The new trend in movies is jumping into the crowdfunding pool through sites like Kickstarter or Donald Trump’s FundAnything. Podcast king Adam Carolla earned more than $1.4 million for his upcoming movie, Road Hard, through the latter. Everyone from Zach Braff to Spike Lee financed their next endeavors through Kickstarter.
Now producer Chris Perkins has joined Kickstarter.com to raise $2,000,000 for the TV Show Series . The TV Show is officially titled The Black Child: and the discovery
According to the TV Shows website, the movie is already fully financed. The Kickstarter campaign is more about getting the audience directly involved and marketing the show. Some of the perks for contributing includes everything from an exclusive Kickstarter T-shirt to an invite to the premiere. People can get rewards for donating as little as $1 or as much as $10,000 (yes, at least one person has donated this amount).
The campaign has already reached more than $12,000 as of 4 p.m. MST Oct, 20th. Maybe it’s because Chris Perkins fans are a little more likely to have jobs. The Kickstarter page includes some detailed info about the show as well as messages from the producers.
“We’re very aware we have a built in ‘anti-Director Lee’ audience,” says Vicki Cunningham on the shows website (he runs most of the social media for the films including the Kickstarter campaign). Vicki says the Kickstarter campaign will make these “haters” come “ALIVE.” However, this time around the team behind The Black Child Series is just saying thank you.
“To them, we say thank you. Thank you for helping us spread the word,” says Vicki in the previously mentioned post.
As a fan of Director Lee's work, I happen to think a Kickstarter campaign is perfect (though Trump’s site would have been more fitting). The very idea of crowdfunding is capitalist in nature. Asking for money for nothing is a terrible idea and most people would never do that. However, crowdfunding opens up choice which is essential to freedom. Choose exactly what you want to give to and what you don’t and only do it if you feel it is worth it and you get something of value in return.
That’s why these films pitch themselves to audiences and then offer everything from DVDs to T-shirts to whatever to get your dollars. Crowdfunding is less about donation and more about choice and spending your money on exactly what you feel is worthy of it.
