Dedicated Fans Bring Movie Back To Life, Contributing $346k In Just A Few Weeks
from the connecting-with-fans... dept
A bunch of folks have sent over this story of how the author of the popular book Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller, had been working for years on turning the book into a movie, but in the middle of September, he posted to his website that it just wasn't going to happen, because the traditional funders of movies weren't interested in the movie. The book apparently is a sort of coming of age, semi-autobiographical story, involving aspects of the author's spiritual/religious journey. As Miller explained, while the book is a "Christian" book, it has elements in it that those who traditionally fund "Christian movies" didn't want to support (for example, something involving putting a giant condom on a church steeple...). And he suggested that, while the book has found an audience among students going through similar situations, those are not the people who generally fund movies.Or, perhaps they are. Miller had been able to bring together some funding, but came up $125,000 short of what was needed for the indie film production (including some well-known actors). After saying that the project was dead, some fans apparently stepped up and suggested he try to raise the missing $125,000 on Kickstarter. In the course of about a month, not only did they hit the $125,000 mark in just one week, but fans of the book continued contributing to the cause, leading them to bring in $346,000 by the time the project closed.
That's a rather stunning amount. Prior to this, I believe the largest Kickstarter project had been the famous Diaspora distributed social networking project that got tons of press for breaking $100,000. Of course, no one is suggesting that this is the way to fund all films or that this will work in every case (we've certainly seen Kickstarter projects fail at times). However, it's yet another example of how really committed and engaged fans can make things happen where the old gatekeepers stood in the way.
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Filed Under: blue like jazz, donald miller, fan funding, funding, movies
Companies: kickstarter
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Pshaw
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Re: Pshaw
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PLEASE THINK OF THE BIG LABEL EXECS!!!
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How big is the religion/belief factor?
I'd wager that we'll see the largest "donation" oriented activities being successful in more situations like this where a bit of religious fervor is involved, regardless of it being a traditional or a modern religion such as this one. Not to discount the merits of this of course. I'm only suggesting that due to the history/upbringing of these individuals there's already a solid connection between "what I believe in" and "donate money towards that". And Mr. Miller is clearly connecting at a deep level with what they believe in.
Then again, we can see the exact same phenomena in activities like the previous "Ron Paul Moneybombs". Perhaps a different sort of religion, but fervor and connecting on a deep level with beliefs nonetheless.
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Re: How big is the religion/belief factor?
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Re: Re: How big is the religion/belief factor?
Believers (those who fervently believe their particular shared delusion is a fact) scare the crap out of me for exactly that reason; they're not making rational judgments based upon reality, but rather deterministic judgments based upon their false belief.
Those who know they're enjoying a shared fiction, on the other hand, I can well and truly appreciate.
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Re: Re: Re: How big is the religion/belief factor?
Ah. I see where you're coming from, but I have to disagree.
From the perspective of funding a project, the degree of belief only matters to the point where funding is made available. Sure, there are religious types who truly believe that the end times (or whatever) are here, and would conduct their lives accordingly. Likewise there a Whedonites who think that the Firefly universe should continue in any medium they can get their hands on. Now the former group certainly 'believe' in their message more than the latter group, but it's the money they can front that makes the difference in which project gets funded.
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Re: Re: How big is the religion/belief factor?
Some connections are stronger than others. Some strong connections are easier to make than others if that person already has a strong set of beliefs surrounding it and you tap into those existing beliefs.
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Hey...
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It's a great book
That said, I have no idea how they'd make it into a movie, but I'd love to see the scene where they set up the "confession booth" to confess all the sins committed by the Church over the years. That's bound to draw some comments!
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Too bad
I'm still bitter.
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Re: Too bad
It would be great to see Firefly continued somehow as an actual series, but crowd-funding wouldn't pay for one episode's worth of Nathan Fillion's bill at this point.
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Even if the first part of the statement isn't as true as it once was it still is and will be for quite some time.
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