Here at MFM, we’ve long since covered Kickstarter, as it’s all or nothing approach has been a brilliant challenge for filmmakers like Mike Flanagan, the Varava Brothers, and many others! So much have we covered it as a filmmaking tool that it’s true depth of possibilities have been overlooked.
DarkestGoth Magazine editor, GV Pasclato
Over the past year, with my work on World of Depleted, I got a chance to know more people in the Gothic community, after first discovering how many of the elements of World of Depleted were truly Gothic and then discovering that my overall worldview coincided with theirs. (I was surprised by how much skewed information is out there in popular society about this community.) One of the personalities I got a chance to know is just launched DarkestGoth Magazine editor, GV Pasclato. Recently, he and his team started working on a new way of using Kickstarter in the form of the mira nocta Bluegrass Goth Festival. I personally hadn’t thought of using Kickstarter for an event, but had to admit it had lots of possibilities for Independent filmmakers who might want to do their own film festival or a multi-faceted exploration of a few film series with cult followings.
I liked what their ideas were enough that I was even willing to speak on camera to some of their readers, who have a lot of similarities to our filmmaking audience, and even to agree to show the Day 419 film with a Q&A if their event is funded.
With that said, here’s a brief interview that GV was kind enough to give me about what they’re doing:
Jeremy Hanke (MFM): So what led to the idea of having this Goth festival and funding it on Kickstarter?
GV Pasclato (GVP): Well, as we were preparing for the launch of DarkestGoth, we had been working with a group that was planning to have a Gothic event in the midwest. There are a lot of our people who are from the midwest, but not very many events in this area. Unfortunately, the group we were working with decided to go in a different direction, move the event out east, and do it later in the year. We felt very disappointed by this, but really didn’t have the money in place to set up an event ourselves. I was talking it over with my co-founder, DJ Gomez, and a few other people and we were just bummed that folks who deserved to have an event in the midwest weren’t going to get one this summer. That’s when someone mentioned Kickstarter and it was like a lightbulb went off in my head.
A lot of the folks that make up our community are similar to yours, in that they’re very artistic. And, as you know, artists sometimes are very enthusiastic about the idea of things, but…well…
MFM: Aren’t as quick to follow through when the rubber hits the road?
GVP: Yeah, more or less. Anyway, the Kickstarter idea would allow us to really see if Goths in the midwest were willing to put their money where their mouth was. In this way, the “all-or-nothing” approach Kickstarter has really works to our advantage because, due to how new our magazine was, we really wanted to know we could afford the entire event before we tried to leverage assets. Kickstarter essentially allowed us to figure out what our break even point was, sell tickets until we met or exceeded that, with the ability for everyone to get their money back if there just wasn’t enough interest.
MFM: That’s a pretty cool way of thinking of it. I could see how a lot of our filmmakers might harness this concept for specialty showings of their movies or even festivals.
GVP: Absolutely. Just so long as they remember that their first person to convince is not their audience, but the Kickstarter review board. Be sure to look at other events that are out there and make sure you put in enough information, being sure to showcase what things are artistic and cultural. We initially had a problem with our first variation of this festival because we’d left it so wide open, so as not to pigeonhole it, that the Kickstarter folks had to reject it because it was just so broad and ambiguous. Fortunately, we have a great editor who goes by the name Nightwarden who came up with the text that went into our next submission and it was approved very easily. It was a rookie mistake on our part, I’m just glad we had such great help!
MFM: Excellent point there. So essentially our readers want to make sure that they clearly label what their event is designed to do and how it impacts the arts?
GVP: Yep. It’s really not hugely restrictive on the part of Kickstarter, but it helps them make sure that people are trying to push the artistic envelope and not just get stuff out there for keggers or other [lowest common denominator] events.
MFM: So, how far along are you right now?
GVP: So far, we’re about 30% there with just about two weeks to go.
MFM: What are some things you didn’t know that would be helpful for our readers to know about if they decide to do a live event?
GVP: Well [one thing to] remember is that you can’t do ala carte gifts?
MFM: What do you mean?
GVP: Well, one of our favorite bands did a private crowd funding campaign and you could give multiple donations and get a variety of different gifts. We intended to do that with our Kickstarter event…allowing people to buy their tickets for one donation and then add extra customized gifts with more donations. Unfortunately, I think the event option is so new that Kickstarter hadn’t realized this was something people would want to do, as, right now, you can give as much as you want, but only can claim one gift. (This became especially complicated if people wanted to get multiple tickets, because we had to go through and create packages for two and three tickets due to this.)
MFM: Wow. That is an issue! Hopefully they get that taken care of in the future. Is there any work around for it right now?
GVP: Sort of. If your contributors really want multiple gifts, they can create a different Kickstarter account for another email account they have and then donate under that to get a different gift.
MFM: Gotcha. That’s really excellent info, GV! I hope you do well with this campaign.
GVP: I do, too. It has such a potential for being so scalable for Goth communities all around the country that I would love to help give them the courage to step up and do it!
For folks who’d like to see the campaign and the video they had me help with, you can check out the video below!
Jeremy T. Hanke
The director of two feature length films and half a dozen short films, Jeremy Hanke founded MicroFilmmaker Magazine to help all no-budget filmmakers make better films. The second edition of his well-received book on low-budget special effects techniques, GreenScreen Made Easy, (which he co-wrote with Michele Yamazaki) is being released by MWP in fall 2016. He's curently working on the sci-fi collaborative community, World of Depleted, and directed the debut action short in this series, Depleted: Day 419 .