How Do I Build a Community That Will Support My Work?
The co-creators of the experimental variety TV show ‘The Eyeslicer’ talk about what it takes to build a community that will support boundary-pushing work.
Dan Schoenbrun and Vanessa McDonnell are the independent filmmakers and Kickstarter Creators-in-Residence behind the experimental variety TV show The Eyeslicer. They funded the show, which they describe as “a handcrafted mixtape that blends boundary-pushing short-form work into a weird, wild, uninterrupted whole,” through two Kickstarter campaigns.
Here, Schoenbrun and McDonnell discuss how they found a loyal audience for their out-there film experiment, and share tips that you can use to build a community around your own project.
Define what you mean by “community.”
Ask yourself, who is this for? “One thing we knew starting out is that we didn’t want to just make The Eyeslicer, put it out on the internet, and have anonymous people watch it and have no engagement with them,” McDonnell says. “For us, ‘community’ means audience, but it also means filmmakers and collaborators.” (Fun fact: some of the backers of the first Kickstarter campaign were fellow filmmakers who later became involved in the show.)
Start with your existing community and build from there.
“Both of us are involved in film programming. We make films, and we’ve met a lot of filmmakers,” says McDonnell. “Obviously that was our first stop in terms of trying to get the project going, to go to our own personal communities, and then build it out from there.”
To reach new people, McDonnell and Schoenbrun suggest writing emails and personalized notes, making phone calls, and talking to people — anyone you think would be willing to support your project. During The Eyeslicer’s campaign, Schoenbrun says he would sometimes write 50 emails to 50 different people in a single day.
Use your project page to tell your story and connect with like-minded supporters.
The project page for The Eyeslicer’s first season “was very much like a manifesto,” says McDonnell. “We very clearly stated our mission, what we wanted to accomplish with the project. It’s all about bigger issues in film and distribution, and other people care about these things too, so they wanted to help make it happen and be part of it.”
“We found that our project and the ethos of it, of building an alternative space for art filmmaking in America, did appeal to a lot of people who care about Kickstarter,” Schoenbrun says. “They’re going on Kickstarter to find work with that mission. Especially during our first campaign, we got a lot of money from total strangers who just found the project because they were looking for that sort of thing on the site.”
Know you’re taking a risk—and that’s OK.
“There’s no way around what you’re doing when you do a Kickstarter, which is putting yourself out there and asking for money,” says Schoenbrun. “You’re deciding not to wait for somebody in a traditional sense to write you the check. You’re taking your destiny into your hands, and part of what comes with that is a sense of entrepreneurial hustle.”
Launching a Kickstarter campaign “feels risky and it is risky,” says McDonnell. “But we believe so much in what we’re doing, and we needed the resources to make it happen, so it felt okay to ask our community to help us.”
Interact with your backers in fun and creative ways.
Building a community “is not magic,” Schoenbrun says. “You’re doing that work from the ground up, and you’re probably talking to 95 percent of [your supporters] before they back [your] campaign.”
As a way to have some fun with supporters during their first campaign, Schoenbrun and McDonnell started “slicing” backers’ eyes on Facebook, a cheeky nod to the Eyeslicer name. “We found some cartoon eyeballs online, and I would download somebody’s Facebook profile picture, put those cartoon eyeballs on the picture, and then re-upload it with a message like, ‘We just sliced your eyes,’” says Schoenbrun.
“It became this social experience, and it was a real ‘aha’ moment for me,” he says. “It wasn’t about us finding a way to talk even louder about why we’re great or why our show is great. It was about making it about [our backers]: ‘You chose to back this thing. We think that’s awesome. Here’s a fun, weird token of our appreciation.’”
Interested in launching a Kickstarter project? Browse our Creator Handbook for more helpful tips, or head here to get started—you can save and update your project as you go!
