Crowdfunding: A Survivor’s Tale

After 45 days, life doing its life thing (happening while you’re busy making other plans), loads of self-revelations, interviews, descents into near-insanity, burn-out, never wanting to talk about the project again, and ultimately, finding and interacting with a passionate and excited audience, the Whiz!Bam!Pow! IndieGoGo campaign came to an end at 3AM on Sunday, December 5. We banked $3205 (soon to be less taxes and fees) of our $15,000 goal, are donating over 100 comic books to the Comic Book Connection Initiative, and are putting the comic book and radio shows (slightly modified) into production.

Now, the ultimate question: would I ever crowdfund again?

Only as a last resort.

I never set out to reach the $15,000 goal. I set out to build a passionate and engaged audience, and we did it. Articles were written in support, people tweeted the project in my absence, lots of referring going on, all that. And it was a great thing. But I will never crowdfund again (unless it is absolutely necessary. I’m sort of the guy who is given a gun and asked if he will use it. My response: only as a last resort).

By its nature, crowdfunding is a wonderful concept. The problem with it is that it requires so much effort that the act of actually making something is nearly impossible. Couple that with a horrific economy, a sense of “the well’s run dry,” and a ridiculously unbalanced risk vs. reward assessment, and I can only come to the conclusion that “no, crowdfunding will not save independent film.”  It’s just another tool. Some use it better than others.

What would I have done differently?

I tend to have a penchant for secrecy that crowdfunding doesn’t reward. I don’t mind revealing my methods, but I despise revealing my results until they’re in the format I intend. It’s akin to a chef having his signature meal revealed as a frozen food entree before being unveiled in the restaurant.

My penchant for secrecy was a disservice to the project in the crowdfunding campaign. But, it was necessary to maintain the “discovery” aspect of the project that is so integral to a transmedia experience. It was a major catch-22.

“Pitching” a transmedia project is not like pitching a film. There is no set way to do it. I faltered and flubbed my way around a pitch for the project throughout the early days of the campaign, even though I had worked on it for months – years – prior. The pitch was ever-evolving; the message, ever-evolving. Finally, the ultimate last act was the revelation of the story of the feature film in Volume Two, which, while a necessary act to reveal the connections between the disparate pieces, was so far outside of my comfort zone that I realized I wouldn’t reveal any more. I had given all I could, and would give no more.

The loss of my partner-in-crime, Paul, to an understandably earth-shattering personal family crisis (he’s back now and everything’s groovy)  in the early days of the campaign was the single greatest defeat the campaign experienced. When we set out on this campaign, it was thought that we would both be in this together, fighting the good fight throughout.

That was not, unfortunately, to be the case. But, the show had to go on, for the worse.

As I dealt with doing everything myself, I became much less my normal self, and found myself in danger of losing the one person who had always been with me through the “Great Unpaid” (I lost my job nearly one year ago on December 11, 2009) – myself. The campaign suffered for it. So did my creative output and personal life.

Fortunately, I’m a tough sonuvabitch, and I managed, after a two-day writing lockdown and cutting off all my hair, to get back to myself and finish the campaign as it needed to be finished. But it was one hell of a struggle, and my message wavered, my enthusiasm waned, and, to put it bluntly, I was fucking tired.

But, in the last week, Paul came back, and we got the campaign on track again. We raised just over a thousand in that final week.

Kinda cool.

As I said before, my goal was never to hit the $15,000 goal. I’m an optimist, not delusional. While I have laid out my issues and personal struggles during the crowdfunding process, I’m not going to leave out the good.

First, crowdfunding gets your idea out there, and tests the idea in a “real world” setting (real world being only the part of the world that actually finds your idea, either on the part of your own actions or the actions of the site you choose to release your idea on). This is the number one plus of crowdfunding. It gets your idea out into the world and gives it its first test.

The second is that it pre-builds an audience, which was my main goal. When I received messages from supporters of the campaign who could only give $10, but said they wanted to give more, and that they wanted to see this project made, that made this whole sordid tale worth it.  That gave me the strength to keep going. $10 from someone who has very little is infinitely more sweet than $15,000 from someone with very much. That is passion. The other is an impulse buy. If this project must be built on $10 donations, then so be it. I’ll make sure every single one of those $10 donations goes as far as humanly possible.

What’s next?

That’s to be determined. We’re making the comic book (in fact, the first day off from the campaign, I finished the script), the radio shows will be slightly modified, though still kick ass.  It goes without saying that the short film and the app are not happening – for now. I’m looking into other forms of investment and funding.

And yeah, part of me sort of wishes I had funded only the comic and radio shows – but without the context of the short and the app, they wouldn’t have had the same impact.

Remember my chef analogy from earlier? The problem with crowdfunding is that it forces you to reveal things so early in the process of idea execution (the funding of it) that it’s like getting the frozen TV dinner version of a chef’s signature meal from a restaurant.

Throughout the creative process, ideas morph and change. The Short Film and App that I pitched in the campaign are no more. They are becoming something new, something exciting. Something in line with what I’ve preached for years – to use all the technology we have at our fingertips to explore new forms of storytelling, as opposed to cramming an old form into a new format.

And guess what? That’s all you’re getting out of me. The veil of secrecy returns – but the light of engagement will never dim. I’m eternally thankful to all of you for your support throughout this campaign, even when I descended into near-insanity. Without you, this project wouldn’t be where it is.

I’m looking forward to sharing more with you soon, and getting that comic and radio show stuff into your hands. This is just the beginning of Whiz!Bam!Pow! and we’re just getting warmed up.

This project, like the Sentinel, is going to take to the sky and soar. And I can’t wait to bring you along for the ride.