How is crowdfunding helping the film industry?

In our current state of economic crisis, the number of people successfully putting their creative light bulb ideas into action has declined in the last few years, with high numbers resorting t

In our current state of economic crisis, the number of people successfully putting their creative light bulb ideas into action has declined in the last few years, with high numbers resorting to uploading a quick fix video onto social media sites such as YouTube and Twitter not always to their full potential.

 

 

That is until a cheeky fat cat showed me another funding source for independent films and it comes in the form of a marvellous invention started in 2008 called ‘crowdfunding,’ with the main site being Indiegogo.

 

I am what you could call a dedicated YouTube follower of cats doing cute, funny, crazy, sleepy and angry things, which brought me to following my now personal number one uploader Simon Tofield, the creator of Simon’s Cat.

 

Starting around the same time as Indiegogo, the big fat lovable cat made his entrance onto the small screen (or large depending on your fondness of technology) with Cat Man Do, a short video of the charming and funny illustrated cat attempting to wake his owner with a variety of methods for the purpose of filling his tummy.

 

 

Since then Tofield has provided his fans with many hilarious short videos inspired by his cats and is now aspiring to create his first colour, eleven minute video Off to the Vet. In order to fulfill this goal Simon has created a campaign on the crowdfunding site Indiegogo.com, raising £88,000 in under a week, leaving him with just 30 per cent left to hit his target in two weeks’ time.

 

 

Crowdfunding allows anybody to raise money for any idea and for people to take action to help create more of what they love. Of course it’s not all just giving; campaigners are expected to show their work in progress and entice more people to campaign with trinkets and other memorabilia. 

 

It’s unsurprising that so many campaigns are making progress and are reaching their targets with as many as nine million people from around the world visiting Indiegogo every month.

 

 

Many well-known and popular films have recently been made as a result of crowdfunding. Most recently fans helped the Veronica Mars film become a reality showing just how successful crowdfunding websites can be.

 

 

Of course it’s not all good news as some ideas of course will not have enough possible consumers willing to contribute money to help the campaign. However, some crowdfunding sites have taken this into consideration and wish to help the campaigners by expecting them to follow planned itineraries to best help them succeed.

 

Sites such as Indiegogo also give users the option of users refunding all of the money to their contributors at no charge or keep all the money raised minus a nine percent fee, for those who fail to reach their target amount.

 

Crowdfunding certainly comes with flaws but is increasingly helping independent filmmakers realise their dreams in a time of economic crisis, as shown with Simon’s Cat.