Education
Education For Every Step Of Your Creative Journey
July 14, 2020
Crowdfunding to Build Independence: Online Workshop
Essential Education
Panels and conversations about the many stages within the Creator Journey.
Creative Sustainability Series: Live streamed sessions with well-known industry experts who share their experiences and dig into the very real challenges Creators are facing right now. This series is an effort to provide access to Creators of all mediums to inspire them to build a truly independent, sustainable creative career.
Lunch & Learns: Weekly midday sessions that offer conversations with emerging Creators as well as practical tips for your creative projects from building an email list to designing events that help promote your crowdfunding campaign.
Creative Ideation
Navigating the idea-building stage
- Cracking Your Project (In Quarantine) with Mark Duplass
- Finished in Four Screenwriting Challenge with John Ridley
- A Step-by-Step Roadmap to the Draw of Comics with Erika Alexander
Setting the Culture
How to shape your project and your collaborators with equity and inclusion in mind
- Ethical Filmmaking: Tools for Creating Inclusive Film Sets
- Pulling Others Up By Your Bootstraps: A Guide to Helping Sistahs
- Top 5 Takeaways from Family Meal (A Conversation on Anti-Asian racism during COVID-19)
- The Mission Statement: How Your Art Moves the Culture Forward
- A Feminist Way to Work
- Moving Forward After Weinstein: How to Build a Better Culture
- Why It's Time to Disable Diversity Efforts
- Meena Ramamurthy on Increasing Representation
- Diversity with a Capital D
- 3 Simple Tips to Increase Gender Parity in Your Films
Getting your Legal Ducks in a Row
Note: we are not lawyers or legal experts. When in doubt, ask someone who is!
- Keep it Clean: Chain of Title
- Negotiating the Location Agreement
- Protecting the project when working with partners
- Mixing Business with Pleasure
- Development: Tips for Protecting Your Intellectual Property
- Development: 6 Ways to Finance Your Film
- Development: Breaking Down the Option Agreement
- Pre-Production: Contracts, Contracts, Contracts
- A Filmmaker’s Guide to Navigating the Legal Landscape
- Indie Line Producing 101
- An Overview of Insurance
- Why is 'Chain of Title' Essential for Your Movie?
- No Entertainment Lawyer? We Asked 5 Questions for You
Audience Building
Perhaps the most important place to start your journey
- Drop "donate" from your crowdfunding vocabulary
- Using Criminal Psychology to Help Build Your Audience
- Where you build, your audience will follow
- How (and Why) to Interview Your Audience Before Crowdfunding
- Building Your Email List for Your Crowdfunding Campaign... and Career
Using Social Media
The operative word here is “social;” don’t post into the void, start conversations!
- Social Media 101
- Social Media Handbook
- Using Social Media to Help Build Your Audience
- Do’s & Don’ts for Social Media
- Audience Building While Social Media Cleansing
- Advertising on Facebook
- Social Media at Your Festival Debut
- Should you have personal or project-specific social media accounts?
Pre-game Strategizing
Ready to crowdfund? Read a few of these first!
- Crowdfunding to Build Indepence Class Series
- A Killer Campaign Timeline
- Can I Crowdfund If My Friends Are Broke?
- 5 Common Crowdfunding Myths Debunked
- Raising funds for post-production
- Crowdfunding for venues and festivals
- Optimize your campaign's shareability
- The 7 Things We Look For When We Review Crowdfunding Projects
- 8 Tips to Take Away the Crowdfunding Night Terrors
- 8 Ways to Crowdfund Hard
- 9 Tips to Break Crowdfunding Records
- How To Raise Over 100% Of Your Crowdfunding Goals
Building Your Crowdfunding Page
The following gives helpful tips for best practices with each section of your crowdfunding page. Feel free to read them all or go directly to the section where you could use some extra help.
