Crowdfunding Videos - The Documentary Network

Solar Roadways

Documentary.net staff — Tue, 27 May 2014 05:07:40 +0000

Solar Roadways is a modular paving system of solar panels that can withstand the heaviest of trucks (250,000 pounds). These Solar Road Panels can be installed on roads, parking lots, driveways, sidewalks, bike paths, playgrounds... literally any surface under the sun. They pay for themselves primarily through the generation of electricity, which can power homes and businesses connected via driveways and parking lots. A nationwide system could produce more clean renewable energy than a country uses as a whole. They have many other features as well, including: heating elements to stay snow/ice free, LEDs to make road lines and signage, and attached Cable Corridor to store and treat stormwater and provide a "home" for power and data cables. EVs will be able to charge with energy from the sun (instead of fossil fuels) from parking lots and driveways and after a roadway system is in place, mutual induction technology will allow for charging while driving.

Keys to Crowdfunding Success: Pitch, Proactive, Audience

Documentary.net staff — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 12:06:33 +0000

Get insights how to setup your crowdfunding campaign to reach your goals. Valuable tips from somebody who definately knows this business very well: Danae Ringelmann co-founded Indiegogo to democratize fundraising. She brings entertainment industry and finance expertise, and serves as an Advisor to The Conversation. The 3 keys to success 1. Great Pitch

You have to tell a compelling story. Tell the story behind the story. Not just what the project is, but who you and your team are. And also why this project should happen. Honesty, Transparency & Authenticity
Personal video: Campaigns with a video raise 114% more. People want to look in your eyes and see that you are real.
Clear Funding Target and Use of Funds
Clear Deadline: Recommend: < 40 Days, Campaings less than 40 days are more successful than 40+ days campaigns.
Have unique and exiting perks: Things people cannot buy at the "grocery store", limited in availibility. $25 is most popular perk price. 70% of campaigns reach goal with 3-8 perks.

2. Being Proactive

Prepare: Plan to raise the first 30% from people you know. You need people who put the first money in to generate a viral effect.
Use updates: Update every 1-4 days doubles your funding
Earn High Gogofactor: Take 6 actions: Have a pitch video, offer three or more perks, update every few days, post media to you gallery, link to your other pages, campaign less than two month

3. Audience that Cares

Great Pitch and Being Proactive alone will not result in a successful camgaign. You need an audience who supports you. Think about your idea twice, is there a need, market? If the campaign is not successful may be the need was not strong enough.Iit can help you redefining the idea.

Documentary about unmade “Superman Lives” by Tim Burton starring Nicolas Cage

Documentary.net staff — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 07:14:07 +0000

A documentary about the proposed 1998 "Superman Lives" feature film that would have been the most original and strangest Superman ever. The Superman Lives film was to be based on a script by Kevin Smith and directed by Tim Burton. And best of it, it would also have featured Nicolas Cage as Superman. Doesn't this sound like an weired/awesome combo? Now director Jon Schnepp started a crowdfunding campaign to find out what happend to the planned production. So if you want this documentary to be made, support him. The story behind the project: The Death of “Superman Lives”: What Happened? is a Feature Length Documentary about the unmade movie "Superman Lives". This film, out of all the various attempts to make a Superman movie between 1987 and 2006, would have stood the test of time and become a bonafide Cult Classic nowadays. I am not alone with my intense interest in knowing everything I can about this project, and so now I'm embarking on making a Documentary that will cover everything ever made for this film, from interviewing as many people as I can who were involved, to including actually recreating scenes from the script!!! I’ve been interested in this film since it was first announced back in the late 90’s. Nicolas Cage was announced as Superman, Kevin Smith was announced as the Writer, Tim Burton was announced as the Director, and fans have had very heavy opinions, both positive and negative, on all of this. As news slowly bubbled out, news buzzed around about Rainbow Robot Outfits, Brainiac Skull ships, Superman not "flying", Fighting a Giant Spider, Polar Bears guarding the Fortress of Solitude. It all sounded so crazy, so weird, so different, that I honestly was hoping that they would actually make it, just so we would have something different from what had come before. It never happened. Cut to almost 15 years later, and I really wish I could slap that “Superman Lives” disc into my player, and watch this guaranteed weird, strange, and original new take on the mythology of the Superman character. By this time, whether it was a success or failure at the box office, It would have for sure been a cult classic, due mainly to its inspired casting, and its tremendous bravery in it’s attempt to merge toy sales with the weirdness. Be sure not to miss this video. Kevin Smith talks about Superman Lives. Great...

