What have I learned over the past 6 weeks?
Fundraising is hard as fuck and I hate it.
When I lived in Sydney I would see those fundraising workers outside the train stations wearing green T-shirts, or even worse a Koala suit. They would try desperately to trap commuters into a conversation that turns into a sales pitch. “Hi there! Can I ask you a question? Do you know the rainforest is dying?" They would subsequently be ignored. I'd always think, wow – that would be the worst job ever.
Well, this process has felt a little like that. I feel like a guy in a Koala suit. GET THIS THING OFF ME!!!
Part of the problem was that I was very optimistic going into the campaign. I thought, hey – if some dude just raised over $50,000 on Kickstarter to make potato salad, why shouldn’t this work for me and my film? I also listened to a couple of people that I shouldn’t have, who encouraged me to set a huge goal and convinced me that “the money will come”, that they would help me bring money in. Funnily enough, the day that the campaign was launched, they disappeared.
Despite all this, I have kept at it – knowing that every single dollar I can raise will help me get this film off the ground.
Even now with 5 days to go, I am still frantically brainstorming ways to bring in dollars.
Yesterday I decided I needed to add a $5 perk for the final week, to entice people on a budget who may still want to support the film. I came up with what I thought was a great, fun idea, that fitted in well with the theme of the movie; For $5 I would photoshop the contributor's face into a romantic photo with a celeb crush who they would have no chance of dating. I put together one of myself that I was going to use as an example. It took me 2 hours to make. Here it is:
Last night at dinner with some close friends, I showed them my masterpiece and explained my plan and waited for the positive feedback. The response was unanimous:
“I just don’t think anyone will wanna buy that”.
“That took you 2 hours?”
“There’s something really sad about it”
“Yeah, you can’t put that on the campaign page.”
“It looks….. Um… What version of photoshop did you use?”
It was at this point I admitted I don’t even have photoshop. I had made that in Microsoft Word.
Hey, you can’t say I’m not trying.
But you don't always see things clearly when you're wearing a Koala suit.
