I need to raise money, maybe 25,000, for a short film. Does anyone here know any great fundraising tips other than a bikini carwash?

Read "Rebel Without A Crew." Sell yourself to science. Or you can read "How to make a feature film for under $10,000 and not go to jail."

What I believe in isn't scary, it's what I don't believe in that is.

lol 25 grand?
Get a good job or sell drugs, quicker that way

"Everything you know is wrong"

- disinfo.com

Ha, I think everyone on this message board has now read Rebel Without a Crew. Tizzy: mission accomplished.

As far as raising funds... first of all, slice the budget and take out anything not important. Then hit up the actors for cash. Tell them they'll get a percentage of the profits (joke's on them because oftentimes there are no real profits! At this stage is's about the all-important exposure to the public)

If you're really short on cash, start saving and postpone the production. If it's for a contest deadline, wait til next year and spend the extra time working hard at making it even better than what you were first going for.

And good luck.


--Alan

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http://www.alandenton.com
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pretty much I need to build a small bedroom. so it would be about a -$10,000 shoot. Actors are working for free and i got all the equipment.

Ok, Ill toss in my hat. read, "Rebel without a..... HEY! LOL
Actually, another site I frequent had someone planning to write an article on this very subject about 6 months back, but it never happened. Question is, did it not happen because they just flaked, or because they couldnt find enough info to write an article?
First, I will offer some suggestions, then, I have some options for what you might do.

But first, money. Its hard to get money for a short from any kind of investor, because shorts have no real possibility for return. Aside from festival wins, its almost impossible to make money with one. $25,000, heck, even $10,000 is ALOT to drop on a short, unless its your thesis piece, but even so. I assume your shooting film. If not, you deffinentley need to reavaluate your costs involved, but back to cash.
One way is to have a indie film showcase, where you charge admission,and show movies. I have done a couple of these. The biggest hurdle is finding a venue to show at. If you can do that (really, to make sense, you allmost have to get it for free) then you might do ok. I even know of two guys (incidently, these two just won Project Greenlight) who had such a party, showing some of there older work, and then had people fill out pledge cards. You didnt have to come up with the cash that night, but you were saying you would come up with "X" ammount by "X" date. I dont know how many actually came through though.
Another I heard about, was People were auctioning off executive producer credit on E-Bay, and suprisingly, got a good response. They did it where if you gave $20, you got a copy of the movie. $40 got you a copy, and a t-shirt, and $60 got you exectutive producer credit as well. In a way, they were pre selling their movie on video, and many gave $60, just to see their name in the credits.

Theres that, now on to your shoot. You say you have to build a bedroom. May I ask, "Why?" I assume its because you want to be able to fly out walls, and so forth, but even so, $10,000? You will succeed in this bizz if you simply force yourself to be creative. Ill give you an example, with the little I know about your needs.
Ok, I am going on the assumption, that you really just need more space then a conventional bedroom will allow. So you need a place to build your set. Pressumablly a sound stage, heck, even a school gymnasium would give you enough room, but that can be difficult to come by, and expensive. You cant do it during the school year, and during the summer, someone has to be paid to let you in everyday. Someone, is you. Now, you havent even started construction and your loosing tons of cash. Here is my point. It would be cheaper to rent an apartment for a month. Now, know, you cant use a conventional bedroom, but who says you have to use the bedroom?
As I type this, I am sitting in the living room of my apartment. I have a good sized apartment, and this includes vauletd ceilings. Lots of room up there for lights. I also already have track lighting tha you could toss some halogen bulbs in, and tada, lights. Plus, there is a ceiling fan that hangs about 4 feet down. You could easily get a camera up there, and it would appear like you were shooting through the celing. Move out the t.v., put a bed and a dresser there. There is a window, and a sliding glass door. There can be a sliding door in a bedroom. The room is about 3 times the size of my bedroom. Pleanty of space for a camera at the end of the bed. Lets say you have to shoot toward that end as well. Just move stuff down a bit. Put the camera behind the headboard. Now it feels like your shooting through that wall.
There is still one problem though. Three sides of the room work, but the fourth is a kitchen, and a staircase. So? Build a 9'x7' "wall" with drywall to match, paint it, and move it into position where you need it. Its alot cheaper to build that then it is to build an entire set.
You could probablly even work out a deal with the apartment complex. Tell them what your doing, and that you only need a month. If they have pleanty of empty apartments, theyll be glad for the cash. I would suggest trying some of the bigger places, with larger apartments. Go look at alot of them, and make sure you find atleast three that fit your needs, then approach them with your proposal. (or, ask right out of the gate, so if they arent willing to work with you, you dont waste your time looking at apartments you cant use.) My rent is high, almost a grand a month, but even so, if you gave them 1 months rent,. plus security deposit, your looking at $2,000. Now your entire production shouldnt cost more than another $1,000. $3,000 is alot cheaper than $10,000.
You just have to be creative. You can buy cheap furniture from good will. You can do anything you want you just have to think.
One other option, is to see if there are any productions in your area. Any school plays, any film schools with sets. If so, and they have a bedroom set that fits your needs, see if you can use it when they arent. Roger Corman used to make all his movies this way. He would walk onto sets that productions had just wrapped on, and shoot fo a few days before they tore them down.

