- Self-funding -
Tailoring content to your audience
“When you are looking to create a project that is funded through grant applications or mainstream bodies it needs to be highly niched and tailored to a very specific audience who are going to eat up your content with a spoon or alternatively you have to go for the vanilla flavoured mass-audience option and in that respect you end up with a very dualistic kind of content and people tend to fall into one of the two categories.” Sarah explains this as “tailoring their creativity to the audience.” Unfortunately this does limit the creativity in some respects because you have to think about your audience before you create the creative product.
We can explore this further by looking at two areas Sarah discussed above.
Micro-communities and Mass-audience are the two general areas online content heads towards. If it is going to be niche, it cannot be mass-audience attainable. With micro-communities you are able to build a loyal following of people that will watch your content on a regular basis but deal with the risk of that community being very small, but focused. However if you go for the mass-audience option, you are guaranteed many hits and views but are those views you are looking for to sustain your work in the long run? Is loyalty out the window? Sarah has chosen a more generic feel to her website, almost semi-mass audience whereby she dances between solid and serious topics like child abuse, poverty and women rights but also focuses on upcoming musicians and the art scene here in Melbourne. Therefore, Hidden Documentary covers a wide spectrum of genres catering to a large demographic hence it’s not targeting a niche audience with her work. She explains, “When you have micro-communities, say biking communities living in rural NSW, how many people are going to want see that? But there will be a community of people who are fascinated by that content and committed to that and will create a community around that particular idea, conversely, if you want something that everyone is going to see, a universal theme say “cooking” and we se the success of the show Masterchef and that is because most people can relate to at some level. A friend of Sarah’s also a independent online content producers tailors his content to fitness buffs. This allows him to have access to the whole wide web of supporting people already with a gym membership based in Melbourne through online fitness training videos. “It’s very cleverly designed because it’s not a huge financial commitment from people and it’s scalable as he does not have to individual consult each person and in turn acts as a great platform for him to sell his personal training services,” shares Sarah.
An excellent case study demonstrating micro-communities and self funding out of your own pocket is demonstrated by a film called The Linguists which is a feature-length documentary costing about $550,000 with the help of a national grant at the later stages. Seth Kramer had more than 14 years of filmmaking experience when he began trying to raise funds for his documentary. Many foundations and grants found the subject matter too narrow and lacked a guaranteed audience. According to Seth, “Nobody is going watch a movie about languages, they (grant organisations) told us, it’s just not going to happen and it was extremely difficult because nobody thought the film was going to be interesting,” (2009) He pushed on in search for the last whisper of a dying language and the crew spent money out of their own pockets to travel across the country, talking to groups that had a stake in the issue. “The community of linguists getting behind this was really helpful in raising the money,” he said.
“Eventually, they self-funded a trip to Siberia where they shot almost 20 percent of the film, using not more than $10,000. Then they used that footage to put together a reel, which they included as part of a package sent to the National Science Foundation, in hopes of getting a grant.” (Independent Magazine, 2009) This goes back to the first point Sarah made, “When you start something that you don’t have credibility behind to get funding, then when you start, you can gain funding.” This acts like a Catch 22 in many similar cases. Seth admits that it is probably unlikely for first-time filmmakers to get this kind of grant, “It’s different to make these movies and write these grants when you don’t have a track record of getting your work seen.” Seth suggests a great way to work with micro-communities building on the loyal group of followers and in some lucky cases, get the word out for you about this niche interest due to the loyalty fostered in a micro-community, which can be provided to an independent content producer. “You can find people that are supportive of your issue to hit the pavement for you and spread the word about the piece, so it’s a good idea to build community support,” he said. The Linguists was accepted into the Sundance Film Festival, making it the first National Science Foundation-funded film to be selected for Sundance.
Check out the trailer on their website: http://www.thelinguists.com/
We can explore this further by looking at two areas Sarah discussed above.
Micro-communities and Mass-audience are the two general areas online content heads towards. If it is going to be niche, it cannot be mass-audience attainable. With micro-communities you are able to build a loyal following of people that will watch your content on a regular basis but deal with the risk of that community being very small, but focused. However if you go for the mass-audience option, you are guaranteed many hits and views but are those views you are looking for to sustain your work in the long run? Is loyalty out the window? Sarah has chosen a more generic feel to her website, almost semi-mass audience whereby she dances between solid and serious topics like child abuse, poverty and women rights but also focuses on upcoming musicians and the art scene here in Melbourne. Therefore, Hidden Documentary covers a wide spectrum of genres catering to a large demographic hence it’s not targeting a niche audience with her work. She explains, “When you have micro-communities, say biking communities living in rural NSW, how many people are going to want see that? But there will be a community of people who are fascinated by that content and committed to that and will create a community around that particular idea, conversely, if you want something that everyone is going to see, a universal theme say “cooking” and we se the success of the show Masterchef and that is because most people can relate to at some level. A friend of Sarah’s also a independent online content producers tailors his content to fitness buffs. This allows him to have access to the whole wide web of supporting people already with a gym membership based in Melbourne through online fitness training videos. “It’s very cleverly designed because it’s not a huge financial commitment from people and it’s scalable as he does not have to individual consult each person and in turn acts as a great platform for him to sell his personal training services,” shares Sarah.
