Crowdfunding Indian Indie film

Indian audience does not really care much about Indie films. Who is to be blamed for that? Is it the lack of quality indie films in our country or the absence of a sturdy system to support them? All we know about movies is, Bollywood. Also there are the regional film industries that contribute to the popular culture. But there is a lot of meaningful cinema that is going unnoticed because of their non-existent marketing budget and dearth of PR machinery that could talk about films with substance rather than the glitz and glam of Bollywood.

Not just this, in wake of this ignorance surrounding indie films, even high profile commercial churners have started calling themselves indie film makers because it’s “cool” to be indie. Here is our attempt to introduce you to a real indie film maker and his struggles to make his dream come true.

“Making an independent film is like saying it on the face, whatever has kept on boiling you from inside, without caring about how the social or political or any other kind of institutions might react. And making an independent film with a producer is like organizing a movement sponsored by your father where you can bring down the wall of Berlin only if your father allows”, says Anamitra Roy, Co-founder of Little Fish Eat Big Fish.

Any form of independent art is about creative independence. Film is not an exception. And with creative independence arise issues like why should someone else become the sacrificial lamb for your ideas. If it does not look commercially viable absolutely nobody is going to come forward and support you with his or her hard earned money. So, either you need to be an entrepreneur (which is quite unusual in case of films) or you just need to forget about your dreams and move on. Between these two options, another way has been discovered after the advent of digital media; A path less traveled where you can think of producing films at the cost of breathing. No Budget films have been a new area of interest in several film festivals around the world in the last couple of years or so. These films are also known as Zero Budget or Micro Budget films.

Anamitra and Sriparna are amongst the pioneers in the zero budget movie making in India. They took it up to the level of entrepreneurship almost while others thought the new media is good for students only to try their hands. It must have been the year 2007 when Anamitra startedoff with editing every video he could grab. A couple of years later, he made his first film with a digital video camera, with help from friends who did everything from acting to making props and managing other production duties.  Then a no-budget filmmaking forum was co-founded with these friends, under the name Little Fish Eat Big Fish, and Bengal’s first widely recognized no-budget filmmaking movement started during the following months.

The following year, in January 2010, his first film ‘Jean Luc Godard Had No Script’ was compiled with four other no-budget films from his like-minded friends and published as a self-distributed DVD in the Book Fair, Kolkata. They sold more than 100 copies of the Five No Budget Films in just seven days. There has been no looking back hence.

After 3 years and 3 compilations of significantly experimentalfilms, they have a nationwide pool of viewers and followers who want to see their films. The model for self-production, self-promotion and self-distribution that they wanted to test five years back had proved itself.They started working on The One Rupee Film.

The preliminary target was to make a docu-fiction film on the independent filmmaking scenario in our country, India. The secondary target was to reach the audience through this One Rupee Film Project. “Since making films without a budget happens to be my popular area of specialization, One Indian Rupee from everyone I come across, would be enough I think. But, I need everyone, yes. It’s not an appeal for their money; it’s an appeal for their attention, not just towards Little Fish Eat Big Fish, but every other aspiring filmmaker in India who takes up the camera and fulfills his aspirations without caring for or fearing anyone or anything that stands in his way.” Says Anamitra Roy, for whom filmmaking is not an industry but an activism.

He announced the idea in Bring Your Own Film Festival, Puri in February 2012 and got an overwhelming response. They collected more than Rs. 2000 in the first six hours!

The 0ne Rupee Film Project (Aashmani Jawaharat aka Diamonds in the Sky) which saw its roots being set in Feb 2012 is in its last leg of the long journey. What began as a dream has taken shape over the past 14 months and the team of the enthusiastic duo Anamitra Roy and Sriparna Dey have been able to complete nearly 75% of the film on a tight budget. The team needed Rs. 2,50,000 in total and is still short of the target by a lakh and is reaching out to all movie and indie film supporters to pitch in and make this dream a reality.

The project has raised most of its funding through offline supporters. It has also raised some amount on online crowdfunding platforms and is currently raising funds for the last crucial leg of its journey on Funduzz.com, which is an upcoming crowdfunding platform of India.“Crowdfunding is trying to bridge the funding gap which has always been felt in the country for creative and innovative people. Funduzz.com is enabling ideas to turn into realities by partnering with such creative minds and engaging the crowd to support their ideas”, says Monash Sarkar, Co-founder of Funduzz.com.

