Early thoughts:
+ Documentaries don't draw better than Narrative films. On the contrary, they do worse.
+ Is it easier to attract backers if your film is in the can? Not really.
+ The most popular perk level is clearly $25, right? Wrong. The most popular perk level is the DVD. When the DVD is, say, at $50, the spike in the graph is at $50, almost without fail.
+ The $750 perk is dead. So dead.
+ Campaigns that don't offer a single digit perk actually raise slightly less money than those that do, but they average 24 fewer backers. So by starting at $10, you're pretty much telling 24 people you don't want them around.
+ If you're thinking, "We need $20k, but we want to make sure we don't come up empty, so we'll ask for $10k and try to go way over...", it isn't going to work. You'll almost always end up below $12k.
At some point, I'm going to log more of these, but this should at least give you a better starting point for your next campaign.
If you want, I can break this down for you further. Email me (lmcnelly [at] gmail [dot] com) for more info.
Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.