Crowdfunding works best for Documentary Films

Hannes Kreuzer — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 09:11:18 +0000

On January 3 2013 Kickstarter reported that more than $100 million have been pledged to film projects since April 2009. This is an amazing number and shows the impact this film financing form can have on the film industry. Compared to the overall film budgets of the whole film industry the amout is of course very small but if you take a closer look at what films have been funded via crowdfunding you will be surprised. The funds of the crowdfunding people have been distributed to the following genres:

Film Subcategory	Pledged	Funded Projects
Documentary	$42.64 million	2,394
Narrative Film	$31.74 million	2,331
Short Film	$16.68 million	3,000
Webseries	$6.83 million	619
Animation	$4.87 million	223

According to this figure the genre documentary film is in leading position when it comes to financing via you - the audience. For some this is not really surprising because most documentaries have lower production costs compared to fiction films. You can make decent doc-films with a tiny crew while you need a big team for fictions films. Some other interesting facts:

People created more than 8.000 films with the $100 million (this would be one film from a major studio)
Three documentary features and two documentary shorts are currently shortlisted for Oscar nominations in 2013: The Waiting Room, Detropia, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, Inocente, and Kings Point.
Two films have been nominated for Oscars in the past two years: Sun Come Up and Incident in New Baghdad. A third, Barber of Birmingham, launched a project after being Oscar-nominated.
At least 16 Kickstarter-funded films have been picked up for national broadcast through HBO, PBS, Showtime, and other networks.
Kickstarter-funded films have won at least 21 awards at the Sundance, SXSW, Tribeca, Cannes, and Berlinale festivals.
Film stats on Kickstarter: Total pledged: $102.7 million, Total collected: $85.7 million, Total backers: 891,979, Funded projects: 8,567

So what do you think of these numbers? Is crowdfunding the future? Note 1: See the possible Oscar contenders of the Academy Awards 2013 (including the mentioned above) here: Note 2: You can submit your crowdfunding campaign to us to get more awareness. And don't forget to tweet us. via Kickstarter

CAPITAL C – A Documentary on Crowdfunding seeks Funding (plus Filmmaker Interview) UPDATE: FUNDED!

Documentary.net staff — Tue, 01 May 2012 09:28:39 +0000

What is it really about this phenomenon crowdfunding everybody is talking about recently? Who can really benefit from it and how to run a successful campaign? The best way to find out would be to dig deep into the topic and start at the beginning. Filmmaker Timon Birkhofer is doing this exact thing by making a documentary about crowdfunding with the help of crowdfunding. Not only he plans to interview really notable and experienced people but this film also profits from its own funding experience. Update: 3 days before the end of the campaign, they reached the goal of USD 80.000! Congrats! Confirmed interviewees so far: • Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia • Scott Thomas, Design Director of the Obama Campaign • Brian Fargo, creator of Wasteland 2 • Tim Renner, former CEO Universal Music Europe • Prof. David Alan Grier, President Elect IEEE Computer Society • Prof. Eric von Hippel, MIT • Zach Crain, founder and CEO of Freaker USA • and several inspiring project initiators from North America to Europe We asked filmmaker Timon some questions and will regularly update this post to see how the funding campaign and the production of the movie works out. Plus: Don't forget to support the production of the movie at Kickstarter.

