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In the ever changing sphere of business and the increasingly important role that technology and new media play, the consumer is now more involved in the creative process and has even more impact on the final product. Now not only do consumer have an impact on the final product but they can also help fund it. Crowdfunding is fast emerging as a way to get small business off the ground and is also an indicator of how much interest there is for certain products. The need for venture capital is no longer as high because of the option to crowdfund projects and ideas to gain the necessary funds to begin.

Crowdfunding is defined as “the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large amount of people who each donate a small amount” (Oxford Dictionaries, 2015). There are many platforms for crowdfunding that are commonly used such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo. While every project on these sites is different the presentation is pretty standard across the board, the project creators make a profile for their product containing a short video describing their product and a list of rewards for donations (Prive, 2012a). Most crowdfunding projects also use other new media to build a following and spread awareness of the campaign through social media such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr. 

For most projects to successfully reach their funding goal it requires not just a good idea for a product but also a great social media campaign alongside their idea (Prive, 2012a). This lends itself to the hope that by creating a great social media campaign around their idea that the project will go viral and they will easily achieve their goal. This works within the spreadability of a product and its campaign as the further it is spread the more value people will attach to it and the more the final product will be worth (Cassidy, 2015).

Crowdfunding is becoming more popular for starting businesses or projects and is changing the future of how business get off the ground. The idea of crowdfunding is great as it means that people are so passionate and interested in a product that they’re willing to give their money towards it in the hopes that it will succeed. The idea of a large number of people each giving small amounts of money may not be a new idea but with the new technology available the idea has been revolutionised and is now a popular choice for many small businesses and projects (Prive, 2012b). It also is more popular in this time as the line between producers and consumers is becoming increasingly blurred through the nature of the internet and the interactive nature of many of these sites (Cassidy, 2015). People giving their money to these projects aren’t just consuming the final product, they’re also helping to produce it, maybe not in the traditional sense but without their contributions the project might not ever be able to be produced.

An example of the impact that crowdfunding is having on professional industries, especially film, is the Veronica Mars Movie. 

The movie is based on a much beloved television show that ran for three seasons before being cancelled. The fans of the show weren’t satisfied with the shows ending and so when the creator and director Rob Thomas launched a Kickstarter campaign for making a movie extension of the show, the fans were able to raise over $5.7 million (Thomas, 2013). The Veronica Mars movie project broke multiple records in crowdfunding projects as it was the fastest project to reach $1 million then $2 million, it’s raised the most money of any project in the film category and it’s the third highest funded project in Kickstarter history (Thomas, 2013).  

Between the television show ending in 2007 and the Kickstarter campaign launching there were a couple of attempts to get Warner Bros. to greenlight a movie adaption of the series but they turned it down citing that there wasn’t enough fan interest in the project. When Rob Thomas went to Warner Bros. with the Kickstarter funded movie idea in 2013, Warner Bros. agreed to allow them to launch a Kickstarter campaign and said that if there was enough fan support behind the idea then they would be on board with the movie (Thomas, 2013).

Before the launch of the Veronica Mars movie project, there had never been an attempt to try to crowdfund a studio movie. There had been multiple campaigns for small independent productions but nothing as large or ambitious as the Veronica Mars movie which would be a large scale feature film studio production (Thomas, 2013). Consumers now have real power amongst the film industry as they can now help fund projects that they are passionate about and want to see come to fruition. The Veronica Mars project was ground breaking in many ways and has opened the door for other smaller productions to follow in its path and use crowdfunding to begin their projects.

Another ongoing example of crowdfunding helping small productions is that of the Almost Adults movie. This project was launched earlier this year by the creators of The Gay Women Channel on Youtube. They also plan to produce a feature film but on a smaller scale than the Veronica Mars project. While not having as large a fanbase as Veronica Mars, The Gay Women Channel used their Youtube channel as well as their Twitter and Tumblr to build a following and spread the news of their project throughout their audience (Unsolicited Project, 2015). 

While the original goal was $40,000 it was the bare minimum required to create their project and so they set ‘stretch goals’ which also had exclusive backstage content as rewards when they were achieved (The Gay Women Channel, 2015). By offering not just individual rewards for donations but being able to ‘unlock’ content through achieving the ‘stretch goals’, the project was shared further amongst Twitter and Tumblr along with urgings to donate to the project. 

