How to Raise Money for a Short Film (a new approach)

It's almost impossible to raise money for a short film without having to beg for it.

For "Wayfarers", Jonathan Knapp (Producer) and I are trying something very new: it's a system I'm calling "Comm Pledge".

Traditionally, to get money, you have to offer something. In TV and radio, ad money flows in exchange for eyeballs. The size of an audience determines the cost of advertisement.

With a short film, what can you offer? Most short films don't have movie stars attached, and they're one-off productions, so there's no way to predict a short's audience. I'll amend that: there's an easy way to predict a short's audience: it's almost always tiny.

At first, Jonathan and I took that as gospel truth, and we looked elsewhere. Perhaps nonprofits would support the film for its education-centric message? I spoke with some folks at a few nonprofits, and the refrain was always the same: there's no money! Of course, underneath that is a more basic problem: what would the money buy? We're back to the audience problem.

I was at a Chanukah party in Long Beach when a friend suggested I re-examine the radio/TV model, with an eye towards the opportunities that the internet might provide. Within a few hours, I had the seed of the Comm Pledge System in mind.

Here's how it works: We are looking for pledges from organizations and people who have a broad digital reach. We're not looking for money, but for a pledge to send one email, to post one facebook status update, or to send one tweet with a hyperlink to "Wayfarers" when it becomes available online. When an organization makes this pledge, they're also giving us a measure of our potential audience. If one organization has a thousand-person email list, and another a 10,000-person list, and the next an 89,000 person list, we now have some important data: when our film is ready, a link will be sent out to 100,000 people. Now, we can develop a viewership forecast.

With a viewership forecast, we can approach corporate sponsors with a tangible, quantifiable offer: Fund the film, and your "sponsored by" title card will have an audience. In some cases, we may even be able to break down the audience by rough demographics: If 25% of the addresses come from, say, indie film organizations, we know 25% of the potential audience is interested in indie films. This provides additional value to the sponsor, especially if the sponsor is interested in reaching a particular demographic.

This is an as-yet un-tested approach, but it's much better than begging friends and family to toss a few bucks in to the latest crowdsourcing website.

We're also offering a "special thanks" credit (and possibly other perks) to our communications pledgers, so if you'd like to participate, please fill out this form:

THE WAYFARERS COMMUNICATIONS PLEDGE

-Arnon Z. Shorr

New Projects in the Works...

New Project 1: "Wayfarers" A short film by Arnon Z. Shorr, in active development at OxRock Productions. A post-apocalyptic Exodus narrative.

New Project 2: "Sex.Sound.Silence" A feature-length drama about a girl pursuing her dream of becoming a successful electronica DJ. A BrokenLine Production, directed by Ari Davis, produced by Arnon Z. Shorr in association with OxRock Productions, LLC

Update on "A Modest Suggestion"

With post-production well behind us, OxRock Productions, LLC is working hard to set up a DVD release of "A Modest Suggestion" for August of this year. The release, through Amazon's Createspace.com, will coincide with a grassroots campaign to raise awareness about the film, and about its controversial means of delivering an important message.

OxRock competing to "Get it Made"

Did you know that "Blood and Stone: A Legend of the Golem" was made (in part) to explore a concept for a feature film?

"In the Image of Man" is a feature-length screenplay that tells the expanded story of the Golem that we encounter briefly in "Blood and Stone".

OxRock is currently competing on www.openfilm.com for $250,000 to develop the film. In order to be considered, "Blood and Stone" must have a high 'star rating' by the end of this month.

Here's where you come in: Go to the website, create a free account, and give "Blood and Stone" five stars. You can only rate the film once, so make it count!

http://www.openfilm.com/videos/blood_and_stone_a_legend_of_the_golem/

Then, share the film with your friends. Share it with everybody! Ask them all (ask nicely!) to create an account and rate the film five stars. Ask them to share the film with their friends, too.

With your help, we'll reach the next round of this competition, where we'll have an opportunity to prove the feature's merits (and not just our ability to mobilize fans). But for now, let's MOBILIZE!

"A Modest Suggestion"

BREAKING NEWS: OxRock Productions, LLC and Mark Jaffee Pictures, LLC are teaming up to produce "A Modest Suggestion", a feature-length satirical comedy about anti-Semitism. Details to come...

OxRock in 2010

Here are a few things to look forward to as 2010 begins:

- 'Just the Ticket' is almost completed. The short will be submitted to festivals in the first quarter of 2009
- A new feature project is being developed for production before 2011.
- The website continues to be redesigned.
- "OxRock Video Services", an industrial division, is being formed.

OxRock in the news!

OxRock's "The Audition" made it in to the blurb about NEMPAC's film festival on boston.com! Not only is our film mentioned, but a production still from the set is the event's associated image! Hooray!

Here's what it looks like