You decided to ask for $80,000. This amount seems rather high for a documentary campaign; is there some strategy behind it? No doubt, $80,000 is a hell of a lot of money to ask for. But all six members of our team will put their full-time jobs as DOPs, graphic designers, producers, editors, or directors aside to fully concentrate on making CAPITAL C a reality. This means several months of research, preparation, traveling in North America and Europe for shooting, editing, postproduction, sound design, mixing, and working on rewards and fulfillment. We have been working together for years and we are fully aware of the fact that all of our living expenses will have to come out of our own pockets during the production of CAPITAL C. At the same time, we do not want any external investor or financer to gain control over the content of the film, the selection of interviewees or the kind of stories and statements that make it into the final cut. CAPITAL C will be the very first documentary about the crowd funding movement that emerged from the independent culture scene. Making this movie any other way than independently would feel inappropriate to us. What are the top 3 questions you are trying to answer with the film? This project started quite differently from all the projects we did before: In 2009, we first discovered that cool little idea of making creative projects become reality with the support of the crowd. The only question was: Would crowd funding work on a bigger scale as well? In 2012, this question has already been answered by thousands of projects, small and huge, created with the helping hand of the crowd. So we've talked with several project starters to find out whether crowd funding could possibly work for us too. And when we realized that, yes, it could indeed work for us as well as for countless other projects out there, it began to dawn on us: This was not just a cool little idea anymore. It had grown into a game changer for filmmakers like us: Imagine yourself trying to sell the idea of a documentary film about the life of independent game developers in North America. You would have a very hard time doing this. Still, James Swirsky did it and asked the crowd instead of producers to support his film. He found his crowd, made his film, and won Sundance 2012 with “Indie Game: The Movie.” Would “Indie Game” ever have been produced without crowd funding? Well, most likely not. We will talk with many independents, just like James, to learn more about their adventure of working together with the crowd. We want to understand the dynamic and motivation of the crowd, its full potential, and its limits. And, of course, we hope that CAPITAL C will help others to reach out for their crowd – as it has helped us already. But there is at least one more question that we want to explore with CAPITAL C: What's next? I mean, every business that comes into contact with crowd funding is changing fundamentally. Take a look at the game developers Tim Schafer and Brian Fargo: They had little more to offer than the idea to create a new game. And each of them raised about $3,000,000 with the help of their crowd. Imagine the creative freedom they have with a budget like this and without publishers breathing down their neck. And now imagine what that means for the future of their former publishers… For that reason, we will also talk with crowd experts like Prof. Eric von Hippel, MIT, and Prof. David Alan Grier, president-elect of the IEEE Computer Society. And we’ll interview people who've already experienced the ultimate power of the crowd, like Scott Thomas, design director of the first presidential campaign of Barack Obama, and Jimmy Wales, founder of the biggest crowd sourcing project of all time, Wikipedia. Sorry for answering that extensively, but I hope I have mentioned at least three questions that we will try to cast light on with CAPITAL C. Who should watch this film? Literally everybody. Honestly. Crowd funding is such a powerful tool for innovators and consumers that it will shape the future for all of us - for established entrepreneurs and artists who already have their own crowd backing them as well as for up-and-coming talents, who introduce their very first creations to the market. It just doesn't matter anymore where we are located or where we are coming from. The only things that count are the idea behind the project and the desire to really make this idea happen. How much time did (or do) you invest in promoting the campaign? That's a good point! Most filmmakers are working on their projects on the Q.T. We are no exception. In a perfect world, we wouldn’t promote our work before everything is in place. Now with crowd funding, we are forced to show what we have in the middle of the process. Is that a bad thing? Not at all, since it makes things better: During our crowd funding campaign, many people approached us and offered their help. Brian Fargo and Scott Thomas, both interviewees of CAPITAL C, even backed our project. Other backers told us we should give them a call whenever we are in the area and they offered us to stay at their homes during the production. What more can you ask for? In this way, the promotion becomes part of the production process. It’s difficult to say how much time is used for what - but be sure: It’s a lot. Outcomes so far? Check it out on Kickstarter. We regularly post updates there and everyone's welcome to be part of the project!

Art in the Era of the Internet

Documentary.net staff — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:23:55 +0000

The internet has intensified connections between people across the planet. This film takes a look at the impact of this new interconnectivity on the art world. Traditional funding models are dissolving, new forms of expressing ownership have arisen to accomodate for remix culture, and artists are finding ways to connect physical art experiences and traditions to the internet. In the digital era, the experience of art from the perspective of the artist and the art audience is shifting rapidly, and bringing more people into the creative process.

The Making of The Age of Stupid

Documentary.net staff — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 09:45:44 +0000

50 minute documentary following every stage of the epic five year battle to make The Age of Stupid climate blockbuster, from early funding meetings in London to kidnap close-calls in Nigeria and from filming with Pete Postlethwaite to recording the full orchestral score. This is very interesting for everybody who wants to learn something about crowdfunding. "The Age of Stupid" is always mentioned as the best case scenario for this new financing model.