Crowd Founding

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The website that I researched was the "crowdfunded" - http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/

This website allows to create a campaign for anyone that needs to raise money for their projects.
It can be a charity, sport clubs, political movements or film makers. Anyone can show their ideas and plans and
ask people for financial help. The website helps with gathering the money towards a project and it also allows
the company or a group to keep in touch with the people who donated the money for their idea. 

The website provides the guide of how you should plan, create and run your project. It gives brief step by step guide 
as well as some of the information given by other people who used "crowd founder" before. 

They also include videos where people explain what they did for their campaigns, why and how it
was successful. 

This shows that the website and people behind it really want to help others with creating their
own projects. They are trying to be as helpful as possible. Also people who already use it or that
are still using it are happy to share their tactics. It created this community of people who want to share 
ideas and people who want to support them. 

To understand how the campaigning works I looked at three different projects, which in my opinion were
very good, good and bad. 

The one I thought was very good : Alderney: The Homecoming Documentary
http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/alderneythe-homecoming-documentary

The film will tell the story of 1,400 islanders that had to evacuate within 12h notice to escape
from German occupation. It will introduce people to those who still remember that day; their
experience of leaving and then going back after 4 years to completely destroyed home.

The film was very well made. It showed the person who was asking for the money a lot, which allowed 
people to know who he is and what he is like. It made the project seem more personal. Like it comes
from a person for a person. There were also used time lapses from the present mixed with photographs
from the past, so people were introduced not only verbally to the story, but also visually, which allowed
them to understand the story better. It allowed them to visuals the idea that Charlie had and from
there decide i this is something they want to help with. 

They broke down all the costs to visualize what the money is going to be used for, which help people
with understanding it and it ensures them that the project is real and professional. 

 
































Their pledges: 

 































I believe that they smartly divided the prices and the pledges that they go aside with them. 
This tactic allowed them to raise £5,300 of £5,000 target with 82 supporters in 35 days. 

The project was supported by people who knew Charlie but also by people who thought that the project
was interesting and should be brought to life. It was thanks to the brilliant filming and edit, as well as
the narrative and the pledges. Along side, there was other tactic that Charlie used. 

Charlie used the "update" section to inform people who supported his project about the money that they 
managed to collect and about things that they were planning to do or managed to do with the collected
money. I think it was a great move, because it shows exactly how the money has been used. They
were honest and open about their project which made people trust them.

I also really liked that Charlie would say "thank you Charlie Gauvain" or "With best wishes Charlie Gauvain" at the end of each update. I think it made it more personal and people who were following
those updates felt like they are a part of this project. As the amount of collected money grew, Charlie started sharing his email address and phone no. (charlie@eyefilmandtv.co.uk; +44 7768 648146). It shows how he gradually started trusting more people and so it seemed like a more "human" thing to do. It allowed him to make stronger connection with people who supported his project.

The one I thought was good : Trigga 
http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/trigga

Trigga is a film written and directed by Meloni Poole. It is based on the director’s personal childhood 
experience of bullying and how her horse helped her deal with it. She wanted to do it to inspire young 
girls to not be scared of bullies and that love trumps hate.

The film, although very well shot, was rather monotonous. It definitely represented the relationship between young girl and her horse. It also included the narrative voice, however unlike the film that Charlie recorded, Meloni does not show herself on the camera at all times. I think that it takes away the personal approach to the project and makes it too mysterious to actually want to participate in it. 

Meloni talks a lot about her own work and then she moves to the part where she explains why people
should donate money to help her with realization of the project. Personally, I do not think it is a great
move. I think that the reason why people should donate their money should be shown as first, because
it is the most important part. 

In this section she talk a lot about important things such as how young kids are bullied and that she 
wants them to see that there are creative ways to deal with and to make them feel rave to be themselves. 
It is a great message, however it was not placed at the beginning which in my opinion was a mistake. 

