Charlie Kaufman does Kickstarter

Here's the problem. And I've held this ever since Louie CK did his first experiment. But the thing is, you NEED to already be Kaufman or Louie Ck in order to pull something like this off. Because there is literally no way to make an indie widely profitable, on the level that kickstarter let's you fund it.

What I mean is that, kickstarter has made it soooo frickin simple to get something funded, from people all around the globe. But there is no way to release it once it's done and actually make enough money to make it profitable to be able to make another one. Because unless you have a fanbase that will go "Holy Shit it's Kaufman (or Louie CK) doing a thing, I'm going to go buy that.". NO ONE on the face of the planet, no matter how well you try to market yourself, is going to go "Holy Shit Chris Walker is doing a thing!" Because who the fuck is Chris Walker? Never heard of him.

Once we can have something to overcome that. Then we can start talking about it being a threat. But for now it's a closed loop system of people getting funded, making thier project, and having to get funded again...and the loop continues. With a few outliers.

Anyways. The film looks like it could be awesome, and I'm a big fan of Kaufman and of stop-mo so this should be interesting.

Last edited by BigDamnArtist (2012-07-13 06:25:19)

This is already happening, which is awesome. And I think it will probably keep happening, which could be awesome. The issue is:

A lot longer than it should, maybe even too long to catch the wave. The thing is, we already have a plethora of ways to distribute (Youtube, vimeo, etc etc). But none of those ways provide a way to market or make money off of your project.

An example: Most major movies these days will get marketing everywhere on the web (I'm gonna stick to the web here, but you can imagine how it would apply to TV/radio other formats) there are banner ads on every site you go to, youtube trailers in front of videos. People KNOW that this fucking thing is coming out. And the films budget shows that price (What is it, a movie's budget is actually a third marketing or something like that).

But an indie kickstarter funded thing just can't do that. So unless you're Louis CK or Kaufman, and can get that kind of marketing just because you're doing a thing, no one is going to know that you're thing exists. Obviously there are a few steps you can take, but nothing even remotely on the level of people of would need to reach in order to make it profitable.

So really the only way i can see this becoming a thing is:

1) We need someone, somewhere to figure out how to and then actually set up a system to market a movie at a high level and to wide audience, and then to do it, EXTREMELY CHEAPLY, and that's the key part.

2) We need a place where movies can be hosted, in high quality, in either a pay to watch format (You know 3 bucks to watch the movie) or some sort of netflix style with ads. (I'm not even remotely experienced with establishing or running this kind of operation, so there may be more options, but this is what I got.)

3) All of this would need to be cheap enough and reliable enough to be run off a kickstarter budget, and produce enough enough FOR THE ARTISTS that they can become self suffiecient enough to not have to rely entirely on kick starter or other funding sources.

So, I think it COULD happen, but it's going to take some serious genius behind it to make a viable option for true indie stuff. And I think that by the time it becomes a viable option it'll have missed the wave of support.

EDIT: On further thought. It could work to just have step one, and then have the artists sell the film on their own. But that could get extremely hectic and be a huge headache for the artists. But the key factor is still getting enough people interested in your thing.

Last edited by BigDamnArtist (2012-07-13 08:50:18)

That's one way to do it. But I still think you would run into the issue of getting people to bother with it. What I mean is that, I'm sure there would be a small niche that would love spending hours digging through pages of movies to find something that interested them, and who wouldn't mind paying the fee to try something out.

But then you have the rest of the world that doesn't actually seek out new media in that fashion. The people that have no idea whats playing except for the trailers they've seen blasted in their face. And from my experience that's the vast percentage of the population. So, while the distribution method might work (And it would actually be nice if it could piggy back on something like steam that already has a wide dedicated fan base that might dig something like that.) you still hit the wall of actually telling enough people about your movie, and getting them interested enough to seek it out.

Probably, like I said, I could be entirely wrong. But I don't know how to get past that wall. I really wish I did, but I don't.

Well yeah. It definitely has issues, but I was just outlining what I think would need to happen in order to turn a kickstarter workflow into something that could be financially viable.