I recently had a similar dilema. My script called for a hospital room. I called hospitals, they all said, "Yeah, no problem." but months later, they still couldnt get a big wig to sign off that it was ok, and they all reniged. I was stuck. I needed to shoot that weekend, in order to make a festival deadline, and I had no hospital, but, my school had a nursing program. It turned out, the program had a hospital bed, an EKG machine, gowns, ect. The only trouble was, it was in a classroom that seated 50 students, AND I would have to set up, shoot, and be gone in two hours. Sounded impossible, but what was I gonna do, quit? Hell no! I went in, we put the bed, the EKG, ect, in a corner of the room. We framed around it, so you wouldnt see all the desks lined up, and we shot very quickly. We used the door to our classroom, as the door to the hospital room. To this day, NO ONE has ever even questioned whethere or not it was a hospital. I tell them that story, and their like, "No way!" They see a bed, and an EKG, and a guy in a white coat, and they think, "Must be a hospital."
That is the beauty of movies. Anything can be, anything you want it to be. Think outside the box. Always consider options, even if it looks like somethings working out, ask yourself, "If this all crumbles, what will I have as a backup." There is always an alternative. Good luck.
R. Michael McWhorter

And you shall know us by the trail of dead.

$10,000 to build a room? Dude, go check out some locations. Then if you find a place you like use that, most of the time you can get that place for free as long as you put the people who let you use it in the credits. That leaves you with $15,000 which is still ridiculous for a short. You are more likely to get discovered with a low budget (Hence Robert Rodriguez and Christopher Nolan) then maxing out someone's credit card. People have made feature lenghts with special effects for less then $10,000. I recommend doing some Guerilla work so you can really learn to appreciate the things you can buy to make your movie look good. But you will never need $25,000 to make a short, unless you have a really horrible script (not sayign that you do).

What I believe in isn't scary, it's what I don't believe in that is.

Maybe you could give us some insight as to the kinds of shots you need to get inside the bedroom. You could make a bedroom set with three flats and a roll of carpet for a couple hundred. Then use props and furniture that belong to you and your friends.

Spending $10,000 to build a room is a little crazy. This is a short film we are talking about...not a Hollywood feature. Building a room should cost $1000 tops - especially if you just build the walls as Tizzy said.

As far as funding goes....bikini car washes and rich uncles are great ways to raise money for a film...especially a short where there isn't much chance for any return of investment.

It is slightly "easier" to find fundage from people for features because there is a theoretical return of the investment.

A GREAT book on funding and making features is "Independent Feature Film Production: A Complete Guide from Concept Through Distribution"
by Gregory Goodell.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312181175/studentfilmsc-20/104-7037414-8614364

BUY THIS BOOK NOW! It is a great book.

-Chris
Studentfilms.com

[This message was edited by Studentfilms.com on March 25, 2003 at 10:05 AM.]

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But you will never need $25,000 to make a short, unless you have a really horrible script (not sayign that you do).

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BTW - Spending $25,000 on a bad script will not make a good film. A bad script is always a bad film. $25,000 on a bad script will be $25,000 that you never see again.

The script is the most important part! (Unless you spend $25,000 on Hollywood writers to write you a good script - which would be crazy as well)

What I meant on my quote with the bad script, is spending the money on top of the line actors, best crew and best equipment. So what the script will suck but it will look good. Just kidding, a great script is a first off must.