Pitch Video
- Making a Perfect Pitch Video
- Our Favorite Pitch Videos of 2019 Part I
- Our Favorite Pitch Videos of 2019 Part II
- Favorite Pitch Videos of 2018
- 2018 Pitch Video Standouts Part I
- 2018 Pitch Video Standouts Part II
- 2017 Pitch Video Standouts
Mission Statement
- The Mission Statement: How Your Art Moves the Culture Forward
- 8 Great Inclusion Statements (the Mission Statement’s precursor)
Wishlist
Story
Incentives
- Finding the Perfect Incentive by Asking Your Crowd
- Aligning Your Incentives with Your Career Level
- The Elusive $25 Incentive
- Our Favorite Incentives of 2017
- Ten Incredible Incentive Ideas
Ready, Set, LAUNCH!
Tips for Creators who are actively campaigning
- Maintaining Momentum During Crowdfunding
- Tech Tools for Crowdfunding
- Writing Great Crowdfunding Emails
- Using Google Analytics for More Data on Your Campaign
- Navigating the Data in Your Dashboard
- What to do with your data
- How to Use Social Media to Tell Your Campaign's Story
- Motivating Your Teammates During Crowdfunding
- Using Updates to Reach Your Crowdfunding Goal
- Show Your Audience How to Follow Your Campaign
- We Hit Our Crowdfunding Goal: Now What?
- The Lowdown on Loans
- The Desperation Phase
- 4 Tactics for Engaging Your Audience When You Run out of Things to Say
- Crowdfunding for Post Production
- How To Raise More Than 100% Of Your Goal (Stretch Goals)
Hosting Crowdfunding Events
Events are an essential component to crowdfunding. With COVID-19 impacting our ability to gather, we strongly recommend offering virtual events when possible and taking safety precautions, including social distancing, for events that are live.
- Using Events (both virtual and live) To Crowdfund (video)
- How to Make Live Events Part of Your Crowdfunding Strategy
- Crowdfunding Event Ideas For Writers
- Crowdfunding Event Ideas for Filmmakers
- Crowdfunding Event Ideas for Musicians
- Crowdfunding Event Ideas for Theater Projects
- Crowdfunding Event Ideas for Podcasts & Audio Dramas
Production & Post Resources
All about actually making the thing
- Tech Tools for Production
- Connecting Audio with Audience: Tips from a Sound Engineer
- Sound Wisdom: 5 Sound Mistakes to Avoid Part I
- Sound Wisdom: 5 Sound Mistakes to Avoid Part II
- Baby Got Back(Up): Managing Your Digital Workflow
- Your Editor is Your Best Friend
- How to Get PR for Your Independent Film
Navigating the Film Festival Circuit
Pro tip: cheap, throwaway submissions add up, so be thoughtful about where you’re submitting and how it helps your creative journey
- 10 Questions Filmmakers Should Ask to Online Festivals
- Tips from Festival Programmers
- Making the Most of Film Festival Submissions
- How I Learned to Take Film Festival Rejections Less Personally
- 10 Things a Filmmaker Should Do at a Film Festival
- How to Navigate a Film Festival
- Festival Survival Guide for Filmmakers
- Social Media at Your Festival Debut
- The Art of the Q&A
Distribution & Sustainability
This isn’t just about your next project; it’s about your career
- Top 10 Takeaways from the ATL Creative Sustainability Summit
- Taking the Plunge: Tips for Getting the Most from a Self-Financed Film
- Getting into Bed with Distributors: #MyFilmMyRights
- The Top 5 Misunderstandings about Self-Distribution
Project Case Studies
Learn from the titans that came before!
- Errata - Fantasy comedy series, $8k campaign, Indianapolis, Indiana
- Distance - Romantic comedy series, $20k campaign, Los Angeles, CA.
- F*ck Yes - Romantic comedy series $20k campaign, Los Angeles, CA.
- Real Artists - Sci-fi short film, $21k campaign, San Francisco, CA.
- Bite Me: The Joyful Vampire Tour - Romantic comedy feature, $35k campaign, New York, NY.
- I Am Thalente - Documentary Feature Film, $48k campaign, Durban, South Africa
- The MisEducation of Bindu - Dramedy feature, $62k campaign, Indianapolis, IN.
