During her freshman year, film conservatory student Sara Gardephe worked 40 hours a week at local Target in order to make the few grand it would take to fund her freshman film project.
“That was the most miserable experience ever,” Gardephe says. She’s lucky that now her grants, scholarships and FASFA money exceed her tuition, so she funded her sophomore and junior films without much of a problem. That didn’t cut it for her senior project though.
Gardephe, like so many of her film student peers at SUNY Purchase, turned to Kickstarter.com, a funding platform Web site for creative projects where people from all over the country submit their ideas and ask for donations to fund their art in 90 days or less.
Kickstarter’s most unique feature is its “all-or-nothing,” rule. If you don’t fund your entire proposed budget through donations, you don’t get any of it. The theory is that it motivates the artist. You only need to follow through with the project if you receive enough money to make it happen. It also forces the creator to really spread to word about their project, doing everything they can to make sure they’re funded.
Gardephe only asked for $700 for her project. She ended up making more than double what she asked, thanks to the subjects of her film. Her senior thesis on “Love-Shy,” an internet forum sub-culture of men who can’t talk to women, was backed in part by her friends and family, but also largely by the men who believe she is finally bringing their terrible struggle to light.
It is a huge financial endeavor to be a student in the film program. So Kickstarter becomes a common tool for any and all students, including junior Nicole Favale.
“Whenever I explain it to someone who had never heard of Kickstarter, they ask, ‘Why would people possibly give you money?’” Favale said. Her skeptics pose a good point though. To submit an idea is not enough to reach your goal. It takes planning, advertising, and some serious harassing to get your project where it needs to be. Even when it’s all said and done, you still might not get all of what’s yours.
Nicole Favale’s junior project is a documentary on an asylum called Willard State Hospital. When a backer – someone who pledges money to help meet an artist’s goal – wants to check out her project, he or she can visit her project page. They can watch the two minute video clip styled after her prospective movie, and read the 200 word summary she gives as to why she’s doing what she’s doing, and what she would do with their money.
Favale did her research before setting up her page, checking out other documentaries that were trying to reach the same goal as she was, a backing of $1,500. She looked at what worked, what didn’t work, and what she could risk asking for. Because remember, this is an all-or-nothing game.
“You have to work at it,” said Favale of the time you have to put in once your page is up and running. Gardephe and Favale both took advantage of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter to constantly remind friends and family to donate to their projects.
Other film students have not been so lucky with Kickstarter. “My goal on the Web site was $8,000, I raised $1,500 on my own,” said Dan McCartney. “My parents ‘donated’ the difference just so I could get the money.”
McCartney, though following the same process as Favale and Gardephe, felt jaded due to a lack of support from the site itself.
“I feel like they’re just artistic leaches,” McCartney complained. “Their goal is to make money.”
Another stipulation of using Kickstarter is that for every value pledged, Kickstarter takes 5% of it, and the site they use to handle their monetary transactions, Amazon, takes another 3-5%.
“Every person that gave me money, I got them to donate,” said McCartney. “Besides having the website, Kickstarter didn’t do anything. I paid them 5% of my money to do nothing.”
A spokesman for Kickstarter declined to comment, but a friend of McCartney remarked, “That’s like blaming the hat for not collecting enough money.”
“If I had to do it again,” McCartney said, “I wouldn’t do it again.”