While Hollywood insiders talk about which big-budget studio movies made and lost the most money in 2013, there's a far more interesting number to consider: 3,000,000. That’s how many people backed crowdfunding projects for a total of $481,788,567 last year -- and that's on Kickstarter alone.
During the last 12 months, "crowdfunding" entered the popular lexicon as it expanded from funding DIY endeavors to multimillion-dollar celebrity projects and became one of the most exciting -- and polarizing -- developments in pop culture.
Blame it on Rob Thomas. In March, the Veronica Mars creator took to Kickstarter to fund a film version of his sleuthing teen television crime-drama, which had been canceled in 2007. Thomas was ready to make the film, but needed the kindness (and dollars) of the series’ devoted fans to make it a reality. His goal was to raise $2 million, which could be pledged $1 at a time.
The production had the cash it needed within 11 hours. When the campaign ended 30 days later, The Veronica Mars Movie Kickstarter had raised $5.7 million from over 90,000 backers -- more than a quarter of whom had given $25 or less.
"It's like the old Steve Martin joke: You want to know how to be a millionaire and never pay taxes? First, get a million dollars," Thomas told WIRED. "In our case, it was: First, start with a title that people have been clamoring to see. If I'd gone on Kickstarter and said, 'Hey gang, I've got this brand new idea that I need $2 million to film,' we would've heard the sound of crickets."
Other Hollywood crowdfunding projects haven't enjoyed the same success. Just look at Melissa Joan Hart. One day before the Veronica Mars Kickstarter campaign expired, the former Sabrina, the Teenage Witch star attempted to raise $2 million for Darci’s Walk of Shame, a film that would give Hart "the chance to once again be in a fun and hilarious rom-com much like Drive Me Crazy... only all grown up and having a roll in the hay with the hot actors in the film!" At least the film was appropriately titled; the following month, having raised just $51,605 from 315 backers, Hart put the kibosh on the project.
"The whole thing is a gamble," Hart told The Los Angeles Times in May. "What we failed to do was let the fans know exactly what the project was. If we were to go back, what I would do is either shoot five minutes of the movie or have a full cast. We thought we could do it based on 'Hey, here's Melissa. You've liked what she's done, check out what she's going to do next.'"
Zach Braff must have been taking notes. In April, the former Scrubs star launched a $2 million Kickstarter campaign for a film called Wish I Was Here. In order to lure backers, Braff leveraged the success of his 2004 directorial debut, Garden State, even shooting his video plea for funding with a Garden State poster prominently displayed in the background.
But as the pledges poured in -- more than 46,000 pledges totaling more than $3 million -- so did the backlash. Where the success of the Veronica Mars campaign seemed to be about satisfying the fans of a beloved but prematurely cancelled television series, Braff’s decision to crowdfund a film in order to maintain creative control didn’t sit well with everyone.
Braff later admitted in an interview with the Los Angeles Times that the negative response had blindsided him. "I guess I was a little naive about this coming in," he said. "I didn't think that people would care that much about a little movie, which I was wrong about. But I can’t say I totally get it. It's not like I've taken over Kickstarter."
>"If I'd gone on Kickstarter and said, 'Hey gang, I've got this brand new idea that I need $2 million to film,' we would've heard the sound of crickets."
Rob Thomas
If Thomas brought "crowdfunding" into the popular lexicon and Braff turned it into a David vs. Goliath debate, the argument about whether the scrappy start-up artists were being supplanted by A-list projects reached fever pitch on July 22, when Spike Lee promised "The Newest Hottest Spike Lee Joint" in exchange for $1,250,000 on Kickstarter.
"There is no question that all boats rise with the tide and with high-profile creatives embracing crowdfunding. It brings new eyes to other projects on the sites that might not otherwise get the exposure," said producer Braxton Pope, who crowdfunded $100,000 for his film The Canyons. "I do think, though, that these sites work best as financial/community engines for independent projects that couldn’t raise the money traditionally or, if they could, wouldn’t have the creative autonomy to make their project the way they want."
The criticism became so loud that Kickstarter’s co-founders posted a message on the company's blog titled "The Truth About Spike Lee and Kickstarter," publicly explaining the economics of crowdfunding and the benefits of having celebrities like Lee participate in the process.
"Kickstarter is not a zero-sum game where projects compete for pledges," it read. "All projects benefit from the network effect of a growing Kickstarter ecosystem." And they had the numbers to back it up, including the statistic that 47 percent of the individuals who backed Lee’s film were new to Kickstarter. They called Lee, Thomas, and Braff’s campaigns, collectively, "a windfall for creators. Those projects brought thousands of new people to Kickstarter who have since pledged more than $1 million to 6,000 other projects."
