About Time: You Started CrowdfundingBy Ashon Spooner

The BFI London Film Festival recently finished up another year. The films garnering the hype and ticket sales are, as usual, the big studio numbers like Brad Pitt’s wartime epic Fury, or Wild starring Reese Witherspoon.

Besides one or two small films by local London filmmakers, like Rebecca Jones’ Honeytrap, most of the 248 films showing at the festival are films with lots of money behind them. The same goes for the films we see at the local cinema or can download on Netflix and iTunes. It’s pretty rare that we’ll stumble across an unknown indie gem.

Enter, crowdfunding.

Crowdfunding: What?

Independent filmmakers and even the ‘big guys’ are taking matters into their own hands and turning to crowdfunding to get their films made and distributed. They’ll announce their upcoming film on a crowdfunding platform, and ask the world to come and fund either the pre or post-production, or the distribution of the film. People will donate ten or twenty pounds in return for a chance to be involved in the film in some way. There are large ‘catch all’ platforms such as Indiegogo and Kickstarter, and more niche platforms such as Phundee, which is just for arts and entertainment crowdfunding.

Crowdfunding: Who?

You might be surprised to hear who in the film industry is crowdfunding. In the last few years, Martin Scorcese, Zac Braff and Woody Allen have turned to the public to be able to get their projects off the ground. Even they know the big studios won’t be willing or able to fund their more artistic or personal ‘pet’ film projects. Martin Scorcese for example recently got the public to crowdfund a film about a late film critic who had been a great inspiration to him. Not only did the audience give him money, but they gave him feedback along the way, so the potential audience were intrinsically involved in his film.

A film currently raising funds on Phundee (the new crowdfunding platform for film and 8 other categories of the arts) is ‘Lead me to the Dark’. It’s a unique story-led ‘family horror’ film by a well-established independent film producer called Steven Smith, who worked on films such as Four Weddings and a Funeral. He knows how expensive and prohibitive it is to get films off the ground – it costs £1,000 alone just to get the required BBFC classification done on a film, and it’s for reasons like this that many brilliant and inventive films like this are made, but never shown and released.

Crowdfunding: Why?

Since the dawn of the ‘talkie’ the big studios have tightly controlled the film industry. But as one independent filmmaker Steven Smith says, the problem seems to be magnified now: ‘There’s never been so much rubbish out there being watched, and brilliant stuff being made but not distributed and therefore never seen.

Well-known British actor Jimmy Akingbola (Rev, Holby City) is behind another Autumn London film festival, The Triforce Short film festival (November 22nd at BAFTA: www.tfsff.triforcepromotions.co.uk). He’s also a crowdfunding mentor for Phundee. He’s hoping that many of the short films in the festival will be crowdfunded ones:

“I want to introduce Phundee to our TriForce creative network so our filmmakers can take advantage of all the great opportunities Phundee can offer them. Hopefully some of the short films submitted for next year’s festival will have been funded via crowdfunding.”

There’s very little not to love. It’s about bringing independent, raw, quality films to the forefront. Let’s go.

Article authored by Ashon Spooner, Founder, along with Colin Macgregor, of Phundee, a newly-launched crowdfunding site for film and the arts, helping future artists fund their projects and careers.