Let’s suppose that you have nothing to do with Blender Foundation, you are a complete nobody, without a cent in your pocket, you have no portfolio, resume, nothing at all… and you would like to have some kind of financial insurance to make your first short animation movie.
Now, to do that, there’s the know method of pre-sell DVD’s of Blender Foundation that works very well… But they are the Blender Foundation we can trust them. In other hand there’s the stranger that probably will just use the money for his vacations and nevermore deliver the DVD to the good willing buyer.
Sometime ago I thought in a more trust worthy method for this kind of pre-order DVD’s stuff.
Persons would pre-order the DVD’s, but instead of the money be cashed right away it would stay in some kind of standby during a certain period of time (the time established to make the movie), not in the buyers hand and not in the filmmaker hand.
If the movie gets done, the DVD’s would ship and the money would be cashed and if for some reason the movie didn’t get done, the money would automatically return for the buyers.
Now what good this would bring to the creators if you still didn’t have the money to make the movie? You may hask.
Well you can easly borow money from a bank if you’re sure that you’ll have it once you deliver the final product
So what you guys tink about this? Would this work? Would it be possible?
It might be possible… But of course, most people do ship the DVDs to us… I think it might be rather…well, useless? I mean, we could always file a case…Though your idea is not bad either; It will remove the hassle… hence: It could work…
So who is going to be keep an eye on the money and how is he going to be paid? Nice idea but I do not think it will work unless you have a large trusted entity who can function as fiduciary. The BF is such an entity.
BTW I do not think that a bank will give you loan just on that basis. It would probably be easier to get funding from a private investor.
Postmodern_Boy:
This isn’t a idea just for me Well, if works I also could use it :evilgrin:
… but I was thinking more in the first time directors arround there, that have a big miend and empty pockets… like me when I made Orion Tear.
musk:
Yea! That who keep a eye in the money “tiny issue”… I also still didn’t figure it out :o
Agree with the private invester sugestion.
The Blender-er:
Yes, I think everyone really only wants to make the movie and deliver it, but sometimes things don’t quite work as planed and if that time comes there’s no money to return and no movie to show.
Its a pretty dodgy idea i reckon.
Money is a difficult issue… And with all the 14 yr-olds around here (trying to make massive Zelda movies to rival Hollywood and GTA standard games etc), it could cause some major problems…
But, if the person wanting to do this had some Rep, and i mean a lot of Rep, then i see that it could be a very good idea.
I think the best way to go about it though, is to do something impressive to prove yourself (ie Orion Tear) and then start working on the next animation/game. Then, start building up some hype, and when the project is well underway (ie around half way completed) start selling pre-order Dvds. So at that stage, you would certainly have some interest, and something to show that your working your ass off, and can finish the rest of the project off. :yes:
3D world mag just had a nice feature a couple of issues ago about how to go about marketing you short one of their recommendations was to establish a good reputation in a forum considering this point I would find it hard to support someone without even a portfolio unlike yourself where there is a great amount of work to look at.
The whole point of the pre-order DVDs for the Blender Foundation is the fact that it funds the project itself. If the film company doesn’t get the money until after the film is finished, then the film would never be finished because there is no money to finance it. This idea would never work.
tyrant monkey:
Yea! The thing is that for making Orion Tear I had to use all my life time savings … so I thought some ways to a complety unknown person find some financing… this was the only idea I had courage to tell, and of course, as you can see, it needs improvements.
I’ll try to read that article off 3D wourl mag, thanks for the info.
Here in Germany I would say your best bet is to get the funds from one of the official government foundations for filmmaking. The big plus with these is that once you get accepted it doesn’t really matter if the movie becomes a success or not as far as I know you simply have to deliver or else you are obligated to pay back the money. Not sure if you have something like that in Portugal but I think the Europeanunion has some fundings for movies made in Europe. But the competition will be hard.
I think money for a short will not be available but if you do a short as an expose for a full fledged movie and you have the screenplay and the short ready for demo then it should be no problem to find a private investor as long as the idea of the movie looks promising.
The problem as I see it is that many who do want to make a short do not have the experience to go through with it so a lot of people tend to think “Darn not another one” when they see somebody asking for PreOrder requests.
There’s something here called ICA that is the main cinema founding institution arround.
The thing is that ,like in every other of this founding institutions, they demand a registraded production company that pays the taxes… which considering we don’t have money to make a movie how the hell can we open a production company and pay taxes. I think the Europian founding is the same.
Ok, so let’s find a production company, I thought… conclusion there’s not even one that makes my kind of movies and of course, the ones that work somehow in 3D, they don’t use blender… which doesn’t work for me then
An artist sould never be involved in business in my opinium
Making a movie, that’s easy, we work from dawn until dusk all days during 2 years and we end up with a movie… but making money out of it, that’s a pain!