By the end of 2013, Kickstarter successfully funded almost 20,000 film projects from more than 3 million backers to the tune of $481,788,567 in total pledges. The numbers are impressive, sure, but to the company’s executives, crowdfunding is as much an exercise in cultural community-building as it is fundraising.
"The creative freedom and sense of community that come along with bringing new ideas to life on Kickstarter is something that emerging and established artists enjoy alike," said Kickstarter spokesperson Justin Kazmark. "It’s a way create on your own terms, build community, and take creative risks. For audiences, it’s a meaningful entry point into the story behind the project and a way to voice the kind of culture you want to see exist."
The Second Wave of Crowdfunding
As 2013 continued, the successes of Thomas, Braff and Lee bolstered other would-be creators, including Criminal Minds star Shemar Moore. Last June, he set up an Indiegogo page for The Bounce Back, a romantic comedy in which he will star and produce. In less than eight weeks, he had raised almost $640,000. "The whole process was new to me," admits Moore. "I didn’t really know if we had a shot or how it worked. But then I started to understand the concept, that this is the way the film business is now progressing, and you can take control of your own content and create stories that you want to tell."
Films aren’t the only projects that benefit from crowdfunding. In June, '90s hitmakers Toad the Wet Sprocket announced New Constellation, the band's first album in 16 years, with a $50,000 Kickstarter campaign. Two months later, they had exceeded their goal five times over.
"Seeing the project exceed the initial goal by so much helped to create a momentum that just kept building," said singer Glen Phillips. "Also, our fan base has been very loyal; we weren’t the cool kids when we first came out, and we still aren’t. The only reason to be into us is that the music does something for you. Not being tied to fashion has made it so that those who’ve stuck with us are in it for the long haul."
This second wave of crowdfunding projects has had its share of failures, too. Lil Wayne raised only $62,596 of his $200,000 goal to turn his Miami-based after-school program, The Motivational Edge, into a national affair. Girls star Zosia Mamet couldn’t even drum up 10 percent of the $32,000 she and her sister (aka The Cabin Sisters) needed to produce a music video for their "unique brand of folk via body percussion, banjo, and harmonies."
After raising just 88 percent of his $30,000 Indiegogo goal in April for his multimedia performance art piece BIRDSHIT, James Franco jumped back into the crowdfunding fray in June to give three unknown filmmakers a chance to adapt a trio of stories from his Palo Alto collection. Yet again, his fundraising efforts fell short, with just $327,929 collected of the $500,000 he sought.
>"What we are guinea-pigging is a model that would allow studios the confidence to make smaller movies."
Rob Thomas
"I read some blog complaining that all people have to do now is go online and ask for money," said Thomas. "I wish it were that easy. I've never worked harder on anything. Getting this Kickstarter campaign off the ground took a year and a half. From the time I first proposed the idea to Warner Bros. until the last poster is shipped, three years will have passed. That's three years of trying to convince the studio of the project's merits, then soliciting backers and then trying to make sure backers are happy. You have to have a high level of passion to go this route."
Thomas also says the unprecedented success he many other crowdfunders experienced in 2013 can only mean good things for the future of studio filmmaking.
"There used to be a lot more movies made in the $2 million to $10 million price range, but the economics of the business has studios betting mostly on bigger movies," said Thomas. "What we are guinea-pigging is a model that would allow studios the confidence to make smaller movies. If they can be confident the audience is out there and enthusiastic, we might actually see more smaller budget films. That seems like a good thing to me.”
Hal Hartley, a significant figure in the ’80s and ’90s American indie film scene who raised nearly $400,000 on Kickstarter for his new film, Ned Rifle, doesn’t see crowdfunding as an either/or proposition. "I don't think of it as an 'indie thing,'" said Hartley. "I think it should be a way of doing business for anyone. It's mercantilism made (finally) plausible by Internet technology; mercantilism being defined as a belief in fair trade. There's no speculation. It's not, in that sense, capitalism."
Some, including Braff, speculate that it could easily transform from a rewards-based system to something more akin to the stock market, however. "No one knows exactly how it will turn out," Braff told the Los Angeles Times. "But I do think one day people will be able to get equity in a project like this. They’ll be able to invest in a movie like a stock. It's not legal yet. But there are some very smart people, people a lot smarter than me, figuring out the legalities. And anyone watching this knows that's where it's going."
In the meantime, backers and detractors alike will get a chance to see the finished efforts of some of 2013’s biggest crowdfunding success stories in the very near future. Braff’s Wish I Was Here premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this past weekend, with a theatrical run set for September. Veronica Mars, which recently debuted its first trailer, will hit theaters on March 14th.