The story of this director duo is one that inspires every budding film-maker to go out and realize their dreams of making an indie film. Theyare inspirations for all those who dare to dream and live by their own rules. Funding which has always been a hurdle for the Indie Film makers is seeing light at the end of the tunnel because of some Crowdfunding platforms like Funduzz.com. They are amongst the pioneers in micro budget independent film making in India and also pioneers in crowdfunding for it. Talking to them one can get a better sense about the passion and devotion one needs to show while raising funds from the Crowd.

“Raising funds for your independent movie through crowdfunding is the best way because you get to connect with your audience and know their response and feedback. There is a better connect as when they support your idea and become your Patron, they show the acceptance of your creativity”, says Monash. Hence public opinion and audience approval is known to you even before the releaseof your movie. Also as you may give out CDs of your movie as one of the rewards for your Patrons, which means that you don’t have to find an audience after the release as you already have a ready audience who believe in your vision and have promised to support you and stand by you! They support you for your idea but do not impose their thoughts on your creativity, unlike traditional producers.

“An indie lives and dies with his ideas unlike a merchant filmmaker working on some project. Interpreting the limitations he always finds a way to express himself. The crowd is the community where he belongs. The more he interacts the wiser he becomes. If this interactions bear fruits like building up a self-consuming system there’s nothing like it. Only self-consumption can save a movement and if you are really serious that should be the approach”, says Anamitra.

To show your support for The One Rupee Film Project, visit his campaign page on Funduzz.com and contribute with an open heart to help the Real Indie film makers grow in India.

Crowdfunding Mantra #4

We could not overemphasize the importance of knowing your audience and customers. Crowdfunding is one of the highest level of marketing and needs your skills of understanding your audience’s needs and demands. You should make the story around your campaign in such a way so that the audience can relate to it and want to become a part of your idea.

Crowdfunding Mantra #3

To test the validity of your idea, its important that you become a good listener and get feedback from your friends, family and acquaintances. Refine your thought process and fine tune your idea before you approach the unknown crowd.

Crowdfunding Mantra # 2

Start talking about your idea. Campaigning for your crowdfunding project starts much before you actually even start making your project. Let people know about your idea and you would also get an idea about the level of interest people would have in your idea before-hand. You need not disclose intricate details about your plans but a rough overview. You can generate interest by leaving teasers in your blogs or facebook wall about your upcoming campaign.

Crowdfunding and protecting your ideas

Intellectual Property Rights in Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding as we have been highlighting, is the next level of social networking and is a great way of raising funds from people online. Though crowdfunding has gained prominence over the last 2-3 years and globally thousands of projects have been crowd funded, still the basic rules of law apply to it. Artists, startups and online creators using this new platform are governed by Intellectual Property principles.

One might be wondering why Funduzz.com has been focusing so much on Intellectual Property (IP). This is because Funduzz.com team believes that every idea is precious and the creator of it should have the protection so that others cannot copy the same. Intellectual Property (IP) refers to the creations of the mind; and most commonly include ideas or inventions, literary and artistic works, symbols that identify your brand, names, logos and/or competitive business ideas or information.  Under the broad purview of Intellectual Property, there are generally four categories that govern the use of Intellectual Property:

• Trademarks
• Patents
• Copyrights
• Trade Secrets

Though in India Intellectual Property is still not one of the top things that comes to any creative persons mind when he puts his idea online, but with increasing awareness about the need for protecting your idea, IP would be a game changer. Before making a project campaign or disclosing your concept to an online crowdfunding community to raise money, these four categories of protection and the potential resulting consequences should be thoroughly examined.  Let’s take a deeper look at these four categories.

TRADEMARK

A Trademark is a word or symbol that acts as a source identifier for goods or services.  The trademark is the brand of your product or service.  A registered trademark provides the owner the exclusive use of the brand in the jurisdiction that it is registered in.  When pitching your idea or concept on a crowdfunding site you should seek to first secure the rights to the brand through a trademark registration so as to preclude another from using or “hijacking” your unique brand identifier.  If you would like to be the exclusive owner of the name you should also register the domain name and any common variations of the name with an online domain registry.