It’s like…how much my work worths? I don’t know, how can I put a price in it without even knowing if it’s bad or good!? For me no matter how hard I try it’s always very bad You know what I meen…
Hehe If there’s one producer arround here I could use some more tips :yes:
Opening a business isn’t that hard! It more depends on what legal form you want to have. For example here in Germany you can open a GbR and all you have to do is register it with the state. This will cost a couple of euros.
Now if you want to create a GmbH you’ll have to have at least 25000 EUR but they are changing this currently (if they haven’t done so allready).
As a member of the European union you can also start a company in another EU state. So for example you can create a limited in the UK which as far as I know (and I haven’t looked into it too deeply) is fairly easy and you do not need a lot of money. The problem is with the rights and the obligations you have when opening a company.
E.g. if you open up a GbR in Germany you have to provide pretax payment (there are ways around this if you do not make too much money) and incase you go banckrupt you are in it with all your private ownings. If you have a GmbH you have to do a balance on a quarterly basis (if I remember correct) but you are only liable with the money (25000 EUR) you put in as the founding money. A GmbH is a legal person a GbR isn’t.
With a limited I think it is a legal person but your liability depends on the money you put in the company up front and the business you do. It is a whole lot of legal mumbo jumbo but opening up the business is not really the problem, it’s maintaining and keeping it running. But there are companies that can do that for you. Of course this brings you back to the beginning on not having any money to pay these companies.
In the Netherlands you can start a foundation, a partnership or a BV (company), from experience registering a company is cheap (140 euro’s and then you have to say “hi” to the taxman, which is usually free of charge). Then there’s a little administrative hassle (not very much though).
I’ve been playing with the same idea to develop games: make a website explaining the whole game designs and people being able to “vote” for a specific game by paying for their vote, much like shareholders. With the strings attached that once a game reaches a certain break even point for production the games goes into production and the votes are used as guidelines by an experienced game designer (ie: me, or if budget allows somebody with even more experience).
For games that do not lift off financially within a certain amount of time people would get partial refunds (because paypal&co take their share and adminstrative costs).
People would have to “promote” the game they sponsor to get more sponsors to vote for the idea they like.
The same system could be used to make a movie with people voting on scripts, actors, scenario’s and so on.
Thanks allot for the explanation musk!
I think here in Portugal is more or less the same thing… if there’s any diference it’s in the price, here must be more expensive
but opening a companie doesn’t work for me now…
Edit: hoxolotl:
Yes! A foundation was exactely wath I had in miend :yes:
The main reason is because I don’t want to make money (well just the enough to have a low profile life) just movies.
I’ve reserched a litle and it seems that here it’s a litle more complicated… whe have to justif that the foundation is somehow usefull for the people.
Your voting idea it’s also good… it could become hard to manage, but it could work
From what I heard in Europe the foundation type or “Stichting” legally only exists in the Netherlands. And even then there’s a boatload of stuff to set up (especially the rules&objectives part of the foundation have to be clear and legally sound).
The advantages is that if it’s Dutch based we could ask Ton for a little help to set it up (in the sense that we’d use their legal papers as inspiration and blueprint to make the stuff for our own stichting).
I’m currently setting up and working with the Multimedia House www.multimediahouse.nl (also a foundation, still in set-up stage) here, and we might arrange something, as soon as I get a little time I’ll discuss it with our business partners to see how they feel about it.
If I go through with this it’s going to be fun to see if the networked work environment functions… hmmz, it might even be subsidiesed… Ok Thursday I’ve already got an appointment with some people, I’ll see if I shoe-horn it into that meeting.
Been thinking along these lines - dont have a serious short film planned, but ideas are ideas - and I think proof of concept would go a long way.
Much of the cred of the Blender Foundation comes fromt the fact it is the BF, but unpack the reasons ‘why’ and a key one is that you know they can draw upon worldwide talent giving the projects a heavy chance of delivering in the end. In the same way that directors and smaller studios pitch to bigger studios, I think a (near) complete character, concept art and a story blurb would boost the chances significantly of people pre-ordering, more so if followed up with a production blog so people can check the progress.
Obviously doesn’t guarantee anything from the film makers end or the people pre-ordering. Just thoughts.
Interesting so for a project like Pigeon Impossible you would preorder the DVD?
I also wonder what happens on the contract side: As an example if I would put up a preorder option for a short I’m planning (all hypothetical of course ) then here in Germany I would be liable for delivery as I’m entering a contract with the people.
So if I do not deliver I can be held responsible for the money taken. Which in turn can mean I can get sentence to prison for defraud if they can proof that I did not deliver deliberatly.
But what about a case where you can’t deliver and the money is allready used up?
How is this in other parts of the world?
And what about international orders as this is going to be on the internet?
Well, if works I also could use it :evilgrin:
… so I thought some ways to a complety unknown person find some financing… this was the only idea I had courage to tell, and of course, as you can see, it needs improvements.
You know what I meen…