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Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!
Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: Going "No and Pro"
Can you hear Tiffany and I rejoicing? We found a celebrity host for the June 4th Producer’s Dinner we're holding to court investors for our film Tiny Dancer: Bobbie Thomas, the beautiful style editor for NBC’s "The Today Show." Why Bobbie Thomas, you might ask? Well, Tiny Dancer is about two women struggling to find their inner meaning and, in a sense, their inner beauty as well. Ms. Thomas, who began her career as a rape crisis counselor, has been quoted as saying “Beauty truly comes from the strength within.” Damn... that could be the tagline for our film! We are thrilled to have her as our Guest of Honor.
Tiffany and I have been going here and there trying to widen our circle and spread the exciting news that we are now accepting investments in Tiny Dancer, whereas before we were a non-profit working solely off of donations. The donate vs. investment mentality is fascinating to me. Where does the distinction come from?
May 22nd, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: Needed—One Celebrity
So we have our LLC set up for Tiny Dancer (it’s amazing how fast you can create a business in this country), we’ve finalized our invitation for the June 4th event and we’ve sent out e-mails letting our supporters know that we have changed our plan of attack to “invest.” We’ve had a few responses requesting our PPM and business plan and are keeping our fingers crossed that we can get some investors. I spent the weekend casually trying to talk up what good sense it makes to invest in Tiny Dancer at the numerous birthday parties we took our son to. But we still have no celebrity host for our upcoming event.
May 15th, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: No Sleep 'til Financed
We haven’t been sleeping much since we decided to have this Producer’s Dinner on June 4th and fully embrace taking investments for Tiny Dancer. I've been kept up at night by questions. This morning alone I am proofreading our Private Placement Memorandum/Subscription Agreement (wait... am I qualified to do this?!) and e-mailing our lawyer about finally setting up a Tiny Dancer LLC. Not to mention the freaking-out-ness Tiff and I are experiencing with creating the event’s invite. How do you list “tiers” of investment on an invite you are e-mailing? Ah... times have changed since the days of $100 donations. We are a little scared, but we also feel like something is pushing the project forward. Don’t question, just go!
May 8th, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: Here We Go Again
As many of you may remember, when we held our last big fundraising event in October for our film, Tiny Dancer, many people came, but few donated. Dare we tempt fate again? What else are we going to do? On June 4th, Tiff and I are having what we're calling “The Producer’s Dinner” at the loft of Patrick and Kate Morris, who are donating a dinner for 20 catered by Food Glorious Food and sponsored by Medea Vodka. We are selling tickets in advance starting at $1,000, and our goal is to raise between $25,000 and $75,000, which will close our budget gap and allow us to begin production on Tiny Dancer this fall.
May 1st, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: Learning from Agent X
Tiffany and I took a week off and went to Mexico with our son, where the only thing we were crowdfunding was pesos from each other. Mexico is such a beautiful country, with people warmer than the green/blue water, especially in Cancún and the Mayan Riveria, where we love to go. We did, however, learn the ultimate lesson on selling—one that has stuck with us—at the airport.
April 24th, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: The Biz Plan
I feel like I’ve already made Tiny Dancer. It was harder than writing the script, shooting for three days or potentially having a baby... I finished the business plan! It was a necessary step, seeing as how we’re gearing up to leave our non-profit status and enter the marketplace. Over the years I have made numerous stabs at writing business plans, and the weeks I spent doing so have been some of the most painful of my life. This time around, Tiffany and I wanted to finally get it right.
April 10th, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: People Are Listening
I have been posting entries on MovieMaker.com for about nine months now, documenting the trials and tribulations of crowdfunding our small—but not that small—feature film, Tiny Dancer. In that time, I have been e-mailed by teachers looking for advice on crowdfunding campaigns for their students, filmmakers looking to get their scripts produced (Wait, don’t you read the blog? We have no money!), lawyers and investment groups following the updates on the JOBS Act (I never thought I’d become an authority on SEC rules and regulations) and fellow crowdfunders looking for a shout-out.
April 3rd, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: The JOBS Act, Indie Film, Crowdfunding and Me
Last week, the Senate approved the JOBS (Jump-start Our Business Start-ups) Act, approved by the House weeks earlier, with a 73-26 vote. The Act, which is heavily backed by President Obama and (oddly enough) both Democrats and Republicans, would relax federal regulation for small businesses and start-ups (and movies like Tiny Dancer), letting them raise capital without running into the tangle of SEC regulations I mentioned two weeks ago. The Senate successfully added a crowdfunding amendment (yay!), which means the Act needs to head back to the House for a second vote, but it seems that it will get approved fairly quickly. So what does this all mean for us, the broke-moviemaker types?
