening, mixed with additional supporters, you should be able to easily hit your $10k goal and shoot most independent feature films.
I have a cast/crew size of around 30 so if all of them got just 10 of their friends, family members, past co-workers to pre-order a ticket to see a movie they are a part of, that would be 300 tickets. I've learned that this is how plays did it back in the old days. They purposely created these plays with really large casts because they knew they could pack a theater on opening night if their cast was large enough. I told my entire cast/crew to all try to get 10 people and once those 10 say they'll go, encourage them to bring just 1 person with them because nobody likes to go to a movie by them self (except filmmakers cause we see too many movies). So that could easily put us up to 600 and really close to actually pulling it off if everyone did their part. And then that's not even counting social networks, people not in the movie wanting to go that could exceed the goal. That's just for the initial push so people believe it will actually happen.
I believe that this model could ultimately lead to a surge in independent films being made if it can be proven to work. My theory is people HATE being asked to donate for money but they LOVE being invited to a movie premiere. And many people will actually get angry at you if you don't invite them to your movie premiere. I'm personally one of them. Even if I don't go, I still like to be invited. It makes me feel special. The same way when someone invites me to their birthday party or wedding. I may not go but it feels nice to know they want to see me there at their big event.
So, I'm giving it a try and I hope you guys follow my progress, I launched yesterday afternoon! Please give me feedback suggestions, maybe help me promote it if you have any connections to bloggers/filmmaker publications, or if it's something you'd watch, feel free to show your support if you like....
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/59092787/paul-and-the-hooker-feature-length-romantic-comedy
If people respond with interest to this post, I'll come back and keep you all updated and answer questions. I'm just a struggling filmmaker like many of you trying to get my movies made. So anything I can do to help, I will. If I ever actually get this movie made, I'll come back on here and create a big thread on it with lots of tips for everyone. I really believe this could be my breakout film that puts me on the map. I got scripts ready to go after this as well to keep making some big exciting things happen. We shall see friends!
My theory is also that there is around $212 million dollars that have flowed through kickstarter, and if I can hit the initial $10k as quickly as possible, the kickstarter crowd may come in and push me over the amount to get the celebrity cameos I have that are interested in this project. But maybe that is wishful thinking, so I'm also going to be looking for sponsors in the meantime to maybe help close that gap.
Some of you are probably thinking, there is no way it could work because people aren't going to reserve a ticket to an event when the date hasn't even been announced yet. And that is the biggest obstacle really. So I've packaged every ticket with a digital download of the movie, soundtrack, making of ebook, digital download of the poster and a public thanks on the facebook fanpage..all for $10. That way even if they somehow can't make the screening with a 1 month notice, they'll own a digital download of it to see it no matter what. I figure if at that point they still don't want to reserve a ticket and I don't hit my goal, I'll go shoot another feature and come back to this later.
You can't give up, got to keep pushing and try new things. I see that some on Kickstarter/IndieGoGo don't even give a digital download until like $25 dollars or something. Or do their premiere tickets at like $50, it's just insane I think to charge so much more than the normal going rate. But what do I know, I'm still trying to figure all this out.
I hope you're all having a great weekend so far.
-AA
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3016534
700 tickets x $10 = $7,000
300 tickets (reserved for cast, crew, press)
Then you can put something up on Kickstarter/IndieGoGo and pre-sell the tickets and if you can find 700 people in your entire city, to pre-order a ticket to your screening, mixed with additional supporters, you should be able to easily hit your $10k goal and shoot most independent feature films.
I have a cast/crew size of around 30 so if all of them got just 10 of their friends, family members, past co-workers to pre-order a ticket to see a movie they are a part of, that would be 300 tickets. I've learned that this is how plays did it back in the old days. They purposely created these plays with really large casts because they knew they could pack a theater on opening night if their cast was large enough. I told my entire cast/crew to all try to get 10 people and once those 10 say they'll go, encourage them to bring just 1 person with them because nobody likes to go to a movie by them self (except filmmakers cause we see too many movies). So that could easily put us up to 600 and really close to actually pulling it off if everyone did their part. And then that's not even counting social networks, people not in the movie wanting to go that could exceed the goal. That's just for the initial push so people believe it will actually happen.
I believe that this model could ultimately lead to a surge in independent films being made if it can be proven to work. My theory is people HATE being asked to donate for money but they LOVE being invited to a movie premiere. And many people will actually get angry at you if you don't invite them to your movie premiere. I'm personally one of them. Even if I don't go, I still like to be invited. It makes me feel special. The same way when someone invites me to their birthday party or wedding. I may not go but it feels nice to know they want to see me there at their big event.
So, I'm giving it a try and I hope you guys follow my progress, I launched yesterday afternoon! Please give me feedback suggestions, maybe help me promote it if you have any connections to bloggers/filmmaker publications, or if it's something you'd watch, feel free to show your support if you like....
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/59092787/paul-and-the-hooker-feature-length-romantic-comedy
If people respond with interest to this post, I'll come back and keep you all updated and answer questions. I'm just a struggling filmmaker like many of you trying to get my movies made. So anything I can do to help, I will. If I ever actually get this movie made, I'll come back on here and create a big thread on it with lots of tips for everyone. I really believe this could be my breakout film that puts me on the map. I got scripts ready to go after this as well to keep making some big exciting things happen. We shall see friends!
My theory is also that there is around $212 million dollars that have flowed through kickstarter, and if I can hit the initial $10k as quickly as possible, the kickstarter crowd may come in and push me over the amount to get the celebrity cameos I have that are interested in this project. But maybe that is wishful thinking, so I'm also going to be looking for sponsors in the meantime to maybe help close that gap.
Some of you are probably thinking, there is no way it could work because people aren't going to reserve a ticket to an event when the date hasn't even been announced yet. And that is the biggest obstacle really. So I've packaged every ticket with a digital download of the movie, soundtrack, making of ebook, digital download of the poster and a public thanks on the facebook fanpage..all for $10. That way even if they somehow can't make the screening with a 1 month notice, they'll own a digital download of it to see it no matter what. I figure if at that point they still don't want to reserve a ticket and I don't hit my goal, I'll go shoot another feature and come back to this later.
You can't give up, got to keep pushing and try new things. I see that some on Kickstarter/IndieGoGo don't even give a digital download until like $25 dollars or something. Or do their premiere tickets at like $50, it's just insane I think to charge so much more than the normal going rate. But what do I know, I'm still trying to figure all this out.
I hope you're all having a great weekend so far.
-AA
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3016534
Last edited: