Crowdfunding Indie Film : Biracy (case study)

Biracy is an indie film project launched at the beginning of last month with the goal to convert download pirates into investors, creators, and distributors by using a persuasive crowdfunding /crowdsourcing hybrid business model. It’s quite innovative in that the filmmakers have allocated 32% of membership income towards an upfront referral reward system, meaning that members can potentially earn money before the film has even been made.

In simple terms, where Fandom appealed to filmmakers who want behind the scene access, and The Age of Stupid appealed to environmentalists who wanted the global warming message documented, and My Million Dollar Movie appealed to people jumping on the bandwagon to plug themself or their business – Biracy will appeal to financially motivated opportunists who would otherwise be pirating other people’s films. It’s an interesting group to target!

David Geertz, CEO, considers it partly a social experiment, and the Biracy website is clearly labelled “Beta.” The aim is to see if this business model works. If it does, then the underlying Sokap platform will be made available to other filmmakers so they too can crowdfund and crowdsource their indie film projects effortlessly.

Beyond the innovative use of crowdfunding, the aim is to give members involvement and ownership of the film ala crowdsourcing style. A handful of pre-selected screenplays will be displayed for consideration, and the members will vote on which one to make. Same goes for every key creative decision. They will have opportunity to interact with the filmmakers along the production process, building a community to support the film, and then they can also profit by helping to distribute the film at the end.

The idea is that this takes away the motivation for some people to pirate downloads, when for a $25 investment you can watch the film, be part of the filmmaking process, stand a chance to win prizes, and even profit along the way.

Biracy’s ideal is to sign up 1,000,000 members to prove that large films can be crowdfunded. More realistically, they have also announced the micro budget amount of $500,000 that they need as a minimum to make the first film. If they have not raised this much within a year the project will be cancelled and members will receive back 60% of their original fee (the other 40% having already been spent on the referral scheme and other expenses). If the Biracy project raises more money than it needs for the first film, the extra money will be invested into more projects.

Ambitious idea - and certainly a new way of looking at filmmaking and audience building. I’ll look forward to seeing how it goes, and will keep you updated.

Things to improve:
The first issue is a lack of information on the film story itself. Partly this is due to the “crowdsource” notion that the audience will vote upon it. However, there is no mention in any of the terms and conditions, Q&As, or main website about any parameters.

Now, if people want to be involved in a film, they need to know what kind of film it is. No one wants to publicly get behind a project only to later on discover that its pornography, or Scientology propaganda, let alone both. There needs to be transparency at the beginning about what members are signing up to.

A recent blog post does reveal that it will be a sci-fi film, which has been decided by the filmmakers without member voting or “announcement” in any other area of the website. This is two thumbs down for lack of transparency.

It’s also not strategically smart to have this information secreted away. A film audience should be targeted according to film interests, so what genre and style of film is being made will greatly influence membership sign ups. Someone who wants a good romcom may be annoyed when their investment is hijacked by sci-fi, equally a lover of indie arthouse sci-fi will feel dirty if the film is dumbed down for a mainstream audience.

Crowdsourcing a film is something that in itself has a lot of risk. Will too many cooks spoil the broth? Research into crowdsourcing suggests that when there is a semi-selection process to the “crowd” then they can come up with better solutions than a specialist would. In the case of film crowdsourcing, I believe you would need a crowd of people who were interested in the same kind of film for it to work. If on the other hand the crowd has disparate interests, as seems to be the case with Biracy, I fear the end result will be a hodge podge of compromise - otherwise known as ‘crap.’

It would perhaps have been smarter to make it clear from the beginning that the first title would be sci-fi, option a couple of good sci-fi novels and potentially also some original sci-fi scripts, target the established novel fan bases as well as sci-fi film fans, and allow members to decide which one gets made. Thus, if a member’s first choice doesn’t get through, they can still back the film because it’s at least in the same genre as their interest, and they knew what the options were from the get go.

The founders of Biracy don’t appear to have any experience in filmmaking, though they do allude to knowing people who have access to great scripts, great crew, distribution, and so on. And perhaps this is the issue, that they may have come up with a great model by the numbers, but don’t understand the creative part that will make or break the film itself.

There are a number of other transparency issues that have rung alarm bells for some, as evidenced by the heated discussion that sparked on Reduser.net.

The Biracy website goes into huge detail on the referral scheme through which members can earn money, but glosses over exactly how profits from the film will be spent. Members won’t earn cash dividends, but will accrue virtual currency that they can invest into other projects connected to the Biracy project. It doesn’t say how these projects will be selected, so from a member’s point of view it puts a lot of wealth and power into Biracy’s hands.

Some elements of the ins and outs of membership rights are not clear to the casual observer, and the contract recommends you gain legal advice. Contrast this with The Age of Stupid filmmakers who had their contract written in simple easy to understand language so you didn’t need a solicitor. It is highly unlikely that someone forking over $25 for membership is then going to pay a couple hundred for a solicitor’s advice.

My gut feel is that these guys are legit and well meaning, but that they simply haven’t thought everything through from a member or filmmaker or audience perspective. To their credit, they do admit it is a “Beta” system (indicating more familiarity with an IT background perhaps), and part social experiment – it’s just a shame they didn’t get an experienced indie filmmaker onboard as a partner to cover the other elements.

Summary:

It would be fantastic if this business model worked, providing indie filmmakers with another crowdfunding business model option. It’s innovative that they are using a referral system to give added incentive to members to recruit more financial members towards funding, and worth a look in if you want inspiration about crowdfunding options.

They have in the space of less than a month already achieved a fair online awareness, and their use of video blogging, twitter, and facebook are off to a good start. This has the potential to be huge by the time the film is made.

I am hesitant to back their manner of crowdsourcing, as I suspect it might end up being a crap film as a result. And there are issues to do with transparency and filmmaking expertise.

However, by combining elements of what Biracy is doing with what other indie filmmakers such as those behind The Age of Stupid, Fandom, and My Million Dollar Movie are doing – I believe there is a better model yet to be discovered that will be a hybrid of these.

Full disclosure: I myself have succumbed to handing over $25 dollars for a base level membership. Call it curiosity, supporting the industry, or pure opportunistic greed... my referral code is jibarmprojection87 if you want in ;)