In the last three years a means of funding a movie project emerged: Kickstarter.com

It uses the crowdfunding method (basically, people donating their money for a project) and this web service became the leading crowdfunding service in the world, with over $230 million dollars pledged (from over 2 million registered backers) and more than 23,000 successfully funded projects (at a rate of 44% successful projects). No other crowdfunding service comes even close.

The most active category on Kickstarter is Film & Video, with over 32 million dollars in pledges (over 3200 successful projects funded).
The top 10 most funded projects in the Film & Video category are in the range of $176,000 to $345,000.

However, the most funded projects in all categories are projects from Design (Peeble Watch – $10 million), Games (Double Fine – $3.3 million), Comics (The Order of the Stick – $1.2 million), Music (Amanda Palmer – $1.1 million), Technology (Printrbot – $830,000).

Since I started backing projects on Kickstarter I took a look at some projects that were film related (but not only) trying to understand why some projects are funded while some other are not.

One of the best Kickstarter short movie projects I have encountered lately is called “Dust” by Ember Lab from Los Angeles www.emberlab.com (see the Kickstarter page here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1261313080/dust-0 ).

Why is this one of the best?

I did a bit of analysis and these are my conclusions (I recommend you to download the analysis and read it carefully).

Download the full analysis of “How to run a successful Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for your movie project” (PDF file, 700Kb)

(right-click and Save Link as… or Save Target As… – or just click on the link to see it online)

Have something already done for your movie project
Anything you can do without needing much money (or with your money/time): storyboards, art work, pre-production stills and videos, trailer shots, etc.
You have to show backers that your movie idea isn’t just an idea, you already doing something about it.

Start the marketing of your project even before posting it on Kickstarter
Establish relationships with the journalists (local included), build a website (and keep it updated), attract fans/followers on your Facebook page and Twitter (and keep them informed), build the audience. All before you are stating the Kickstarter campaign. When the time comes and you will post the project on Kickstarter you will have already people interested in your project and who can become backers. Also, don’t forget to make those future videos for updates early on (they are time consuming).

Make a realistic production budget of your movie and figure out where the Kickstarter money can fit in
You should know how much money you want to ask on Kickstarter based on your production budget (this should include shipping and other costs associated with delivering the physical rewards to the backers: DVDs, Blu-Rays, t-shirts, posters, etc). Don’t just throw an arbitrary number. Don’t forget also that Kickstarter gets 5% of the money collected so factor that into your amount asked.

Make a killer video presentation
Don’t skimp on this and don’t make it look cheap (see again “Dust”).

Give plenty of information in the text presentation
If the text is long, break it down into sections (just like “Dust” has) for easy to read.

Choose carefully your rewards
Also, don’t forget the power of the producing rewards (associate producer, co-producer, executive producer, and producer) and the IMDB credits. Be very specific where the money collected will go.

Update your project often and let backers know
Don’t forget also the call to action (ask backers to spread the word but also remind them that Kickstarter is all-or-nothing campaign – you create a sense of urgency, especially at the end of it). You may have to educate your future backs on how to use Kickstarter to donate the money (don’t assume everyone knows what Kickstarter is and works – you can find tutorials about this on Youtube or can make your own little branded tutorial to show to them).

Go and market your Kickstarter campaign
Using the relationships you have made with journalists try to get articles written about your project on Kickstarter. Submit to social news websites (like Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc), post on Facebook and Twitter and post often (don’t forget about your friends too). This marketing campaign can continue offline too, locally.
Don’t forget about trying to get featured on Kickstarter itself.
You need to keep up this marketing campaign constantly until the funding goal has been reached and beyond (if you still have days remaining for the campaign).

Always keep, regularly, in contact with your backers
Even after your campaign is successful and you got your funding you should keep the updates coming. Backers love to know how you are doing and that their money is put to good use. It gives them a sentiment of fulfillment, accomplishment.

In the end, your Kickstarter campaign has to respond to the questions potential backers asks: Why should I give you my money? Why should I become your backer?
Ember Lab convinced me to back the “Dust” project by choosing one of their $1,000 rewards (this analysis was written in June 2012, right after the project ended its campaign, but published in September 2012).

Download the full analysis of “How to run a successful Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for your movie project” (PDF file, 700Kb)

(right-click and Save Link as… or Save Target As… – or just click on the link to see it online)

Thus, I established a board for this creative community with all kind of filmmaking resources found on Quora and on the Internet: questions and answers, articles, tutorials, other resources (video, images, text).

Here is the board, which I think it will be helpful for those looking to learn about filmmaking:

• Filmvisor (filmmaking) (articles, tutorials, and other resources for filmmakers) – over 130 followers

If you are already on Quora you can followed it. If you are not yet on Quora you can still read them, but you can’t post anything.

Hope you will find them useful and if yes, please let others know (you can also post them on social media services like Reddit, Hacker News, Google+, Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, etc so even more people can benefit).

It’s a very good service which I like it a lot (see my profile here). It’s big in startup related information, filmmaking, technology, web development, science, and other areas. I have a good presence there (more than 800 followers), with over 1600 answers given and over 110 questions asked.