PATENT

Patent rights can also be put at risk when pitching investors.  A Patent is a legal right granted by the government to exclude others from making, using, or selling the invention.  When pitching your idea or concept online to secure funding, such as through a crowdfunding website, you may make certain disclosures that trigger strict patent filing deadlines.  A disclosure of an idea or invention may also trigger a patent infringement lawsuit if a patent holder deems the invention protected under his or her prior filed patent.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright applies to virtually all content found online.  A copyright is a work of original authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression – in other words: pictures, music, news articles, text, graphics, as well as a website’s layout, design and backend source code. A copyright does not protect the idea but rather how it is expressed. A copyright is generated upon the work’s creation.  If you have created a website or are building a software application in conjunction with your crowdfunding project, that website or code may not be copied in whole or in part and used without your permission.

TRADE SECRET

A Trade Secret is information that has value, is not generally known and is subject to efforts to maintain its secrecy.  Common Trade Secrets are formulas, recipes, marketing plans, insider pricing information and/or customer lists.  When seeking funding for your project through a crowdfunding site you should be careful of how much, if any, of this information should be disclosed.  If this type of information becomes generally available through an open disclosure its protected status as a Trade Secret is likely to be forfeited.  Thereby, making the information available for anyone to use and commercialize.

So concluding we would say, it’s your idea and you need to protect it from the prying eyes of millions of online users. Remember whenever you put your content online, in addition to your fans, there are also the competitors who are looking at your creation.

Crowdfunding Mantra #1

Be Insanely passionate about your Idea

Crowdfunding : The next step to social networking culture

Internet has opened up our personal and professional world to the extent that we never imagined before. Professionally, it has helped us to network with job creators and job seekers – creators and supporters – alike. This phenomenon has revealed a great potential that global networking can present to a business opportunity or even an idea.

Social Networking has now become an inseparable part of our lives. We are social animals for a reason. We feel empowered as a part of a social group – online or offline. Our presence on the internet is both an opportunity and an open window to our social and professional activities. But it still depends largely on us how we leverage this opportunity to our advantage.

We now belong to an era where every idea or even a thought is open to public opinion and is gauged by the number of ‘Likes’, ‘Shares’, ‘Tweets’, Re-tweets’. This has both advantages and disadvantages. The main advantage is the fact that you can measure public opinion and reaction towards your idea in your network, backed by numbers and statistics of real audience! From business perspective, this is a very big feat. In times before internet became a house-hold necessity, this seemingly small revelation would require cumbersome surveys. But now all you have to do is post a picture or write a blog and you immediately have a plethora of likes and shares that are clear indicators of the fact that people liked what they saw and read. So some day if you want to commercialize your skills, may be publish a book, you already have a fan base in your network that have seen and liked your work in the past.

The next step hence, is to form social groups for those who believe in a common cause or have common interest and raise funds from them for an idea that appeals to all. The point I am trying to make here is that commercializing your skills, ideas or hobby by Crowdfunding is the logical next step to social networking. Instead of just hitting that ‘Like’ button, ‘Patrons’ and supporters can now ‘Pitch in’ to fund that cause or project that they find interesting. These funds can then be used by the project owner in bringing his/ her idea to life. Crowdfunding leverages on the social quotient of the project owner, the more connections one has, the higher are the chances of getting the desired funds raised for the project campaign.

It is very easy for anyone to ‘like’ or ‘share’ a photograph, thought or an idea. It is often an impulsive action and is driven by your interest and likings. In some cases it is the popularity of an idea or a thought that makes one join the brigade and press the ‘Like’ button. And in recent times, it is also the ‘in-your-face’ advertisements that ‘recommend’ you to ‘Like’ or ‘Follow’ any group, community or page. But it is a totally different ball game when it comes to making people to part with their hard earned money and ‘Pitch-in’ for your idea.

So, crowdfunding becomes the next step to social networking in more than one way. It not just calls for an exchange of words but a show of goodwill through monetary exchange. It also requires one to open up to the idea of giving and sharing with the intention of helping someone in achieving their goal. This means, it is not going to be as easy and simple as sharing your blog or photographs. Here you have to showcase your idea to your network with the motive of raising funds from them, not just their likes, shares or appreciation! So it is a tough deal, but you have a higher chance of getting a monetary support from them as they already know your work. Being part of your network also makes them trust you and your intention and hence it may be easier for them to support your idea.

