Archive for Getting started
If you’re not considering this way to get money for your film–you should be!
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I’ve written before about Kickstarter, a site that makes it easy for writers, producers, musicians, designers and others to raise money in advance via crowdfunding. You describe your proposed project on the site and list what you will give people if they send in varying amount of money. If you’re writing a book, for something like $15 you promise to send them the book, for $20 you send them an autographed copy, for $50 you list them in the acknowledgment, for $100 you give them ten copies of the book to distribute to their friends, etc.
You specify the amount you want to raise and the time within which you want to do it (e.g., 60 days). If you don’t reach your amount, the whole thing is cancelled. If you go over the amount, that’s fine. Lots of projects are looking for $500 to $15,000 or so, but there are also some that are much bigger–or become much bigger. Here is what John McDermott wrote about this recently on wire.Inc.com, a service of Inc. magazine:
Game developer Double Fine broke a record for the fund-raising site yesterday, raising $400,000 injust eight hours, reported TechCrunch.
About $300,000 was intended to go to developing the point-and-click adventure game—a genre that most publishers wouldn’t consider producing—while the remaining $100,000 was to fund a documentary about the game’s production, TechCrunch reports. Double Fine had asked for $15 from supporters in return for access to both the game and film.
Then the donations kept rolling in: Double Fine has so far raised more than $1.4 million from almost 39,000 backers.
Separately, Kickstarter keeps expanding its reputation as a reliable funding source for aspiring filmmakers: 17 films at the Sundance Film Festival received money via Kickstarter, the Kickstarter blog reported. Among them was “Indie Game: The Movie”, a documentary about independent video game producers that has been optioned by HBO for television redistribution and walked away with the World Cinema Documentary Editing Award.
If you have a great idea but need funding, consider Kickstarter or other crowdfunding sites (just search for “crowdfunding”), it may be the solution you’re looking for. If you’re a screenwriter and don’t want to direct, find a director whose work you like, and/or a producer, and suggest you work together to raise the money this way.
What’s NOT stopping you from writing your screenplay
Posted by: | CommentsI have a hunch these are NOT what’s stopping you from writing your screenplay:
* You don’t have any ideas
* You don’t understand the basics of screenwriting
* You have a fear of success
I think maybe one or more of these IS what’s stopping you:
* Procrastination
* Too many ideas
* Writing blocks
* Not enough time
* No support from family and friends
If I’m right, the WRITING BREAKTHROUGH STRATEGY program is what you need in order to write the screenplay you know is in you. Here’s a little (one minute) overview of what it gives you. If you want to find out more or sign up, go to: www.WritingBreakthroughStrategy.com. But hurry, because it starts on Monday, January 16!
Should you write a controversial screenplay or play it safe?
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In the previous two posts I’ve shared two of Robert Ringer’s three rules of writing and added my comments on how they apply to screenwriting. Here is the third:
Don’t try to be all things to all people. Go after a specific market, and don’t make apologies to those who aren’t part of that market.
Ringer points out that it’s natural to want to be loved and therefore to try to appeal to everyone and offend no one. Unfortunately that results in bland writing that may not appeal to anyone. If you’re writing an indie film, a strong viewpoint may be exactly the element that gets it noticed.
If you have a strong viewpoint about anything you will annoy or anger some people. That may prevent you from writing a screenplay that has a strong angle on a controversial topic, or it may incline you to try to give the opposing view equal time. That’s fine for a documentary that’s trying to show all sides of an issue, but it doesn’t make for strong drama.
Will taking a strong stand offend some people? Sure.
I wrote on my other writing blog (http://www.TimeToWrite.blogs.com) not too long ago about how shocked I was at the vehement reaction from one reader to what I thought was a neutral statement. Obviously it pushed some buttons for her, and maybe she felt better after venting her anger. Her statements were mild compared to a lot of what I’ve read in the comments sections of other blogs. But maybe the old saying is true: If you’re not offending anybody, you’re not saying anything.
This is a good thing to keep in mind if you find yourself worrying, as you write, about how readers or reviewers or members of your family will react when they read it. You have to put that out of your mind and keep writing.
I have some experience with this. Not too long ago I finished writing a novel I call Vegas Bible Porn. It’s a comedy and its based, very loosely, on my time in Hollywood. It’s about a producer who tries to cash in on two money-making genres of film, soft porn and Bible pictures, by combining them.
The novel is not pornographic and it doesn’t make fun of the Bible; it’s just descriptive of what this producer is trying to do—the Vegas comes in because that’s where he raises the money to make his film. However, so far the title has scared off publishers.
Even so, I want to hang in there with it because I think it will attract people who have an irreverent attitude, and they’re the ones who will enjoy it.
Is it a risky strategy? Probably. But, as Ringer says, when you have a strong concept you will (eventually) attract an enthusiastic, loyal group of customers–or a producer with some guts and the desire to make a movie that has an impact.
(You can sign up for Robert Ringer’s e-letter, A Voice of Sanity in an Insane World, at www.robertringer.com. If you would like some support in writing what only you can write, join my online Writing Breakthrough Strategy program. It starts in mid-January but now is the time to join and get some great Early Bird bonuses. Find out more at http://www.WritingBreakthroughStrategy.com. )