If you don’t have an account there I suggest you make one (you can connect with Facebook or Twitter too). The service is in English only for now.

Recently they added the Boards, a feature which allows you to collect and organize content from Quora itself and from around the web (if you are familiar with Pinterest.com – an exploding startup on the social media curation scene – then you will recognize this feature).

I thought to create some Boards and have there resources related to technology startups (advice, articles, tutorials, announce your startup).

Here are the Boards I’ve created which you can follow and I hope you find them useful:

• Startup Stage (show your startup – launched or not yet launched – to Quora community) – over 410 followers
• Founders Hub (articles, tutorials and other resources for the tech entrepreneur) - over 510 followers
• Beautiful Websites (showcase beautiful websites from around the web, including yours) – over 880 followers

If you are already on Quora you can followed them. If you are not yet on Quora you can still read them, but you can’t post anything.

Hope you will find them useful and if yes, please let others know (you can also post them on social media services like Reddit, Hacker News, Google+, Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, etc so even more people can benefit).

The result is a 35 page PDF tutorial on installing Ruby on Rails 3.1 on Ubuntu (version 11.04 and 11.10) and Linux Mint (version 11, 12).
I released this tutorial under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Download the Ruby on Rails 3.1 installation tutorial for Linux Ubuntu and Linux Mint (PDF file, 3 MB)

(right-click and Save Link as… or Save Target As… – or just left-click on the link to see it online)
 
The Ruby on Rails installation tutorial has two sections:

• Ruby on Rails 3.1 installation using Ruby 1.9.2, Rails 3.1, WEbrick web server and SQLite3 database (this is the default installation – WEBrick and SQLite is used only in development, not production)
• Ruby on Rails 3.1 installation using Ruby 1.9.2, Rails 3.1, Apache web server and MySQL database (this is more advanced – Apache and MySQL is used also in production)

In the future I will add the installation using also nginx web server www.nginx.com.

As for Ubuntu, instead of installing it from scratch I used a pre-made VMware virtual machine saving thus time. If you want to install Ubuntu or Linux Mint from scratch (on your computer or on a virtual machine) you will have to look for a tutorial for that.

To use a VMware virtual machine you need to install the VMware player (free):  http://www.vmware.com/products/player
Then download a pre-made virtual operating system appliance from VMware website (free also):  http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/cat/508 (look for a Ubuntu 11.10, 11.04 machine, or Linux Mint 11 operating systems appliances)

If you get a Ubuntu 11.04 virtual machine you can upgrade Ubuntu to the latest version (11.10 in this case) by going to Update Manager and you will see a note there prompting you to upgrade to that latest version. It’s up to you if you want to upgrade.

Linux Mint www.linuxmint.com is a fork of Ubuntu so it uses many packages which Ubuntu uses.

After having setup the Ruby on Rails environment you can start building the application from this online book which I found very useful and quite explanatory: Ruby on Rails tutorial by Michael Hartl (it is a bit outdated but still useful)

I will keep updating this tutorial I made as the new  Ruby on Rails version are coming out (as well as new version of Ubuntu/Linux Mint).
The name of the PDF file will remain the same, only the content will change.

If you have found this tutorial useful please tell to others too (on Ruby on Rails/wen development groups and forums) and, if possible, link to this page so more people can benefit.
If you have suggestions or improvements for this tutorial please let me know in the comments. Thank you.

Download the Ruby on Rails 3.1 installation tutorial for Linux Ubuntu and Linux Mint (PDF file, 3 MB)

(right-click and Save Link as… or Save Target As… – or just left-click on the link to see it online)

Useful links:

• www.rubyonrails.org (the official Ruby on Rails website)
• www.railsinstaller.org (Windows Ruby on Rails installer)
• www.ruby-lang.org (the official Ruby programming language site)
• http://httpd.apache.org (the official Apache web server site)
• www.mysql.com (the official MySQL database site)
• www.vmware.com (the official site of the company which builds virtual machine software VMware)
• www.ubuntu.com (the official Ubuntu Linux site)
• www.linuxmint.com (the official Linux Mint site)
• http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book (the site of Michael Hartl’s Ruby on Rails Tutorial – for Rails 3.1)
• http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book?version=3.2 (the site of Michael Hartl’s Ruby on Rails Tutorial – updated for Rails 3.2)
• www.railscasts.com (video tutorials by Ryan Bates – some are free)
• www.stackoverflow.com (very useful site for developers of all kind)
• http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk (Google group for Ruby on Rails developers)
• Berkeley Ruby on Rails class (five parts, on Youtube)
• Youtube.com (lots of video tutorials on Youtube)

This tutorial is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License

This is the first post here and more will come.

I will try to post things from my main fields of interest (web development, filmmaking) but not only.
I read a lot on the Internet and many times I stumble on interesting news, articles, images, videos, etc.

Enjoy your stay and you can always contact me using the Contact form.

Disclosure:
English is not my native language (Romanian is – but it’s not understood internationally) so please excuse eventual mistakes I will make.