March 27th, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: New York Times, Meet Tiny Dancer
Sometimes everything you’ve been working for falls right into your lap without even the slightest effort, as if the hand of destiny just took the wheel. Tiffany and I constantly brainstorm crazy ideas to get press coverage, donations and general awareness for Tiny Dancer... then last Saturday, without us doing a thing, Tiny Dancer was profiled in The New York Times in an amazing article about non-profits joining the crowdfunding landscape. Artspire, the new crowdfunding platform created by our fiscal sponsor, NYFA (New York Foundation for the Arts), is featured in the article, and Tiny Dancer was selected from the over 500 NYFA projects to be included as an example of non-profit crowdfunding. How did this come about? A combination of luck, all the hard work we’ve been doing and the fact that our trailer resonated with someone somewhere. Never in a million years did we think that Tiny Dancer would be in The New York Times!
March 20th, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: Investing in the Future of Tiny Dancer
What do you do when you’ve exhausted all of your “crowds?” When you feel you can’t ask your amazing family and friends for one more nickel for your project and still be able to hold your head up? You think about getting investors, of course. But that’s easier said than done. Not only is it difficult to convince someone to invest in a micro-budget project, but I’m finding it’s even harder to figure out how to legally accept investments!
March 13th, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: The Benefits of a Benefit
It was a rainy night in New York City this past Wednesday, and again, Tiffany and I were loading and unloading equipment, Tiny Dancer postcards and limes in and out of our car into the ultra-pink and fun Benefit Cosmetics store in Soho for a “thank you” evening of makeovers for our Tiny Dancer donors.
March 6th, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: Saying "Thank You"
Sundance and the Oscars are over, and it’s high time to get back to the business of getting our own movie, Tiny Dancer, made. We currently have $25,000 being held by our fiscal sponsor the New York Foundation for the Arts, but there's more money to raise. Tomorrow evening (Wednesday, February 29th) we’re having a “thank you” event for our donors: An Evening of Beauty at the Benefit Cosmetics Soho Store, where anyone who has contributed to Tiny Dancer by becoming a member of The Independent Collective (our little organization for fundraising), gets a makeover, makeup and vodka. What could be better?
February 28th, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: And the Oscar Goes to... Crowdfunding!
I realize that my last post or two might have been sending some of you toward Downerville, so for this week’s blog—the last before this Sunday's Oscars—I've decided to envision a happy future: It's 2020, and three of the Best Picture Oscar nominees are crowdfunded. You may think it couldn’t happen, but the fact of the matter is that it’s not that far off. Did you know that last year’s Oscars saw director Jennifer Redfearn’s Sun Come Up, a Kickstarter-funded documentary short about the relocation of the Carteret Islanders, pick up a nomination? The film met its funding goal of $14,000 in February 2010; then, a year later, the moviemakers were at the Oscars!
February 23rd, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: The Pain of Loving Film
It’s Valentine’s Day, so I figured I’d post something about the nature of the love affair moviemakers have with the beautiful and brutal lover called film. We pour our hearts, souls and wallets (and our friends’ and familys’ wallets!) into our films—our labors of love—only to be repeatedly heartbroken. It’s not unlike dating in New York City. You fall for all these crazy, passionate ideas, mold them into scripts and trick your friends into believing they're good... only to be left heartbroken and crying on the floor when they get rejected.
February 14th, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: Park City Diary, Part 2
It’s only been a week since Tiffany and I were sitting in Ron Nyswaner’s condo in Deer Valley, Utah awaiting the Sundance premiere of Predisposed, the film Nyswaner co-directed with Phil Dorling. Already, it seems like it never happened. The mix of altitude and headiness has given the whole affair the feel of a dream, especially seeing as Tiffany and I have since returned to the grind of trying to raise the rest of our budget for Tiny Dancer, and I’ve jumped into the TV pilot season as an actor.
February 7th, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: Park City Diary, Part 1
Tiffany, our son and I arrived in Salt Lake City in the middle of the night, got in a rental car and drove up to Park City, where two films I’m in—Price Check and Predisposed—were having their premieres. All the venues we passed as we rolled into the city were aglow as hordes of people exited midnight screenings and queued up to catch shuttles. It was 2am, and the lobby of our hotel was abuzz with bloggers, moviemakers, critics and volunteers, all clicking away on laptops. A scant bit of sleep later, and our eyes popped open for our first full day at Sundance.
January 31st, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: To Sundance We Go
Later today, Tiffany and I are boarding a plane for the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, where two of the films I had the good fortune of acting in, Michael Walker’s Price Check and Phil Dorling and Ron Nyswaner’s Predisposed, are having their premieres. We both feel extremely late to the party. All week, people have been emailing things like “Meet me on Main Street!” or “You are invited to the gifting suite!” When they hear we’re arriving in Park City for the last half of the festival, they promptly say something like “Oh, I’ll be back in NYC on Monday. You really are missing everything if you don’t come the first weekend. Why even bother going?!” You’d think we’ll be arriving in a ghost town!
