Our Indiegogo campaign for Invasion of the Undead closed this past Sunday at $6,487, 32% of our final goal of $20,000.
Am I disappointed? Not even remotely! Going into this campaign I literally had no expectations; MonsterBuster Entertainment is a very small and new company with little exposure in even the local Atlanta filmmaking community (hey, we like to make movies, not market them), and I knew raising any amount of money- let alone $20,000- was going to be an uphill battle at best. Looking back over the past month and a half, the fact that we raised $6,487 on Indiegogo (plus more if you include our fundraising party at WonderRoot and outside donations) is a miracle in of itself, and the support we received from our family, friends and fans was truly astounding.
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| We needed your help, and we got it! |
However, the main reason I wanted to write this blog was to give my thoughts on the campaign- i.e. what worked and what we could have done better- in the hopes that another aspiring filmmaker out there will read it and learn from our experience. I'm going to be completely candid here- I don't know if this is the best marketing strategy but whatever, I'm a firm believer in honesty.
The positive:
• MonsterBuster grew a LOT throughout the campaign. We started out with 150 Facebook fans and now we have over 400, with 227 followers on Twitter. We even have genuine fans now (not just our friends and family members) who like and comment on our posts. This has been the most gratifying development for me personally.
• The response we received to our pitch video and webisodes was unanimously positive, and we made a lot of great professional contacts interested in lending their talents to the campaign and the production, such as Shane Morton, aka Professor Morte of Atlanta's Silver Scream Spookshow. I've been a huge fan of the Spookshow since I first heard about it last year; seriously, if you've never been before you really need to check it out. It's easily one of Atlanta's top entertainment attractions, and the storytelling and performance quality are straight out of Disney World or Universal Studios. I randomly showed Shane our Indiegogo campaign and he immediately offered to not only host our fundraising party but also to donate several of his artwork and masks to our auction and raffle. Currently he's allowing our creature creator to work in his shop, which I've been told is like a wonderland of horror memorabilia and props (I still need to check it out myself). He's probably the nicest guy I know, and the fact that I can now call him a friend and colleague is pretty awesome.
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| Professor Morte at our fundraising party! |
• We raised $6,487! Seriously, let's not gloss over this- that's a LOT of money. And it means even more considering that it came from people who believed in our team and my vision. Now that's definitely awesome.
The negative:
I hesitate to call any aspects of this campaign negative because overall I'm overwhelmed with the results. However, there were certainly things we could have done better and I'd like to address them for any future Indiegogo or Kickstarter campaigners out there who may be taking notes.
• We didn't get all of our planned updates out within the ideal timeframe, specifically our webisodes and final poster. While Allison's webisode came out on schedule, Jake's was delayed by a week and Desmond's is still not released, and our poster (which is going to be amazing by the way) is still being worked on by our unbelievably talented production artist. While there were a few reasons for these delays outside of our control (a computer crash being the primary culprit behind Jake's webisode), the main reason was a simple matter of time and money. Everyone in MonsterBuster (myself included) needs to work a day job to pay the bills, and unfortunately paying gigs encroach on passion projects like Invasion. My advice here is to have all of your updates ready before you even launch your campaign, especially if they're something elaborate like videos. No-budget filmmaking is never a smooth process, and stuff will come up that will prevent you from getting updates out when you want to.
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| Our poster is going to be mind-blowing once it's finished. |
• We never really received any exposure for our campaign outside of our immediate social circles. This, to me, is far and away the main reason we didn't raise more money than we did. This wasn't for lack of trying- we sent out press kits to numerous websites and blogs but received no responses, and the only press coverage we got (that I'm aware of, at least) was through a Portuguese website and happened courtesy of one of our backers. I can't read the article myself since I don't know Portuguese, but I do know it singlehandedly brought more traffic to our campaign page than any of our other efforts and got us a few international backers and fans, which is really cool.
All in all though, I'm glad we did this Indiegogo campaign. It was definitely a learning experience for all of us and without it we never would be able to make the movie. If you were one of our many backers, I sincerely thank you from the bottom of my heart. The Monday morning following the end of the campaign I was driving to work and I started crying, not because I was sad but because I was incredibly happy. My lifelong dream to make a feature film will finally come true (not to mention the dreams of everyone else in MonsterBuster), and it's entirely thanks to your generosity and support. I promise to make the best damn '80s-inspired horror/comedy with cocky heroes, beautiful women and stop-motion monsters that I possibly can, and I can't wait to share it with all of you!