This strategy seemed to pay off for The Gay Women Channel as they achieved not only their original goal but all of their ‘stretch goals’ with a final funding of $122,057 (The Gay Women Channel, 2015). Crowdfunding doesn’t just get projects off the ground it also enables future generation of professionals to gain crucial experience. In 2013 the documentary Innocente won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject and 25 of the films aired at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival were made through crowdfunding (Weiss, 2014). For independent filmmakers, being able to use crowdfunding for their projects is sometimes crucial to getting the project off the ground and into production.

Crowdfunding is shaping the future of the film industry by cutting out the need for studio approval and funding for productions to get off the ground. Crowdfunding is especially useful for independent filmmakers who rather than getting corporate sponsors can use crowdfunding sites to fund their projects and maintain full artistic control (Kickstarter, 2015). Crowdfunding isn’t just changing the film industry though, it is also changing other professions such as journalism. The declining interest in newspapers has resulted in many job cuts and company size downs leaving newsrooms now 30% smaller than they were in 2000 (Jian and Usher, 2013). The journalism business is now much harder to break in to but crowdfunding is a new way for journalists to publish their work and create a portfolio of their work.

One crowdfunding site tailored for journalism is Spot.us, a site that has a similar setup to Kickstarter in that there will be an idea pitch and a funding goal. Spot.us allows donations towards individual stories which after they’re funded come with a creative commons license and are able to be published in any other publication (Jian and Usher, 2013). Similar to crowdfunding films, the consumers now have more power to choose what they want to see or read about. Consumers and donors can now pick and choose the topics that are relevant to them and that they are interested in knowing more about which adds a level of interaction that hadn’t been seen so much in traditional journalism.

The possibilities available with crowdfunding are endless as there is no limit on what can and cannot be crowdfunded. Beginning businesses are now seeing the benefits of crowdfunding and are watching it develop more and more as a viable way to start a business. Crowdfunding is a great financial tool that has proved itself invaluable to many young professionals who have used it as a way to gather the funds to begin their projects. In the future crowdfunding is going to continue to develop and gain popularity as a finance tool for start-up business and projects.

  Reference List

Cassidy, E. 2015. ‘KCB206 – Week 2 – New Media and… Society’, Internet, Self & Beyond. Date Viewed: 7 April, 2015. https://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/blackboard/content/listContent.jsp?course_id=_118638_1&content_id=_5693116_1

Jian, L and Usher, N. 2013. ‘Crowd-Funded Journalism’, Journal of Computer- Mediated Communication. Date Viewed: 7 April, 2015. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/doi/10.1111/jcc4.12051/pdf

Kickstarter. 2015. ‘What is Kickstarter’, About Us. Date Viewed: 6 April, 2015. https://www.kickstarter.com/hello?ref=footer

MOVIECLIPS Trailers. 2013. “Veronica Mars Official Kickstarter Viral Video (2013)”. Youtube video, posted March 13, 2013. Date Viewed: 7 April, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DTZ-fXU4iE

Oxford Dictionaries. 2015. ‘Crowdfunding’, British & World English. Date Viewed: 2 April, 2015. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/crowdfunding

Prive, T. 2012a. ‘What is Crowdfunding And How Does It Benefit the Economy’, Entrepreneurs. Date Viewed: 6 April, 2015. http://www.forbes.com/sites/tanyaprive/2012/11/27/what-is-crowdfunding-and-how-does-it-benefit-the-economy/

Prive, T. 2012b. ‘Inside the JOBS Act: Equity Crowdfunding’, Entrepreneurs. Date Viewed: 6 April, 2015. http://www.forbes.com/sites/tanyaprive/2012/11/06/inside-the-jobs-act-equity-crowdfunding-2/

The Gay Women Channel. 2015. ‘Almost Adults Feature’, Kickstarter. Date Viewed: 2 April, 2015. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/220469991/almost-adults-feature/description

Unsolicited Project. 2015. “We’re Making a Movie!”. Youtube video, posted March 4, 2015. Date Viewed: 2 April, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47lS_BSp2Gg

Thomas, R. 2013. ‘The Veronica Mars Movie Project’, Kickstarter. Date Viewed: 2 April, 2015. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/559914737/the-veronica-mars-movie-project/description