Manchester Animation Festival: Making Friends and Animating People - The Art of Crowd Funding

This is an event that we didn't actually have a ticket for, but we had a lot of time throughout the day to ourselves and I thought this event sounded like it would be benefical to me so I picked up a ticket and attended the talk. I was hoping it would be more about how to approach people and networking, but it was very much focused on crowdfunding. Though it wasn't so much what I was expecting, I can definitely see the information I received being useful/helpful for in the future, not so much now as I'm not in a position where I need to raise money to complete a project.

The talk was presented by Emma Burch, Merlin Crossingham and Jon Turner. Emma started by introducing herself and explaining how she and the rest of her production team were looking to raise money in order to produce a Simon's Cat film (Off to the Vet). They were debating whether to go with Kickstarter and IndieGoGo and in the end went with the latter as they thought their system worked better for them. She then went on to dicussing budgets and how you can work them out so that they are sensible.

 Emma's Slides (Terrible Quality Photos, Sorry)

Merlin spoke next. Merlin Crossingham is a director at Aardman and he spoke about their Kickstarter campaign to Bring Back Morph. The crowdfunding came about because they were getting a lot of suggestions from fans to see new morph episodes, so they put out the campaign and it was their pitch video that sealed the deal for them in Merlin's eyes. They were able to reach their target budget within 8 days of starting the campaign, and were able to do this as they received good publicity from different newspapers but also because they were giving good rewards to their backers. Everyone that gave a pledge received access to a production blog so they could see behind the scenes footage and production, but you could also get yourself some special gifts if you pledged a certain amount of money, for instance old plasticine that was once an Aardman model, T-shirts and even a tour around the studios.

Aardman Kickstarter Pitch

The last to speak was Jon Turner from Kilogramme. He had started a campaign on kickstarter as he was interested in producing a part two to his Tall Tales 'series', and needed funding in order to do it. He thought the crowdfunding route worked the best for him and his company as with crowdfunding he had complete creative control; He didn't have to work towards the needs of a client, but instead he had pitched an idea and questioned his audience "do you want us to make this?". He knew the audience was out there from the success of his first animation, but by pitching the second idea he could get a general idea of who would be interested in seeing it, and the pledges on kickstarter confirmed this. 

 Tall Tales 2 Trailer

The presentations were really interesting and informative, and it made me realise that crowdfunding could be an option for in the future as it's not something I had thought about before; I hadn't needed to. The answers to the crowd's questions were just as helpful too, as it made me realise the benefits and issues of using crowdfunding. For instance, I found that it may not always be useful to use crowdfunding, as it can depend on the time you have and what you are wanting to do. People are more likely to back your idea if it is DIFFERENT and NEW, and whether your idea is interesting and well pitched. The panel had a mutual thought that you had to wait a while inbetween each crowdfunding campaign too.