Why Did Our Kickstarter Fail? What Must We Do Better? (pt. 2)
This is part 2 of our Kickstarter campaign review. We attempted to raise our entire budget, $50,000 for the "The Coward", purely through crowdfunding via the Kickstarter.com service but were unsuccessful. This series of posts examines the how and why of why we failed. It will conclude with lessons learned and plans for moving forward.
- DESCRIPTION pt. 1
- DESCRIPTION pt. 2 (this post)
- ANALYSIS
- REVIEW
- LESSONS LEARNED
DESCRIPTION, Pt. 2
In the initial post I outlined the basics of our crowdfunding campaign, which service we used and why. In this post I will go a little deeper into the structure and strategy of the campaign.
The production cut-off for this project in 2023 was late September. This was due to two primary and mutually linked concerns - budget and daylight. After Sept 30th the amount of daylight available to shoot without additional lights can drop drastically. With an overcast day we could be looking at max 8 shooting hours per day.
LIGHTING WOES
To film past 7:00 PM would require additional lighting. Sunset is not a simple linear descent into darkness, it curves down; there's a "knee" in the curve. This is the point where you seemingly suddenly go from being able to see clearly to needing a light - and another light... and another. Now you're in pitch darkness creating full 'Night For Day', or N4D.
D4D? D4N?? N4N?!? N4D!?!?
- D4D - This is an on-set acronym for Day For(4) Day, sometimes written as DFD or DfD. This is when a scene that is written for daytime will be shot in real daylight. We don't usually note this unless it is a change from a previously intended lighting approach (e.g. we were going to shoot in night time, see below) or the scene as now written has changed from night into day. It is also often noted on the shoot schedule when the previous scene in our shooting order for that day was a different time of day (again, e.g. night). That is because it implies removing or adjusting lighting set ups from Night into Day, for example removing tenting around windows.
- D4N - Day For Night. This is the mechanical darkening of a scene, during daytime, so that it feels like night time. The intention is to remove or control the natural sunlight at the actual shooting time of day in favour of a later-in-the-day "feel" - evening, twilight or full night time. It still involves lighting (because no light = no image) but in a specific way, e.g. moonlight or magic hour/twilight.
- N4N - Night For Night. The scene is set at night and we will shoot it at night, usually implying full night.
- N4D - Night For Day - this is a big one, as we must provide full daylight at a physical time of day when there is absolutely none. Also, any light around (eg street lamps) is useless and adds even more work because it does not look like sunlight. This is the direct opposite of D4N.
- Incidentally, I suspect the number 4 is used instead of the letter F/f to make the lighting note stand out on a page. It reads "wrong" so we notice it.
N4D This involves lighting the scene well enough so that it reads as daytime to the camera. But what about the background - trees, fields, etc? How do you make those appear in daylight? Well, you can't, it's as simple as that (unless you're Stanley Kubrick with Bill Gates' chequing account!).
So you go in close, shooting extreme close-ups, inserts on props/hand actions, etc. You limit the scope of the shot to minimize the amount/range of lighting required. But now you need to get your artificial daylight to match with what you previously shot in natural daylight. Guess you need another light - and another and another... Where the heck is Bill Gates when you need him?
This process is doable but it is far from ideal. A situation like this could destroy our small budget in a matter of hours with cost over-runs, with both the cast ($) and crew ($$) are going into overtime. Everything still needs to go back onto the trucks, in darkness (so it takes longer) and now there's more of it to go back. This puts the crew in yet more OT ($$$!).
Your Production Manager, who was a jolly little fellow at Lunchtime, is now Not A Happy Hobbit.
TL;DR - shooting unplanned into a Night-4-Day situation is a financial Nightmare On Elm St.
So Why shoot In September At All?
This project has been going on for years, in fits and starts. In 2022 I came close to actually startingproduction but as Director I wasn't ready and did not have a Producer. In 2023 I was much more ready but by the time Lola Gafaar came on as Producer we were already into summer. Still, I did not want to wait another year so I pressed the red GO! button and off we went - September, here we come.
This leads back into our budget and crowdfunding campaign.
Working back from late September I reckoned that Sept 17th could be the absolute latest our Kickstarter could run. Thirty days back from that gave August 17th as a Kickstarter start date. I had done a bunch of research on Kickstarter and crowdfunding in general, I took over the Kickstarter campaign. This had benefits and drawbacks but those are for a later post. Lola and I figured a 30 day run was doable, even if the requested amount was quite high. More on that budget number in a later post.
BUILDING THE CAMPAIGN - KICKSTARTER
The Kickstarter page was built fairly quickly and easily enough. It re-used a lot of text and visuals from this website. I created and filled out the rewards, structuring them to avoid sending physical rewards until the upper tiers ($500+). Connecting the page to Google Analytics and Facebook was straightforward and error-less.
I accounted for the "mid-campaign" slump with a costumes session for the cast combined with a photo Stills session. This would generate a fresh batch of imagery to push into the Kickstarter. I wrote a fun script for the video on the Kickstarter page. I also made plans for a series of recorded interviews with the cast and creative team; I would export these as both video on youtube and podcast episodes. I had a large list (500+) of potential contacts to reach out to as the campaign moved along. Finally, I had a Mailchimp campaign ready.
BUILDING THE CAMPAIGN - SOCIAL MEDIA & ADVERTISING
I was already familiar with Facebook ads from helping my lovely wife Mari Rozyn with her own business, JustBeCooking.com. Shameless plug - Mari offers culturally specific meal kits called Culture Boxes. They're delicious, unique and very authentic!. I had a budget of about $300 for FB ads, with the various ads themselves somewhat built out. The intention was to have 2-3 FB campaigns focused on different aspects of the film, audiences and types of adverts. As the campaign moved along I would hone in on what worked best. I would also boost any individual posts that gained traction.
I was not very familiar with Instagram ads however. I opted to simply boost posts that got some attention, rather than a deliberate, built out campaign.
BUFFER
We used www.Buffer.com as an excellent social media collation service. This is a online service where you can manage multiple social accounts all in one go. There are many of these platforms (Hootsuite, Sprout Social, etc). You can create campaigns in advance, stagger postings to specific platforms, schedule months in advance and keep track of everything with a very clear and easy-to-use interface. Buffer was markedly cheaper than the agency-oriented alternatives without sacrificing functionality or usability. I found it critical in managing the social media workload. I'm learning more about Buffer each day and will be vital for our second attempt at funding The Coward.
Within Buffer I connected my personal Facebook (& Instagram) and LinkedIn profiles, our facebook page for The Coward itself as well as a Youtube channel. This website was also connected but I didn't intend to blog during the campaign.
I felt fairly prepared, albeit with several red flags. There was no poster, no original visuals to start with (I used MidJourney AI for many initial images on this website), no video ready for the Kickstarter launch and no mailing list to speak of.
I thought I could make up the missing elements as we moved forward, no hay problema, señor!
Yeah - but no...