Nathalie Sejean of Mentorless.com recently blogged that We Are All Unique, But We Are Not Special (or Why We Should Stop Asking for Ridiculously High Amount of Money from Potential Backers to Let Them See Our Film).

She argues that:

“Setting $50 as an entry point to see your film in a crowdfunding campaign is neither okay nor a good idea.”

She discusses the Established System and the emerging Neo-System.

In the Established System you needed to convince FINancers that you were the right person to make the project and that it would make a profit.

Whereas, in the Neo-System, you need to convince people to become FANancers.

“In the Neo-System, you don’t need to convince people that you can do the job, they assume you can do it, you just need to convince them your story is worth seeing the light of day. People don’t give money to our projects because they want to make more money (not yet at least). They don’t care if our film  makes big bucks. Honestly, they don’t even care if it hits theatres. In the Neo-System, the first thing backers care about is seeing our film. Within the Neo-System, our story matters more than we do.”

She wants filmmakers to make sure they don’t mistake FANancers as FINancers.

“Why ask for 4 or 5 times what someone would pay at the theater to give them the “privilege” to see our film? By doing that, we are sending the wrong message. We are telling people that they don’t deserve to watch our film unless they can pay what is essentially five months on Netflix. We are telling people that we are special.”

My take: I really like Nathalie’s insights into crowd-funding. The whole article is worth reading.