The equating of cost with value is largely the result of marketing. Big-budget productions have big budgets for marketing, often in the neighborhood of tens of millions of dollars. It makes no sense spending $25 million to market a $2 million film, so such films (and games as well) always rely more on word of mouth.

But make no mistake. Word of mouth is *extremely* effective. Portal was one part of an inexpensive set of games. Angry Birds and Bejeweled cost much less than Medal of Honor and had little marketing. My Big Fat Greek Wedding and The Full Monty became phenomena with very little advertising.

The person who wants to pirate a big-name game instead of buying (or getting for free) a small-name game is doing so because the big-name game's marketing was very effective. But word of mouth can make anything into a big name.

I guess what I'm saying is that the DiF panel needs to do a striptease and throw birds and jewels thru wormholes, and we all need to tell everyone we know.

I think we're missing something critical. Kickstarter and its ilk could potentially bring a lot of new talent to the field, who would otherwise not be financially able to dedicate a year to a project.

It's easy to damn because we can't see a way around an obstacle, but the point is this is now a thing. This is working; people are contributing significant money to projects they believe in, and it's only a matter of time until entities (Amazon studios anyone?) step up to make some money distributing other peoples work.

Yeah, that kinda came out wrong. What I meant is that you need to have some sort of already established fan base in order to be able to pull off "Everyone will watch my thing, because I'm making a thing. (Regardless of what they actually know about that thing.)" eg: All I have to say is Charlie Kaufman and kickstarter and half this forum will be there no matter what. I can't do that with, say, a project I'm doing; because no one gives a flying fuck about what I'm doing, I have to make people interested in the project itself before people will watch it. (Using myself as the example cause it's easier, just replace me with whatever nobody indie filmmaker is trying to do a thing.)

I absolutely agree (I mean that's at least a partial reason for me doing my LP series). But that's not what I was talking about. Or at least not the circumstances of what I was talking about. Dave asked if this type of thing posed any real threat to traditional forms of funding or the studios. And basically my point was that, until people don't have to already be famous before going to kickstarter in order to be able to actually make a profit on their thing right out of the gate, then no it's not.

People can make shit all day long (And they should), and they can lose money on those films all day long (Which sucks, but is basically the way it is right now). So until it's possible for people to market and turn a profit on their films, there is absolutely no threat to any established system; because right now it isn't a system, it's a flow, of cash moving from kickstarter investors into films.

EDIT: Just reread your post, I think lines are being crossed here. Let me clarify:

I'm not talking about the campaign itself,because I have plenty of friends who have successfully funded their campaigns despite being a relative nobody, and there are obviously a lot of things being funded for people that aren't Louis or Kaufman. What I'm talking about is afterwards, once it's done and released and they are selling it.

I mean take for example Louis CK's experiments, he sold his DVD for whatever you wanted to pay. Which is awesome, but the only reason he got so much free press and so many people flocking to it, is because he's fricking Louis CK, of course people are going to flock to whatever he's doing and give him money. but any Joe Schmoe comedian that tried the same thing would probably fail, because 1) Nobody would give a shit, because who cares about what some nobody is doing. 2) They don't have that established fan base that is going to flock to them and buy their stuff in bulk. And so while it's great that Louis CK can make a billion dollars or whatever doing his little experiment, no one else could (Or at least very few people).

Now just extrapolate that onto kickstarter. When Tippet finishes his film you know there are going to people lining up around the block because "Holy crap are you kidding me? Tippet made an indie film on kickstarter money?! I gotta see that!" Versus, me having to actually try and make people interested enough in my thing to bother spending a couple bucks on it and actually watch it (See my previous posts on why that doesn't work nearly well enough for it to be worthwhile from a business sense). One is financially viable, the other isn't.

And that's what it all comes down too, because it's great that you can get something funded and make it, but you're still going to have to work a day job to pay the bills. Until the whole kickstarter thing can become a self sustaining system and people can actually do that as their JOBS and not a hobby, it's not going to be a threat to anyone.

Last edited by BigDamnArtist (2012-07-19 17:50:52)