Category: Crowdfunding

Warner Bros. Turns A Kickstarter Success Story Into A Flaming Mess With Proprietary Platforms And DRM

We hate discussing failures. But dishing is a whole nuther thing. Big thanks to Techdirt for giving us the discussion to dish about. (That kinda makes sense, yeah?) Anyway:

by Mike Masnick

veronicamarsfrom the how-not-to-do-it dept

Almost exactly a year ago, we wrote about a rather encouraging development in filmmaking, highlighting the story of Warner Bros. film studio working out a deal with the producer and actors of the popular Veronica Mars TV show, that if they could prove demand for a film via Kickstarter, Warner Bros. would fund the rest of the film. Basically, Warner Bros. had been unconvinced that there was enough demand for a movie to finance it upfront. But, with tools like Kickstarter today, you can prove demand upfront, taking away a big part of the risk. And that’s exactly what happened, as the project raised over the $2 million target very quickly, and eventually brought in $5.7 million. Part of what was interesting about this was it showed how movie studios could actually embrace crowdfunding as well, creating some interesting hybrid models that don’t always involve some studio head deciding what people will and won’t like.

The movie came out last week to very good reviews… but leave it to Warner Bros. to totally muck it up, screw over the goodwill from all those backers and scare people off from such future collaborations. That’s because one of the popular tiers promised supporters that they would get a digital download of the movie within days of it opening. But, of course, this is a major Hollywood studio, and due to their irrational fear of (oh noes!) “piracy” they had to lock things down completely. That means that backers were shunted off to a crappy and inconvenient service owned by Warner Bros called Flixster, which very few people use, and then forced to use Hollywood’s super hyped up but dreadful DRM known as UltraViolet. read article

Crowd Sourcing: How It Really Feels to Get Kickstarted

At last! A Kickstartee (?) comes forward to tell us what the crowd funding experience is really like. Not for the squeamish, nosirree:

angry_donkey_kicking

by Marc Alan Fishman

I freely admit that I am 33 years of age and have never been drunk, high, or anything more than over-tired. But over the last 33 days I’ve experienced inebriation in all its stereotypical stages – if only by proxy – as I managed what I can now declare as a successful crowdfunding campaign.

No, I didn’t drink any alcohol, smoke, toke, or shoot any whim-wham-wozzle into my ding-a-ling. I merely held my breath for 33 days as I watched 155 people trickle in to support Unshaven Comics as we embarked on collecting together our first independently published graphic novel. I’m somewhere between hugging the toilet and declaring how I love you all. read article

How Kickstarter Will Shorten Your Life

There’s always a fly in the ointment, as the old saying that makes absolutely zero sense to anybody under the age of 40, goes. Crowdfunding, as TVWriter™ has said many times before, can be a wonderful tool…and a great thrill ride. But sometimes that ride gets so stressful that the thrill, like the late BB King, is gone:

by Marc Alan Fishman

kickstarterIn case you’ve not been reading my articles religiously – and if you’re not, why aren’t you? – you know my li’l studio has launched our second Kickstarter campaign. The first time around, in 2011, we asked for a little cash to make a cosplay suit. We succeeded. It was a small goal, and it took every day of the campaign for us to eek out the victory. On Thursday evening, we launched again, asking for a lot more money, with a much bigger goal in mind. This time, we want to take over the world.

I kid, I kid. Actually, we’re just looking to be able to fund the printing of our very first graphic novel. With almost four years of work under our belts on the eventual collection, it was time we took the leap from floppy issues sold at comic conventions to big-boy-books. read article

Crowd Funding: LB Recommends: “Kros: Hallowed Ground” on Kickstarter

Kros Captureby Larry Brody

John Ostrander, an irregular contributor to TVWriter™, is one of the best writers working in any medium and genre today. For me, his greatest creation is the character “Grimjack,” an anti-hero I’ve always wished I’d created, dammit. In fact, that’s how I’ve always thought of it: “Wish I’d created Grimjack. Dammit!”

You may know King John for other things. Like maybe his work on a host of fine comics, including SUICIDE SQUAD, which is set to open as a major tentpole/franchise/whatever feature film early next year.

I mean, dude’s good, got it?92f6e747e5f53328fb0407e3307213a5_original read article

LB: The Most Creatively Important Kickstarter Project Ever?

jules feiffer
Actually, you should click HERE to play

by Larry Brody

Jules Feiffer is the comic genius who got me through high school. I was a huge fan of his early book of comics, Sick, Sick, Sick, his Bernard and Hue comic strips in both newspapers and – OMG – “Playboy,” and utterly blown away when I learned that he’d “assisted” (read “ghosted”) many of the episodes featuring what I to this day believe was the finest comic book character ever created, The Spirit.

The simple truth is that while I wanted more than anything to be like Denny Cold, the hero of The Spirit, I knew damn well that it was more than likely that the character I’d actually grow up to be was the inhibited, neurotic Bernard.

(I think I escaped Bernard’s fate ultimately, but not the ethos behind him.) read article