How A Film Student Raised $230,000 For A Short Film by Transmedia Author/Instructor Houston Howard
Sherrod Sloan, Filmmaker/LA Film School Student: How do we as independent filmmakers use transmedia to elevate our pitches or when we are trying to take on investors to get financing for our projects? How do we use transmedia to make that more easily accessible?
Houston Howard, Transmedia Author and Instructor: A question that I got after the first round of Film Courage interviews [in 2017] we had was a lot of people asking me about how this impacts the search for investment.
Independent filmmakers and event creators are always looking for money and that’s just part and parcel. You have to figure out how to pay the crew. You have to figure out how to pay for the sets. You have to buy insurance. You have to do all these things. Money is necessary and a lot of people are out there trying to find a private equity investment into their film and right now that’s very difficult.
When you talk to any independent filmmakers they’re going to say the search for financing is one of the most frustrating difficult things that you do as a filmmaker and that’s why a lot of people pivot to things like a Kickstarter or IndieGoGo because they want to crowdsource. Unfortunately the vast majority of films on Kickstarter don’t get funded at all and on average films on Kickstarter get funded at about twelve thousand dollars.
If you’re swell with twelve thousand dollars on Kickstarter to make a movie, I am rooting for you and hope you make the greatest 12 thousand dollar movie ever made. But if you want filmmaking to be your career and you don’t want filmmaking to be your side hustle, then we have to figure out how to get beyond the 12 thousand dollar movie. A lot of my focus over the past year and a half has been working with independent creators on how…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
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