Emily Best is a filmmaker and the founder of the indie film crowdfunding site Seed&Spark. In the piece below, she talks about her experience with crowdfunding helped fuel her new project Mr Jesus, which you can help back via, of course, Seed&Spark.
When I made my first film in 2011, I – like many filmmakers – believed we just had to make the most special, perfect thing and we would get selected for a festival, get a distribution deal, and catapult ourselves into the entertainment industry.
That didn’t happen.
First, it was way harder to make an excellent movie than I could have imagined, especially on a shoestring budget. Our aspirations outpaced our fundraising abilities: We attempted a much more ambitious script than we had the budget to pull off (omg so much of it was written at Golden Hour).
Second, we were making a movie about women friendships, which was wildly unpopular in 2011. Every sales agent and distributor gave me helpful advice on how to make the movie matter to men. My favorite: “Maybe just put some lesbian erotica in it.” He didn’t mean erotica for lesbians, by the way.
So we turned to this new thing called “crowdfunding” — but instead of using these upstart platforms, we made a wedding registry of everything we needed, from the camera rental to bug spray. We asked our community to support us with cash, loans, and gifts. Instead of raising the $20,000 we needed, we raised $23,000 in cash, plus hundreds of thousands in loans and gifts of locations, goods, and services. We didn’t make a perfect movie, but we developed a devoted fan base that’s kept up with us to this day, which unlocked so many possibilities in all our careers. This was the birth of Seed&Spark.
Over 13 years, running Seed&Spark has transformed how I approach filmmaking. So I’m sharing what I’ve learned and how it’s shaped my latest project Mr Jesus, a short film about a down-on-his-luck actor who wakes up to discover his image was stolen to make a GenAI Jesus — and now everyone thinks he’s the Second Coming.
Talk About Your Film
When the inspiration for Mr Jesus struck, I brought it first to my husband, actor Brennan Kelleher. He loved it, we broke the story together over breakfast, and I spent 30 minutes typing a first draft. And as soon as anything was on paper, we started telling people. When they asked “What’s new?” or “How are you handling the technofascist apocalypse?” we’d tell them about Mr Jesus. This has three important impacts:
It makes it real. I spend most of my professional life being seen as a tech executive (blergh) and it reminds me I am an artist who makes things! This boosts my morale and in turn…
It creates momentum. Once you admit you’re working on a project, that creates energy to move it forward. Social pressure can be good!
You get audience feedback immediately. Does this resonate? What do they respond to? What questions do they ask? That’s incredible creative fuel. So many conversations and off-hand remarks made it into the final script (with consent, of course! What am I, AI?).
Make the Best Film You Possibly Can
To match the audience excitement from talking about the film, we must make the best possible version. I reached out to my community of makers for script feedback. Jack Newell, Jennifer Reeder, Stephanie Sanditz are among the amazing writers who offered their expertise. The script is so much tighter, weirder and funnier for it.
Once we had the creative team in place, we did a reading — with Virginia Newcomb, Yann DeMoerloose, Jude LaFuse and Brenna Noyes — and they each offered amazing feedback, layering in their perspectives on characters and motivations. That took it to the next level.
Resource Constraints Are Creative Fuel
The industry has slowed down. And Brennan and I — and the rest of the Mr Jesus team — are more interested in creating our own future than waiting for it. We wanted to make this film this year. So we wrote something we could shoot in our house, tapped amazing creators in the Atlanta community, and reached out to folks where I’d built goodwill to source what we needed through loans and in-kind support.
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We lined up the Black Tesla picture car we need for evil Reverend Muskee (thanks to a neighbor family) and our camera package from the great people from ARRI Rental. We even reimagined scenes to reduce location moves and cost — and those creative constraints made the script stronger.
Audience-First Mentality
If this film doesn’t make audiences laugh, think, and hopefully fight over the ending, there’s no point making it. Films — especially shorts — must have a WHY. If you can’t answer why this film needs to be made by this group now, you can’t be disappointed if nobody comes to see it.
More than that, if you don’t engage people and plan how they’ll see it, you give away all your power to the lottery ticket of festival premieres and distribution deals. Or worse, you relegate yourself to uploading to YouTube, hoping for miracles. If you start thinking about your audience — where they are, what they’re thinking about, what they’re reading, how this will feel to them — you can design smart strategies for both crowdfunding and distribution. (And the Distribution Playbook is always free and always there for you to help design these strategies!)
For this film, an audience-first mentality was crucial because while we’re making a comedy, we’re weighing in on sensitive territory. People have BIG FEELINGS about AI, religion, and most of all, Jesus. We don’t want our film or campaign to turn people away before we can have the conversation.
So our team reached out to friends deep in film (many anti-AI), tech (where AI is” inevitable”), and/or deeply religious folks to get their perspectives. We know this isn’t for everyone (nothing is) but we believe it’s possible to craft an artistic vision that’s also respectful of the people it seeks to impact.
Final Advice From Mr Jesus Director and Seed&Spark Founder Emily Best
And last: my goodness, please enjoy yourself. Make things with people right in your own community whose talent astonishes you (that’s what I am doing for Mr Jesus!). Create a culture of joy on your sets, in your crowdfunding campaign, and in your distribution strategies and you will be undeniable.
Main image: Brennan Kelleher in the Mr Jesus promotional video.