Money to Make Your Movie

Money To Make Your Movie

One of the hardest things about making a movie is to come up with the production budget. There are a lot of ways to do this. In the new micro budget world of digital film making we given many more optipns than we were five or ten years ago. Back then you needed a studio or a few big money investors to finance a movie production. Even in the low budget world a film cost a few hundred thousand dollars to make. Most of this expense was due to the fact that they were shot and edited on film. Film costed a fortune to process while digital media does not. To make a single print of one movie and to get it into a theater ten years ago you were talking thirty or forty thousand dollars. Now iy is a digital print that can be downloaded to a digital projector for next to nothing. Give most micro budget film makers forty thousand dollars and they will be looking to make multiple movies with that amount of money.

The way that micro budget films are funded are first by the film maker saving money until he or she is ready to go into production. With a cast and a crew that are willing to differ payment then a feature can be shot for a few thousand dollars. This budget can be raised by gathering a few interested friends and getting them to invest. The most popular way of putting together a basic budget is to go directly to the customers and ask them for help. This method is called crowdfunding. It is done on the sites Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

The way it works is that you sign up with site and you post your campaign. This fund raising campaign can last from 30 to 120 days. Most film campaigns run in the 30 to 60 day range. You can start a campaign for any number of reasons. To start a production. To feed your cast and crew. To pay for post. To handle editing cost. To pay for every aspect of the process. The campaign is yours and the cool part is that after a certain amount of time you can go back and do another campaign for a different aspect of the production. Also you can run fund raising campaigns on both sites at the same time or back to back.

The campaigns offer perks. For a certain amount of money contributed you are allowed to offer things in turn. A dvd copy when the movie is done. A thank you from the cast. A mention in the final credits.

A walk on part in the movie. Above the line credits. Producer credits, associate producer and for the mega donations an executive producers credit that will get them listed at IMDB. The thing that you can not offer is profit sharing. They are not investors in the general sense. They do not get money back from you or your campaign although they are allowed to sell the perks that you offer. Such as dvds, tee shirts, signed screenplays.

Also if someone likes your campaign and wants in on being an investor in the production they can contact you personally at your website and discuss that with you. Some film makers have found business partners through their crowd funding campaigns. Like being on that show Shark Tank, you may not get what you want from the sharks, but someone out there may be watching an willing to partner up with you.

Crowdfunding has made the indie film world a more interesting place to work in. I would suggest that you visit the sites Indiegogo and Kickstarter. Find a campaign that you like and donate a few dollars. And I do mean a few dollars. Any where from a single dollar to ten dollars. Just to be part of someone else’s dream while you are chasing your own.
Kickstarter and Indiegogo can help you become the digital film maker that you want to be. Research these sites and study how successful campaigns are done.

Here is a campaign that I am interested in. I have done a recent interview with the filmmaker. If your like the trailer please take a moment to visit their Kickstarter campaign page.