Outline For Research Paper

Over the past few months, I have been researching the importance of crowd funding on independent films and media specific projects. While I learned that crowd funding, specifically Kickstarter and Fundanything.com sites are relatively new in the publics eye, the theory behind them has been around for decades.

                                                            Table Of Contents:


1. What is crowdfunding?

An indepth description of how crowdfunding works; the basic theory of pledging and rewards. I will also describe the types of crowdfunding websites available. While they may seem alike, most of the popular crowdfunding sites have specific rules that must be followed, which make them ideal for specific projects.

2. How crowdfunding has changed the entertainment business

       While the majority of films produced still receive funding from major film   companies, a small collection of independent films are being funded publicly on crowdfunding websites. I will examine the benefits of crowdfunding as well as why major companies generally pass on the films.

3. The Risks

I will examine both sides of the crowdfunding venture, the investor as well as the project creator and exploit the various risks and rewards. In this section I will also explain how a well planned campaign can benefit both sides, investor as well as producer.

4. The Process

When creating a crowdfunding campaign, there are many avenues to take depending on the project. I will examine in depth the various resources available to me when I created my personal campaign. I will examine other campaigns that were successful and compare them to my own, explaining how my project could have been done differently and received better results.

5. Conclusion

In this section I will wrap it all up, explaining again how important crowdfunding is for the entertainment industry and will give any final thoughts.

Archaeologically digging for funds

Since starting my Kickstarter campaign to help fund a re make of the student film I made, I have realized that sourcing funding, even from pals on social media is quite difficult. I am sure our economy has some to do with it, I mean the film wasn't that horrible, or was it? Either way, I wanted to look back at some of the more traditional means of funding so off to EBSCOhost I went.

 One of the articles that I found quite interesting was from the December 2010 issue of Art Monthly Magazine. The article titled, Filming The Alternative, by Sophia Phoca, tells of several independant artist filmmakers who had to resort to a more traditional funding resource for their projects. Long before crowd funding, most films were produced by private backers who secured the funding in exchange for royalties, which basically secured the monies with the final project as collateral.

 In the article, the author writes about Carol Morley, a filmmaker from the 1990's, who sourced funds from outside of the U.S for her latest film. "Carol Morley, who emerged in the 1990s, directed the autobiographical experimental documentary The Alcohol Years, 2000, but had to turn to UK private funding to make her recent film Edge, 2010. Her producer Cairo Cannon says: ‘The future is uncertain, it always is, but it’s vital to look at all the avenues that can secure funds for a project. Private finance is probably a key component to how artists’ films will get made in the future, and it’s worth looking at local businesses and business people to help secure money and support.’ Giannaris strikes a more cautionary note and warns this approach inevitably leads to less risky work being funded. ‘The problem with the private funding route is that mainly commercial films will be made and there will be no money for films with low box office returns’, and points to the US as a precedent." What this passage is describing is how indie filmmakers need to think outside the box when securing funds for projects. The majority of commercial films are funded privately because the reward is much greater than the risk of an indie film. This is why crowd funding has become such a relevant resource. While there are risks, they are quite minimal because the entire cost is spread out over several investors. 

Digital Ethics

 While working on a film, there are several times when you must question yourself on ethics. For me, on my particular project for this summer, I worked with children while shooting a horror film. I for one, felt that many aspects of the film suffered because ethically I did not want to subject the children actors to gruesome or scenes that could be scary for them to watch. I watered the project down. While I feel that the project suffered because of this, morally I know I made the right decision. In the future while working on projects of this nature, I will be certain to cast according to knot only what the script calls for but also what concepts in editing I may have.

 There are also ethical issues when dealing with sound design and the soundtrack for film. While I have a pretty vast collection of foley sounds that I have collected over the years from working on projects as well as from my recording and producing music days, on occasion I may have to source sounds elsewhere. There are several royalty free sound resources available such as freesound.org, which allow download of user submitted foley for projects under various licenses. With soundtrack selection, there will always be the perfect song for the closing credits that is totally un useable do to copyrights and publishing rights. Sure you can pay publishing to source the song, however it may not be feasible depending on budgets and the overall purpose of the project. So this is where the sacrifice comes in, and another selection is made. There are many very talented up and coming composers and musicians that are looking to be included in projects for the exposure. A great resource for this is actually Youtube, where you can contact the artists direct and initialize communication and create agreements etc.