Crowdfunding Indie Film Case Study : My Million Dollar Movie

Another indie feature film project to use a crowdfunding business model is Free For All But You (Working Title), also known as My Million Dollar Movie. This project is still in funding stage, but it is notable that it has so far raised $942,520 towards the goal.
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Casey Walker, the indie filmmaker behind My Million Dollar Movie, has achieved this sum by offering people the opportunity to become a “producer” for the price of just $10. The benefits to Producers include a page on the website to promote their business, blog, or show off to their friends, and, if the movie runs to profit, a return of initial investment with further proceeds going to an environmental charity of their choice. Not bad for just $10.

Part of Casey’s sell is the gimmick that a producer’s $10 purchases one frame in the movie. Each person has ownership of the frame they have bought, and this is represented on the website in a manner that promotes them or their business.

This notion was inspired by The Million Dollar Homepage: an English student came up with the idea to raise money for his university studies by allowing businesses to purchase pixels on his homepage for $1 per pixel. He was successful in raising $1,000,000 this way!

In the case of My Million Dollar Movie, the film frames will be owned by the purchasers, but licensed back to the production company for exploitation. This way the money is raised and people feel ownership of the film but without impeding commercial viability. Quite a novel notion.

What could be improved:
While it is certainly a huge achievement to have raised almost a million dollars through this method, in researching this project I couldn’t help but notice a few things that could be improved to increase funding levels, as well as grow the potential to earn a profit at the other end.

Promotion
The email contact given for media inquiries bounces! Huge no-no.

All promotion to date focuses on the novel idea of crowd funding, rather than giving information about the actual film story. There is a synopsis, but that is it. If I’d raised a chunk of money, one of the first things to do would create a teaser and promo materials that can promote the film to its audience - make people want to see the film, which increases the chances of funding the film (as The Age of Stupid filmmakers did). The next thing is to include people in the filmmaking process, but giving access to things like the screenplay and whatever you have to show them.

Online social media has been poorly used – their blog, facebook, myspace, and Youtube profiles seem pretty dead and twitter is infrequent and often uninteresting. These different media platforms and their content have not been well integrated, for example: they have a Zazzle store, but I only saw this publicised on the myspace page, not elsewhere. It really would be better to have a great presence on one social networking site rather than crap presence on several, and the website itself should also be better at consolidating all the content.

Nonetheless they do have a reasonable following of 1,500 odd people, I guess this amounts to about 1% of those who have purchased frames.

As long as a filmmaker is developing a community of crowdfunders, it makes sense to similarly use this time to build the film’s audience – people who will see the film when it comes out. However, all marketing I’ve come across has been aimed at investors, with no relevance to the film content. One of the reasons I think Age of Stupid was so successful is that they went looking for people who would be interested in their film’s subject matter. This allows them to tap into potential investors and build audience simultaneously.

Strategy
It doesn’t matter whether you want me to invest $10 or $100,000 dollars, I want to know how you plan to make the movie happen and also reap returns. There is no clear plan behind this film besides the vague “raise money” + “make movie” = “sell movie”. I’d like to see a strategy that shows that the filmmakers know what they’re doing, and I’m not funding some naive and/or undeserving hack.

Transparency
Reading the information on the My Million Dollar Movie website, including the terms and conditions, there appear to be a few contradictions in the wording of information, which confuses me about what actually happens to profits: do the investors have a choice to keep the profits or does it have to go to charity; does income from Zazzle merchandising also flow back into the investor cache or go straight to Casey? I’ve been in email contact with Casey but he hasn’t at this point given any clarification.

One obvious difference between My Million Dollar Movie and The Age of Stupid is how transparent and communicative the Age of Stupid filmmakers were. The Age of Stupid filmmakers provided investors with the budget breakdown, had obviously gained solid legal advice on what they were doing, created phases for funding so that as soon as they had the first chunk they began filming some of it, and were evidently professional in their conduct.

Further, the credentials of The Age of Stupid filmmakers were clear – they were experienced documentary filmmakers. It is not so clear about how experienced Casey Walker is, or who beyond him is involved in the making of My Million Dollar Movie.

The biggest doozy for me, is that in the t&c's it says that if principle photography hasn’t begun by 31st December 2009 (half a week away) the money will be returned to producers less Casey’s expenses. There is no word that the film plans to begin shooting any time soon, yet the website is still selling frames, and as there has been no transparency about budgets or expenses to date, who knows if money will be returned, or what system is in place to return that money.

This lack of transparency has the potential to ruin the crowdfunding business model for everyone – if trust is breached, if investors are ripped off, then asking for film crowdfunding could become likened to a Nigerian email scam. I hope for everyone’s sake that Casey Walker manages to pull this film off.

Summary
I'm not sure that Casey Walker is going to pull off actually making the movie, or - if he does make it - if the film will be any good, or - even if it is good - if it will manage to make a profit, or - if it makes a profit - if investors will see returns.

However, what is great about My Million Dollar Movie is that is shows that a virtual nobody can raise almost one million dollars online through crowdfunding. And, if we apply lessons from other indie filmmakers, we can see multiple ways to improve on this particular crowdfunding business model for increased chances of success for indie filmmakers and investors alike.

Relevant stories:
The Age of Stupid