Moving past the "No"

[Fdprod]

So, in no effort to see defeated, it's looking like we are not going to reach our fundraising goal on Kickstarter for my first feature film. What do you guys do when you have to bounce back from a failed project to follow your dream?

Or, can you help suggest better ways of getting this funded? We have not been able to even schedule a meeting with "interested investors" and we have tons of positive feedback on the short film we created from the opening 10 minutes of the script. Any ideas?

If you are curious about the movie, you can visit www.Hunter-TheFilm.com. But I would really love to hear advice. Thanks!

 

[Zensteve]

We have not been able to even schedule a meeting with "interested investors" and we have tons of positive feedback on the short film we created

Where have you been getting the positive feedback from? It doesn't matter how great it is, if it's coming from the audience with no money.

Btw, I watched both your campaign pitch and the short. Your short contains quite a few examples of what you rail against in your pitch. CGI, unoriginal rehashes, etc. Maybe your product is not matching your pitch?

Really dug that head-through-window shot, as post as it was. Came out well. I did like that.

Good luck!

 

[Lucky Hardwood]

Keep in mind that most people on KickStarter seem to wait until near the end to pledge. You still have 25 days left.

 

[Fdprod]

Where have you been getting the positive feedback from? It doesn't matter how great it is, if it's coming from the audience with no money.

Btw, I watched both your campaign pitch and the short. Your short contains quite a few examples of what you rail against in your pitch. CGI, unoriginal rehashes, etc. Maybe your product is not matching your pitch?

Really dug that head-through-window shot, as post as it was. Came out well. I did like that.

Good luck!

We've gotten positive feed back from the film festival where we were nominated for Best Short and Best Editing by working actor's/C-Grade celebrities, Just recently got positive feedback from the host of Film Riot, a few on here in the Screener section, and just about anyone who has watched the short. The biggest compliment has been how great of an homage to the classics that I mentioned it was. It has the classic elements of slashers we grew up with, without telling the exact same story. If fact, the opener is the most cliche of the entire movie, but I do understand what you are saying and you are, in fact, the first to even point that out, haha. Thank you.

The knife was a composite, real elements shot on set assembled in post, and wasn't a full CGI, digital shot. That compared to the overly digital Freddy coming out of the wall in the remake is what I was getting at.

I'm glad you liked the window shot, which was really the only big cgi element in the whole piece outside of compositing live action elements. As I said, I really do get loads of compliments, but my goal is to make a quick and dirty slasher flick that we can sell for my first directed feature film, to branch that career. We decided to do the kickstarter because even though we are getting the feedback from the people who either actually scheduled investor meetings then bailed, or never called back after contacting us originally, or said "I want to see a short first" then never responded to even see it, we figured we are never going to make names for ourselves unless we make those names ourselves. So this is our absolute best option at the moment.

 

[Fdprod]

Keep in mind that most people on KickStarter seem to wait until near the end to pledge. You still have 25 days left.

See, that goes against the research I've been doing for the past few months. They say we should get the bulk in the first week to know if we will be successful. It would make sense to get the bulk towards the end, but what is quite scary is we are not even at 1%, and according to the KickTraq system, we are projected to only receive 1% total for the whole campaign. I don't want to wait to the last day before looking into any other options, so that's what sparked the inquiry on here.

I do have hope, the numbers just aren't adding up, which makes me cautious.

 

[Fdprod]

Where have you been getting the positive feedback from? It doesn't matter how great it is, if it's coming from the audience with no money.....

I do need that audience with the money, though. If you have any ideas to getting my product to that audience, please let me know! I'd really love to finish this film and direct the next, and so on.

 

[ItDonnedOnMe]

Campaigns usually get funded with a big rush up front, due to the initial launch attention, a long dip in the middle, and a big rush at the end when people actually feel the urgency of the campaign ending. Unfortunately it doesn't look like you ever got any initial launch bump, and realistically I'd assume at this point you aren't going to hit your goal.

It seems to me like maybe you didn't really prepare for the campaign very well - what did you do to prepare for the launch, and how did you launch the campaign? Where and how have you been promoting it since then? Crowdfunding success is generally a measure of how good you are at promotion, not necessarily the absolute quality of your project. Since this first campaign doesn't even seem to have really started maybe you should plan a new one, but this time do a lot of prep and planning beforehand on how you're going to reach the people you need to fund it. Your problem right now isn't 'Moving past the "no"' - there is no 'no' if nobody ever heard the question.

You need $25,000. Typically most contributions will be in the $25-50 range, lets call it $40 per donor average. That means you need over 600 donors. To get 600 donors you'll need to get your campaign in front of 10-100x that many people - leaning more towards the 100x end of the spectrum unless you already have a dedicated following. So what are you going to do to get your campaign in front of 60,000 potential donors?

 

[Lucky Hardwood]

You know that I'm rooting for you guys. I'm working on a documentary that, if made, will be funded by corporate sponsorship. I don't imagine that's much help to you though. If my feature gets made, it will be a seven figure budget paid for by investors or a studio. The only reason that I may have those options is because of people that I know and, more importantly, people that they know. Again, not much help to you unless you also know people who know people. Do you have a significant following on YouTube? Also, in reference to your promotional giveaways, have you factored in the cost of delivering those to the donors? If so, what would your net take from the KS campaign actually be?

 

[AudioPostExpert]

As I said, I really do get loads of compliments, but my goal is to make a quick and dirty slasher flick that we can sell for my first directed feature film, to branch that career.

I can see why you've had a lot of compliments, your short is in a different class to the vast majority of others and you're obviously a very accomplished amateur filmmaker. While your short is good, there are still a number of small weaknesses which add up to stop it from being any better than good. Effectively you are competing in a pool of (for example) hundreds or thousands of good shorts in this genre, rather than in a pool of tens of thousands, which is a great achievement but still maybe not enough to attract real investment. In other words, "good" is no longer good enough! In today's market, particularly in such a saturated genre with it's limited target audience, you need to really stick out from the crowd of other good shorts. Once you achieve that elevated level, the all important marketing will have more effect.

Just my 0.02 cents, G

 

[Sweetie]

Originally Posted by Fdprod View Post
We have not been able to even schedule a meeting with "interested investors" and we have tons of positive feedback on the short film we created

Where have you been getting the positive feedback from? It doesn't matter how great it is, if it's coming from the audience with no money.

While it isn't my cup of tea, it looks decent for what it is. It seems paced a little slower than I would have expected, but that could just be your style/genre.

Whether they'll donate, the real question to ask people seems to be "Would you pay to see a sequel movie?" as opposed to asking people if they like it. The first question is more whether they'd commit to spending money on you where the other can have a lot of people just being polite. Though, unless you're doing a test screening (usually for a movie), you're unlikely to be able to ask that question.

Film finance is hard work and there are a lot of pieces to the puzzle. It's much more fun on set turning the vision into reality.