What I believe in isn't scary, it's what I don't believe in that is.

SCRIPT...

It's so nice to see people thinking in terms of the "script" as being the first/key element of the long process in making a great film (no mater the length).

I think my work here is done.

I liked the fact that the person who won the O scar for "Best Short' brought his screenwriter on stage and made the point of saying how important "A GOOD SCRIPT" is.... That's a great message to send to the up and comers [A first time Oscar winner caries a lot more weight than "me" saying it ]


POV: Hiring a "Hollywood" screenwriter will cost you a "minimum" of $68,000, this includes "1" revision. (keep in mind that this price is only "SCALE")

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POV: Hiring a "Hollywood" screenwriter will cost you a "minimum" of $68,000, this includes "1" revision. (keep in mind that this price is only "SCALE")

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I think I have $68,000 lying around somewhere around here.....wait...no...I'm not a Walton.

HA! This is great stuff. Anyways I met a great filmmaker who made an amazing short film (my favorite to date) called "Inside" about a guy with split personalities going up for review in an insane asylum. It cost him a huge amount of money and it mostly took place in one room. The script was awesome and so was the acting. It won big at film festivals and is what's inspiring me to actually make some money to fund my film. Inside was only 8 minutes for about a total cost of $200,000. He said he sold screenplays to make the money but I'm not in the business like he is. So I need to raise it by doing ugly work.

I was a production assistant a while ago for an AFI short and I got to see how building your own set looks on the big screen. It looks great! I really wanna try it for my next short and tizzy gave me an idea to build it in my living room.
I've turned my bedroom into a doctors office before which worked great but it looked too plain.

Ok I guess I did exargerate a bit. And I'm shooting on DV. I just need some money to build walls (Can anyone recommend materials?) and feed my actors (Can anyone recommend food?)

I've never used "real" funding for my other shorts. That's why Im so inexperienced in that area. Heck $25,000?!?!

By the way I have rebel without a crew I just need to start reading it. Gosh I can't wait for school to be over.

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Inside was only 8 minutes for about a total cost of $200,000.

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HOLY SH**!!! NO SH** HES IN THE BIZZ!! Only someone in the bizz could drop $200,000 on short, and consider it a success. Seriously, especially in one room, I could shoot a short film, on 35mm film, for $25,000. I dont know how he spent that much, unless his D.P. cost $175,000.
I do have a couple questions. Have you ever made a short before? and, Are you firing a D.P.?
If you havent made a short yet, try it out. Shoot a couple simple little things. I assure you, it will make this one ten times better when you make it (if you have, go for it). If you want it to look good, your going to need a D.P., and an experienced one. It is what made his short look good.
As for your questions. Some may have better ideas, but its basically some lumber, sheetrock, a bit of ddrywall mud, and some paint. The lighter the materials, the better. You dont want 6 guys lugging a 600lb wall into your house.
As for actors, dont get to fancy. Youll spoil em. Try contacting some local resturuants, and see if they want a "special thanks" credit. Depending on where you live (if your in L.A., probablly not) Either way, keep it simple. I do try and make sure its atleast good, but there is good cheap food. Think bulk. Lasagna, spaghetti, Cuban's know what a "big meal" is, and since im in south Florida, there is almost always one night full of grilled citrus chicken, rice and black beans and rice, and tostones. Mmmmmmm. Make some sort of concentrate juice drink that dosent cost much. Coffee is also always good for long shoots. Dont be afraid to get cheap stuff. People wont care if its grocery store brand soda, long as its free. Hope this helps some. Good luck.
R. Michael McWhorter

And you shall know us by the trail of dead.

I just have to ask. How the hell would you spend all this money on a short non-profit film? 25k? Jesus! What's costing so much?!

Everybody is Funny Looking in their own way
~Funny Looking Productions

Well Tizzy I've made two Shorts. They're both on this site. If you watch 'em you'll be able to see why I want to do the transition from a no-budget film to a some-budget film.

Lachrymose (drama) and
A Child Named Corn (comedy)
Tell me what you think!

get 5-6 credit cards. max them out, and hope for the best...

i know its none of my business. but how can you spend 25 thousand on a short film. I mean you should try using a smaller budget or even make a full film out of it. I'm not saying you personally but, short films don't make too much money in return for the most part.