I want to start an open source short film project, and would like to hear some opinions from you. How would you approach the financial side of it? So the time you spent during this project is covered. Do you think kickstarter.com is a suitable choice? They have already a good reputation, I think it would be difficult do the fundig via pre-orders or donations from the projects homepage.
And (given a proper preproduction, enough infos and the security the project will be done), how much funding would be desirable? Since I have not yet any reputation, it will be difficult to find bigger companies as sponsors, so I think the only choice I have is some sort of micro-financing.
Would you participate in the funding of a well-prepared open source project? (Funding means any amount of money, starting from 5$) In return, there would be a “thankyou” depending on the amount, ranging from for example the name in the credits to a producers credit and a ready DVD-package.
I don’t know if this is very attractive for potential funders, since all source files will be available for free anyway when the project is finished. What do you think?
I think first of all you should do a mini project to get your reputation and then focus on this one, maybe then you will have more people that would want to sponsor you. The mini project would have a 0 budget so you will have to work your way through that.
If you are a good team leader and can do 3d modelling or animation, then it is easy to create a group and people could work for free on the project. you may beable to make money of this and then move on to the next project.
I will be happy to help you. just drop me a PM or email me at: [email protected]
I think I’m gonna release some work by me to build some kind of reputation. Then complete the preproduction phase (script, concept art, maybe 2D animatic), and introduce the project here. Hopefully I will find some helping hands. As soon as this is the case, I’ll put the project on kickstarter.com, and hope for some response (by spreading the word by teammembers and myself). We’ll see if this works out
Hi Fuzzy,
I think your project is not realistic at all for the moment. I’ve been part of several opened projects (from collaborative short animations to games) and they all failed.
It is really hard to work on a collaborative project (harder if you work on the Internet and don’t see your workmates) when people do this job during their spare time, when everyone wants to give their opinion, impose their model, when there’s no strong leader to show the way to go.
You should try instead to do your own little project, see how difficult it is, if you are talented and succeed, then maybe people will donate for your next project, but before that you got to have something to show to be able to raise funds.
I must agreed with most of the comments. Your idea is totally unrealistic. Before even getting collaborative work you must show that you are able to model very well or at least to animate quite good. Much less trying to raise funds.
I would recommend you to create your own short ( may be 5 minutes ) on your own, or with the help of some close friends, set a website, broadcast your film, then if your result is convincing you might get your hands on something. I bet you that after creating your own film you are going to reformulate your ideas. It takes lots of time, talent, expertise to make a profitable short.
Also I searched all your posts here, there is nothing at all related to making movies, no modeling, no animations, no nothing. So what makes you think that you are able to raise money to create a short?
Thanks for your comments. I agree that there ain’t no reputation yet that I’ve built for myself. The plan I got now is: start the short film project on my own, create a website/blog for it, show the progress there and maybe (if it gathers enough interest) ask for help creating certain models for example. So not really a collaborative effort from start to end, but maybe with a little input from the community if all goes well. Then see how the whole thing is received, and take that as a starting point for other efforts.
What I certainly would like to do is give the community something back in return for the great discussions, which helped me countless times (even if I was not the person who asked the question) - not to mention making all this possible by releasing and developing Blender on a free basis. So I’ll look for a way to release the project files under an acceptable license, and show the things I’ve learned and struggled with in the process in the accompanying blog and/or an ebook (some kind of well documented making-of, the kind that I’d like to read).
