Approximately a month ago Rob Thomas stormed onto Kickstarter — the popular crowdfunding website — and was able to ascertain over $5 milliion dollars in fan contributions in order to make a Veronica Mars movie. Today (or maybe yesterday, or this week) Zach Braff has done the same.
Zach Braff’s Kickstarter is for a film by the name of “Wish I Was Here“ that he’s written and hopes (to tonal) continue the story that he began with Garden State (a film I love, but understand why it’s polarizing). He puts up a great pitch for what the film will be, why he’s doing it via kickstarter and a great little video which does a great job of summarizing all of those points. What I’m wondering is how valid all those points are.
He says:
- He is unable to finance the film in such a way that would allow him to have final cut and full directorial control of the movie.
- He is not offering digital downloads as rewards because he wants people to see the film in theatres and is afraid that offering same day VOD rewards will scare are theatres from potentially picking up the film.
- He would not be able to have control over the film’s casting choices with the Hollywood money he can get.
In addition some comparable points (brought up mainly by Scott Beggs at Film School Rejects) as we’re all comparing this to what I hope we can call the Marshmallow Model:
- This is an original property and Braff is not beholden to any higher corporation (yet)
- Wish I Was Here has no distributor, and there is no current potential for one
- The film is supposedly hoping to be ready for Sundance next year
So what does this all mean?
This means that if you fund this project Zach Braff will get to make a movie and hopefully by Late 2014 the earliest you may get to see it in a theatre or maybe early 2015 you can see it on some form of home video. He would be able to make his movie with the only compromises would be related to budget as opposed to a big wig we don’t like kicking him out of the editing room and recutting it (like we read all the while) to please them.
While more and more I’m happy to see this kind of work ongoing, especially since I remain an avid fan of allowing filmmakers to tell their stories (good or bad) it is hard to not bring up the biggest part of the discussion, and that’s the business.
In the video Braff mentions the fact that Garden State would never have been made if not for a specific investor that believed in him at the time. Here we are, all avid fans that believe in his work and fun, but we are not investors. We are just people throwing coins in a tin hoping the tin fills up. Some may say that it would unfair or silly to feel an investment of as little as $1to expect a return in 2015 when the film opens, or even in Sundance 2014 when, if, Braff ends up selling the film for $10 million to the Weinsteins or whoever. But I kind of do. While Joseph-Gordon Levitt has been the model for recent days of monetizing crowdsourcing content and able to disseminate returns to his contributors. While the contribution is actual artistic creation and not dollar investment in projects it still is the same. These people around the world saw fit to give their time, effort and content to JGL and when he thought it was cool enough to show at a screening or put in a collection that he earned money from he sent them all a cheque. Why can’t Kickstarter add this to their model? I’m sure that these fans all throwing in their pennies and dimes would be happy to add to their agreement to give final cut and not have any artistic input, but see them as investors.
In a reddit reply that Braff gave he says
The day will soon come when fans can invest in a film like a stock and reap the financial rewards if it’s a success. That is not yet legal. So in the meantime for $10 you can essentially subscribe to an online magazine about filmmaking and I guarantee you, you will like the content I put up. This isn’t a con. It’s a hail mary pass to make something for you without casting some fuck-head in all the roles.
What about it isn’t legal? Because you see screen names instead of addresses and social security numbers? I’m sure there’s a way to do it. It’s just not offered yet. And if the service is there why use the one that is inferior?
To give a good example of the kind of film we’re talking about Garden State was produced for a reported $2.5 million and grossed $26.8 million; Juno was produced for $7.5 million and grossed $143.5 million dollars. These films, while small productions, CAN earn money. So can we INVESTORS do so too?
You’re using Kickstarter because you’re coming to a community that trusts and loves you. Why not trust them and love them back by treating them with the same respect they are you when we come to drop our coin in your tin.
It makes a great deal of sense, really. Before the concept of Kickstarter, people funded projects in a lot the same way–by finding investors who hoped either for a profit or a tax write-off. Look at the original Evil Dead, which was funded in part by shopping a long trailer to investment groups of dentists and other professional people. Those investors didn't do it for the "art" but for the chance to make a pile of money. The only difference between that and Kickstarter is that it happened without the internet.
I'm not talking about the eventual outcome of that business venture. I would understand how this (as other kickstarter projects) may be bad investments, the difference is that the guise of any sort of possible return is completely removed with the promise of none regardless of the financial success or loss of the end product. And let's be real, it's going to sell at Sundance.
I wish I had the money to help fund Zach Braff his film. I want be like George Harrison and say, "I wanted to see the movie". He mortgaged his own house just to have Monty Python's "Life of Brian" made.
I would be so willing to hand him my contribution. But what kind of precedent for fleecing would it create? I said it when the VM Kickstarter happened, does it make sense for fans to pay for a movie to happen and then have no investment stated in that film? I'm sure that if he said a dollar gets you 0.0003% ownership of the film and he keeps final cut and all artistic license the funds would roll in just as they are now.