Crowdfunding platforms like Funduzz.com, give you an opportunity to connect with people outside your network as well. Hence you need to prepare a pitch that will interest people even outside your existing circle. Crowdfunding works best for projects and ideas that have a story to tell – whether a personal reason for starting the project, a passionate vision for what it could become, or a social mission. People have to feel inspired to invest so you need to write a charismatic pitch to get potential investors’ pulses racing, or else display evidence of outstanding innovation. But you must always be honest and open, as people understand when someone is trying to oversell or is lying.

If you have a mundane or complicated concept which the public will struggle to connect to, crowdfunding may not be right for your idea. However, any crowdfunding project can succeed with the right pitch – the key to crowdfunding success is: keep it simple and interesting. All said and done, getting an audience that will support your crowdfunding campaign in reaching its goal will depend on how well you can connect and reach out to your network.

The involvement of money from the Patron’s end ensures that it is not an impulsive action. It is a well thought out decision that comes into action when your Patron finds your campaign interesting and value for money. This is where the rewards come in play. The rewards that you share with your Patrons will be a major attraction for them to Pitch-in for your idea. Funduzz.com helps its project owners to design the rewards to the best interest of the prospective audience of the campaign.

Funduzz.com is working towards creating awareness about crowdfunding and how it can help bring new ideas to life. Crowdfunding may be a new concept in India, but it is here to stay. It will require many changes like broadening our minds towards the idea of giving and sharing and supporting an enterprising generation in building the new India. Change is inevitable and change is the only constant. Crowdfunding will take its own time to get popular in India, but it will soak us up and will soon become an indispensable part of our lives.

Crowdfunding – Calling for change in people’s mindset

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” – Chinese Proverb

This statement is very cliché, but nevertheless highlights the key difference between giving charity and making someone self sufficient. Crowd-funding an idea in return for rewards is a brilliant way of making someone self sufficient. It is a new way of giving someone an opportunity to be self employed without asking for charity. There are many crowdfunding sites which are actually donation/charity platforms and are raising funds for different causes. But Crowdfunding is way more than just that. You ask for people’s support in exchange for some material rewards that you give in exchange. So there is no free lunch in crowdfunding!

It is easier for donation platforms to flourish because of the warm happy feeling a person gets by doing some philanthropic act, whether big or small. Giving in the form of charity gives immense boost to the feeling of goodness in us and people think, ‘I have helped someone’. However when some innovative or creative person seeks some financial support in exchange of rewards, people often doubt his intentions. People start gauging the value of the reward that they would be getting in exchange and many a times hesitate to take part in the crowdfunding effort. The first thought that might come to many is that, the project owner would disappear after raising the money. Some of the people we have met have gone to this extent of even thinking that the crowdfunding platform itself might disappear after raising the funds! Do we ever have such doubts about the intentions of the beneficiaries of our philanthropic act? We don’t right? Then why should we doubt the intentions of someone who is actually promising you something material, in exchange for your support? The crowdfunding platforms are established business units and not any fly by night conman. Shouldn’t we be getting the same warm happy feeling of helping someone in this case too?

Supporting someone’s creative and innovative idea helps in being a part of their creation and you actually help in generating employment and earnings in the economy. This is synonymous with teaching someone to fish and he would be creating something that could who knows make a major impact in society at large. Crowdfunding could be for either specific projects or for small businesses which have not got the traditional sources of bank loans and funding. It relies on the wisdom of the crowd to either support or rule out an idea.

Crowdfunding platforms run stringent checks in order to verify the authenticity of every project that would go live on their sites. They too have their reputation at stake on every project that goes on their site. So that should lay at rest the concern about the authenticity of the projects raising money. In most cases you would be actually supporting one of your friend’s or acquaintance’s project idea. So definitely you would know your friend better than us.

Crowdfunding is a revolution that would empower the citizens of the world to take the decision making role in their hands. The crowd decides which products and creative ventures they would want to hit the market and which they would not. Crowdfunding for the project owners is like test marketing your products before going into full scale production. If the crowd likes the idea, they would also support it and vice versa.

Every new idea always falls under the scrutiny of society. Every new thought or trend is always looked down upon at first. Does that mean we don’t change? No, we do change. We take the positive out of every change. So the good part of this skepticism is that every new step forward will be taken cautiously but it is important that we do take a step forward and change our mindset.