January 24th, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: And the Award Goes To... the Best Marketing Team!
Watching the Golden Globes last Sunday, Tiffany and I couldn’t help but analyze the seeming trend for this year’s awards season. It looks as though comfort films like Hugo, The Help, The Artist and The Descendants are what we are going to see winning the big awards this year. Is this a reflection of our need for heart-warming films in these dire economic times, or just the old story of the winning films being the ones that spent the most on marketing? A bit of both, I would imagine.
January 17th, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: Grant Me a Wish
The first movie of 2012 that I saw in theaters was Pina, a stunning 3-D documentary tribute to famed German choreographer Pina Bausch, directed by an idol of mine, Wim Wenders. The poster for Pina reads “Dance, dance, otherwise we are lost,” so Tiffany, Tiny Dancer’s DP Kate Phelan and I figured it was mandatory viewing. While I waited in line at the IFC Center screening in New York City to meet Mr. Wenders, who was on hand sign books and participate in a Q&A, I held a handful of poster cards for Tiny Dancer. It was my hope that he would go to our site and watch our trailer, especially since he’s been quoted in interviews about Pina as saying he’s finally cracked the solution to filming dance in its truest, most visceral form... by using 3-D cameras. I wanted to say to him: “Hey, Wim, we used this GoPro camera and had our lead dancer, Katherine Crockett, hold it in her hand, and it’s pretty cool, Wim!”
January 10th, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: 2011—Our Year in the Crowd
2011 was the year of the Arab Spring, of Occupy Everything, of people taking to the streets with placards and doing it themselves. I’m glad I’m around to see another great social movement sprout. As “Hollywood types,” it’s often easy for Tiffany and I to feel like egomaniacs, disassociated from any larger socio-political movement, but I have to admit that this year—the year we took the plunge into the D.I.Y. movement to crowdfund Tiny Dancer—we've felt like a part of the zeitgeist.
December 20th, 2011 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: Mr. Crowdfunding Goes to Washington
Tiffany and I have our plane tickets and hotel room in Park City, which means it’s now time to set up meetings at Sundance; we’ve started emailing agents, sales agents and producers about grabbing some coffee on Main Street and talking about funding Tiny Dancer. As I’m formulating our plan of attack to get at least $75,000 more for its budget, I see that the little indie engine that could known as “crowdfunding” has gone legit, courtesy of the recently passed Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act, which encourages small businesses—and indie moviemakers—to raise low levels of investment from individual investors via crowdfunding.
December 14th, 2011 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: Hello, Sundance
Tiffany and I submitted our 20 minute work-in-progress cut of Tiny Dancer to Sundance in the outside chance that someone would think it was brilliant and program it in the shorts category. Did it get in? No. But I have been acting in a few films this year, and one in particular, Price Check—directed by the talented Michael Walker (Chasing Sleep), produced by Sundance alum Dolly Hall and starring Parker Posey—did get in! Price Check will have its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2012. So now Tiffany and I are wondering: Do we walk up and down Main St. in Park City, setting up meetings to help get Tiny Dancer into production? I say: Yes.
December 6th, 2011 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: What to Write About... When There's Nothing to Write About
I could say I was heading off to direct a low-budget horror movie in L.A. or am taking “meetings” about Tiny Dancer. However, the truth of the matter is that currently the only meeting I’m taking is with Andres Karu, a DP friend of mine and Tiffany’s who I’ve been talking with about re-cutting my acting reel. What can you do and say to keep the fan base you’ve bled for interested, involved and thinking you’re moving forward when, right now, "moving forward" means entering contests and applying for grants? Putting a stamp on an envelope doesn’t really capture the same magic as meeting with investors, does it?
November 22nd, 2011 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: What the $&*# Is Next?
Tiffany and I have spent the past week enjoying the success of our IndieGoGo campaign and fielding questions about what our next step is going to be in our odyssey to get Tiny Dancer into production. I've found myself saying the following sentence over and over again: "Well, what’s next? We are going to take the $20,000 we’ve raised and leverage that into $100,000.” It seems to make sense until I really think about it. Then I get scared. I don't know where I picked up the word "leverage"... maybe from the TV show of the same name starring Timothy Hutton, 'cause I sure don't know what it means.
November 14th, 2011 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: Everyone Loves a Winner
Tiffany and I are now the proud owners of a successful IndieGoGo campaign for Tiny Dancer! For over 60 days we reached out to friends and family and emailed over 15,000 of our contacts; now, with the campaign officially at an end, we’ve managed to raise a grand total of $10,255, overshooting our original goal of $9,000 by $1,255. We can’t thank everyone enough for their donations, and we're thankful as well to the friends and colleagues who went out on a limb to throw up the Bat Signal for our project.
November 8th, 2011 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
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