Crowdsourcing Indie Film : Fandom Experience Case Study

Fandom is an interesting indie film project that is using crowdsourcing to build and interact with an audience from pre-production stage onwards. The film itself is already privately financed, but what they are selling is a paid membership “experience” that allows intimate real-time access to the filmmaking process, from script development and location selection to casting and post production, with opportunity to vote, interact with the filmmakers, contribute, and potentially even have a walk on role.

It’s actually really great value: for $19.95 members will get a copy of the dvd (with extras) and comic, in addition to the year of online interactive content. While it is marketed as selling a membership, you could also look at this as a great “pre-sale” strategy that encourages uptake because of allowing customers to interact with the filmmaking process all along the way.

Eric and James from Fandom have written a detailed description of the difference between crowdsourcing and crowdfunding on their Fandom facebook page. In a nutshell, crowdfunding (such as used by The Age of Stupid and My Million Dollar Movie) puts out an open call for financial support to make the movie while crowdsourcing puts out an open call for collaboration. In the case of Fandom, the film is already funded, but they are using a hybrid model (that they call experiential entertainment) that allows revenue to be gained by selling the collaborative experience.

“We are aiming to use crowdsourcing (note: vastly different from crowdfunding) to create a fully interactive feature film. We are going to make the production as transparent as possible, so the audience can see every minute detail of the filmmaking process. Members will be able to interact directly with the film crew, creating an open environment.”

From a members perspective the benefit of this over crowdfunding is the higher level of involvement in the film as well as less risk that the film might not be made (as finance is already in place).

For a filmmaker, the obvious weakness is that you need to raise the finance elsewhere before trying this type of thing. However, if you consider it under the marketing and distribution part of the budget, you’ll quickly realise there is huge potential to profit from this. Further, there aren't the headaches of splitting investor returns to a crowd of individuals as is generally done with crowdfunding.

Experience Fandom launched on the 6th of December, with the first live event due to kick off in 17 days. In less than a month it has already gained over 300 fans on facebook, though membership has slower uptake so far.

I’ll be following their progress closely, as I am very excited by what they are doing.

Things that could be improved:
This seems like a really smart way of promoting and monetising an indie film. However, there is always room for improvement!

Fandom is doing well at reaching out to budding filmmakers, which works well for the “behind the scenes” elements. However, in terms of building an audience who will want to see the film itself, there seems to be no strategy in place.

There is very little information about the story, just a half page synopsis. At the time of writing this they don’t yet have a logline or a finalised script. Being a writer, and admirer of tightly crafted stories, it concerns me when production plans are in place before the script is.

At this stage there is little information about the filmmaking team, no clear credentials to indicate if they can pull a quality film off. They have been quite responsive and candid about questions I’ve asked them, so I don’t doubt their sincerity or integrity – I think this is simply an oversight that will be rectified as they begin posting more content on their website.

I look forward to seeing how they go, and will report back here on their progress.