Later on she keeps on making the same mistake, by putting the most important formations, further and 
away from the top of the page, where the most of attention goes to. Most people will not want to read
information that have nothing to do with the project they may consider supporting. If they do not 
see it u on the top, they may not bother to look for it, especially if the beginning, explaining what Meloni 
is doing and what she have done is very long. 

Finally we are introduced to what they money will go into. Again, she makes a long introduction, which
takes away the attention of her target audience. She explains what she needs the money for and then
she moves on to the pledges. There she does not really explain much and I also believe that it was 
unnecessarily put there since she has a lit of those pledges on the side. 

In summary I think that she did not put the information in the right order and she was not really precise 
with what she was saying. 

I think that Meloni divided the pledges well, however she mentions her work, but does not give any examples for it. And it actually makes sense, when looking at the comment section, where people seem to know her and her work and I feel like the whole project was aimed at those people, not people that do not know her very well. However she still put all of those information about herself, which makes it a little bit confusing.

 


























With all the things that I think she did well and those that I think were not as successful, she raised 
£10,116 of £10,000 target with 123 supporters in 49 days.





She also uploaded some updates, where she gave information on how much people donated, as well
as thank yous and updates on what they have been up to and how the film develops. 
That was very similar to what Charlie did and I liked what she did there. 

   

































The one I thought was bad : Spitfire
http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/spitfire-short-film-ata-story 

The story line follows a former ATA pilot Betty, who takes her granddaughter for a last 
flight in a Spitfire, and is focused on a forgotten story from WWII. 

The quality of the video is extremely poor. The camera work is absolutely terrible. It is shaky 
and not in a good hand held style, but just a very poor style. The editing is boring and chaotic. The framing, when filming people talking is 
not technically correct. It is very unpleasant to watch the video. It shows the place and the 
plain and people talking about it or asking for the donations, however it does not explain at 
all what the money is needed for and how the project will look like. It looks poor and like it 
was not very well planned. Two females asking for the donations look off the camera. They 
look very stressed and the whole thing looks chaotic and uncomfortable to watch. 

At the beginning they explain that they asked for money before and they raised £700 but it 
was not enough and that they need more money for the project to completed. 

They do very odd thing where they first give a short summary and then they go to talk about the project itself, however in the summary they say that they "are an all female crew at the moment", which to me sounds like they are worried that because they are females no one will want to donate money for their project and they do it in a way where they almost promise that there will be male members of the team. I really do not like this part.

They do not explain things very clearly.  Moreover they include things that really do not matter. For 
example they gave an update that they filmed a second crowdfunding video and for some reason
they said what has been used in that video. I do not think that it is something that will encourage people to donate their money for this project. 

Later on they introduce the crew and after that they finally move on to the purpose of making this film and what the money will be used for, which is a mistake that Meloni made as well, where the important information was on the bottom of the page.

They give lots of facts about the war in terms of females that took part in it and then they write only one sentence explaining why they want to make this film. It was not the strongest tactic to introduce their ideas to their target audience, because it seems like they do not really care about producing this project and making it good.

This is just atrocious, badly written, extremely informal and absolutely unappealing.

Their pledges:

This is a perfect example of "not to do". The breakdown of prices has absolutely no sense whatsoever. The things that people can get for donating the money is spread across the amount of money very poorly. It looks like someone did it at late night, as quick as possible.

I think the worst part was when they jumped from  £15 to £60! and then from £100 to £500. 

I am not surprised with this result: 

They have only one update where they thank their 5 supporters for donating the money towards the 
realization of the project. 
They knew very well that they will not meet their target of £2000. They made another option for their
target audience where they can choose between £10 £20 £30 and £50. The title for this option is 
"just donate" which shows very well how desperate they are. However they still did not try at all. 
It looks very unprofessional and uncomfortable. The worst part is that they give this option and then 
then say that if you do not want to you can get a reward by paying the other amounts of money that I
showed before.