An excellent case study demonstrating micro-communities and self funding out of your own pocket is demonstrated by a film called The Linguists which is a feature-length documentary costing about $550,000 with the help of a national grant at the later stages. Seth Kramer had more than 14 years of filmmaking experience when he began trying to raise funds for his documentary. Many foundations and grants found the subject matter too narrow and lacked a guaranteed audience. According to Seth, “Nobody is going watch a movie about languages, they (grant organisations) told us, it’s just not going to happen and it was extremely difficult because nobody thought the film was going to be interesting,” (2009) He pushed on in search for the last whisper of a dying language and the crew spent money out of their own pockets to travel across the country, talking to groups that had a stake in the issue. “The community of linguists getting behind this was really helpful in raising the money,” he said.
“Eventually, they self-funded a trip to Siberia where they shot almost 20 percent of the film, using not more than $10,000. Then they used that footage to put together a reel, which they included as part of a package sent to the National Science Foundation, in hopes of getting a grant.” (Independent Magazine, 2009) This goes back to the first point Sarah made, “When you start something that you don’t have credibility behind to get funding, then when you start, you can gain funding.” This acts like a Catch 22 in many similar cases. Seth admits that it is probably unlikely for first-time filmmakers to get this kind of grant, “It’s different to make these movies and write these grants when you don’t have a track record of getting your work seen.” Seth suggests a great way to work with micro-communities building on the loyal group of followers and in some lucky cases, get the word out for you about this niche interest due to the loyalty fostered in a micro-community, which can be provided to an independent content producer. “You can find people that are supportive of your issue to hit the pavement for you and spread the word about the piece, so it’s a good idea to build community support,” he said. The Linguists was accepted into the Sundance Film Festival, making it the first National Science Foundation-funded film to be selected for Sundance.
Check out the trailer on their website: http://www.thelinguists.com/
The Linguists is an independent 2008 American documentary film produced by Ironbound Films about language extinctionand language documentation. It follows two linguists, Greg Anderson of the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages[2] and David Harrison of Swarthmore College,[3] as they travel around the world to collect recordings of some of the last speakers of three moribund (dying) languages: Chulym in Siberia; Sora in Orissa, India; and Kallawaya in Bolivia
Since Sarah works on her own without a crew maintaining her website, she could only pocket her own money and save what she knew she could put aside from the day job. Things that you cannot do instantly and have to work piece by piece to obtain can limit the professional production side of things greatly. Sarah shares a similar experience with regards to the lack of funding not allowing an idea to take off and she deeply regrets it till this day. “When you’re working in the creative field you’re always ambitious and you are ambitious with your creativity so there are projects I have considered, particularly travel because I have a Spanish language background so I would like to travel and do some films in Latin America and doing that is quite limited because of the travel expenses involved and secondarily the expense of the equipment.”
Another case study of a similar experience is a Film called A Good Day To Be Black and Sexy costing about $100,000 by methods of Self-funding and a private investor. Dennis Dorch graduated from Loyola Marymount in 1996 with a series of short films under his belt. Ten years later and script in hand Dorch attempted to raise money for the film through grant research and looking around for different investors. He encountered the same problem as Sarah and Seth. After two weeks, he gave up, finding it difficult to get people to invest in such an out-of-the-box film with only a script to pitch with. “I couldn’t raise money because it was my first feature, and I couldn’t make a film because I didn’t have the money,” he said. “It’s the chicken before the egg thing.” (Independent Mgazine, 2007) So what does a desperate script-holding independent film-maker do? He withdrew more than $65,000 in equity out of his house and started production on his first feature film. “People laughed at me,” he said. His film made it to the Austin Film Festival and will screen at the upcoming AFI Festival in Hollywood California this November. The completion of his film was credited greatly to “a couple took an interest in the film, investing $10,000 towards the post-production and legal costs.”
Check out their website: http://www.theblackandsexymovie.com/
Full article of both case studies: http://www.independent-magazine.org/08/10/money-issues-funding-independent-film
Another case study of a similar experience is a Film called A Good Day To Be Black and Sexy costing about $100,000 by methods of Self-funding and a private investor. Dennis Dorch graduated from Loyola Marymount in 1996 with a series of short films under his belt. Ten years later and script in hand Dorch attempted to raise money for the film through grant research and looking around for different investors. He encountered the same problem as Sarah and Seth. After two weeks, he gave up, finding it difficult to get people to invest in such an out-of-the-box film with only a script to pitch with. “I couldn’t raise money because it was my first feature, and I couldn’t make a film because I didn’t have the money,” he said. “It’s the chicken before the egg thing.” (Independent Mgazine, 2007) So what does a desperate script-holding independent film-maker do? He withdrew more than $65,000 in equity out of his house and started production on his first feature film. “People laughed at me,” he said. His film made it to the Austin Film Festival and will screen at the upcoming AFI Festival in Hollywood California this November. The completion of his film was credited greatly to “a couple took an interest in the film, investing $10,000 towards the post-production and legal costs.”
Check out their website: http://www.theblackandsexymovie.com/
Full article of both case studies: http://www.independent-magazine.org/08/10/money-issues-funding-independent-film
Writer/director/editor Dennis Dortch explores the subject of sexuality and relationships within the black community in this collection of six vignettes set in Los Angeles and designed to shatter stereotypes about black sexuality. From the woman determined to get hers first to the curious teenager who finds herself in a questionable situation and the boy who becomes stifled by interracial taboos, Dortch's film doesn't shy away from the more controversial aspects of contemporary sexuality.