Archive for In the Know

To Kickstarter or not to Kickstarter, that is the question!

Your storyline is crafted. You have your productions or outreach goals laid. But, should you take the leap and join the masses on Kickstarter in hopes that your project becomes the next "Veronica Mars" level of funding?

In a recent NY Times article, Perry Chen, one of its founders stated, “This year marks the year that we’ve seen Kickstarter enter the real world in a number of ways. At the Tribeca Film Fest, there are a dozen different Kickstarter-backed films, there’s an installation at the Whitney Biennial that was a Kickstarter project and we just had our birthday party at a Kickstarter-funded restaurant.” So, how can you make sure your campaign will be a success? Strategy!

Kickstarter utilizes the power of fundraising energy with an all-or-nothing situation. You set a fundraising goal and a timeline (up to 90 days), and if the goal isn't reached in the time allotted, you get nothing. So, what do successful projects have in common?

• Do your homework! Follow a few projects to see how they've worked. Check out there video pitch. Review that funding tiers and rewards. We saw that as projects neared the end of their time limit, there was a flurry of pledging activity that pushed them past their goal. It appeared that even projects that didn't seem capable of reaching their goal shot way past it.
• Keep you goals low, but aim high! 99.9% of Kickstarter projects are not Hollywood blockbusters, but actually smaller projects that initially try to raise $5,000 or less.
• Remain focused! Define your project with a clear beginning and end.
• Keep thing realistic! The most popular pledge amount is $25. The average pledge is around $70. Projects with a reward less than $20 succeed 54% of the time.
• Do the preparation! Projects with videos succeed at a much higher rate than those without (50% vs. 30%).
• Hit the pavement! Pledges don’t just happen. Plan your project way before you post it on Kickstarter. Your networks of friends and collegues is the place to start. But, be prepared craft your pitch more than once and in a variety of ways. Use Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. Host pledge parties, distribute flyers around your community, contact your local newspaper and radio stations to tell them about your project. Take the time to do the work.

To date, Kickstarter has raised more than $200 million for 20,000 projects. But, in reality that's only 44 percent of projects that sought financing on the site. So, get ready to work!

Is Sparkwise the future of visual data to tell a new story of impact?

Last week, BAVC was a part of launching the new platform Sparkwise to help collect and compare the data on an entirely new visual platform. As they state, "Sparkwise was created by a team of world-class technologists, data visualization experts and social impact strategists. It is free, open source and available to anybody with a story to tell." So, is it really time to dust off those monthly analytic reports sitting on your hard-drives to build a data driving story of your film's impact? Maybe not quite...yet!

This new platform seems more like a great tool to assess a crisis than assess impact. From the first platform launched, by the documentary The Revolutionary Optimists, they seem to best use the impact of data through the visualization of the hard statistics of the color and odor of drinking water, immunization percentages, along with splashes of photos and videos. But, what is the impact? What is the moving story to show social impact?

At Quiet Little Place, we believe a film's impact is more than just hard statistics to show the void a story can fill. It's about tangible impact! Impact our your film being shared from community to community and those golden nuggets that rise to the surface. For example, with the Sin by Silence postcards that are still making an impact since we incorporated them as part of the first year of outreach. Since then the women in the film have been receiving countless letters and postcards. But, one story of impact is from a women in a shelter who we found out has her postcard of Rosemary Dyer framed on her nightstand. Every day she wakes up and sees Rosemary's smile it is another reminder of why she must not return to her abusive boyfriend! Incredible that just a printed postcard can turn into a life altering decision for a woman to make sure she continues down a path to ensure a safer future for herself. That is data that cannot be given a number. Cannot be given a statistic. Cannot be lumped in with random facts. It is a life changing moment that proves how documentaries can become more than just a film - it represents what great storytelling can do when we act with creativity and strategy to make an impact!