Kickstarter is one of the great ways to fund your film project. We chose this platform over the other competitors because there have been many recent successes for campaigns which have put in the necessary time and set up. Kickstarter is also one of the better known crowdfunding website, according to the results of Crowd Funding Formula. However exericse your own judgement and be sure to do research when choosing the platform that works best for you. Just this month, we’ve launched our first Kickstarter campaign for our webseries Forgotten corpses. Throughout this process our team has learned a lot! I’d like to share what I’ve read and some of the experiences with you for creating a Kickstarter video!
1) Entertain the Audience: The first important advice is to give your audience an entertaining experience. The internet is so saturated with videos today that it is important to take your time to make something that is fun and short. When I was looking at other campaigns that were running on Kickstarter during the period we were preparing for launch, many of the videos were between the 3-4 minute mark. I would recommend keeping videos within this length as well.
You need to catch audience attention right at the start. Approximately about 5% of people drop out (stop watching) for videos that are 1-2 minutes in length according to Wistia (Fig 1.), an online marketing agency. That means for our 3-4 minute Kickstarter video, you will loose 10% of the people in the first few seconds.
In our video, we have thought out each section to be compelling and entertaining. For example, we opened it with a “clap”, high energy to grab the audience’s attention and an upbeat score. I’ve used 2 camera angles to cut back and forth to make it entertaining to watch. I hope the audiences enjoyed it.
2) Tell them Something They Don’t Already Know: When creating your videos, you have to think of a way that you can separate yourself from the crowd (break the rules says Arnold Schwarzenegger) sort of like in a job interview. Ask yourself – why should they support you?
In the countless videos I’ve watched about how to create the best Kickstarter campaign is that if a team is just starting out and doesn’t have a large following, the highest likelihood of people supporting your project will be from your close family and friends. And of all the people that are in your social circle, a Film Courage video states that less than 1% of the people will actually donate.
Film Courage says that one of the reasons why someone will support your film is that they may know someone involved in the project, either the talent, crew etc. Another reason is that they may like the content that the filmmakers are creating and truly believe in their vision (aka fans). Finally a person that might support the project is because they are looking forward to the rewards. For example, if your reward consists of a producer credit and the backer always wanted to become a producer, this could be a good way for them to add their name onto your project.
In our Kickstarter video, we talked about who we are, by doing so we hoped to build trust with our backers. If you tell them who you are with a bit of your background on perhaps your struggles, how you’ve overcame them and the reason why you stand behind your project, then people will have a better sense of connection with you. It will add that human factor element in there and may increase the chances of a donation.
Each of us is different, you will never find anyone just like you in this world. If you can identify your deep inner thoughts and carry that message across to the backers, you are giving them something unique, something that they have never heard of and that’s how you can tell them something they don’t already know.
3) Drop it Like It’s Hot! Cutting a Kickstarter video can be like cutting a film trailer. You need something spicy to add to your style (aka your culture). Nowadays film trailers feels a lot like DJ mixes with swishes and build ups to rhythmic drops. Sometimes the music in trailers sound a lot like sound effects and it may go hand in hand. A good example of this can be found in the Edge of Tomorrow directed by D. Liman, at 22 seconds into the trailer, the soundtrack acted as if it was part of the ship’s mechanical malfunction. The trailer drops the beat at 28 seconds like a DJ mixing a song in a dance club: “whoosh bam!”- after the climatic build up, it goes to silence. The audience wants to see more.
Fig 2. Modern trailer edits has become rhythmic. Above editing timeline from our short film Last Breath.
If you think of your Kickstarter video like a film trailer (Fig 2), then the first item when editing your video is you need to establish the characters. Afterwards show them a series of meaningful clips that gives the audience a sense of what the final product will be like. Finally, you need to establish to the audience the people involved in the project. Be sure to answer the questions in your video with: who, what, where, when and how. Describe it briefly in the video, but don’t talk too much about it, just give the audience a general idea. You can explain in more detail in the description portion of your Kickstarter page as suggested by these websites.
Once the visuals are finalized, music plays one of the most important roles in a Kickstarter video as it can toy on the emotions. In our video, I wanted to create a piece that was emotionally moving. I wanted to play the music low to bring the emotions down, then at the right moment, I let the music played out loud to express an awesome feeling as seen at 2:42mins in our Kickstarter video. Music editing can be read in more detail in my previous blog here. I’ve purchased our score at Audiojungle, however there are many free sites like Incompetech, Ben Sound, Josh Woodward, Global Sound Promotion, and the Youtube Library.
Aaaaaand Cut! The Kickstarter platform is a quick way to fund a film project when comparing it to the grant process. The web site has made it easy for the end user to support you easily with a few clicks of a button on the mouse.
We ran our campaign for 30 days as recommended by them. It creates enough urgency so people will react to it. If it runs too long, people will loose interest.
Check out our campaign currently live here and be sure give us some support! If you have any questions about video production or creating Kickstarter videos, contact us and like always happy editing!