I believe that my campaign wasn’t as useful as i would have hoped as I only get 25 likes at the time of writing. I would have liked to get more views and likes for the obvious reason of exposure and putting my project out there.
I believe that my strengths were that I laid out the things I posted on my Facebook which allowed the content I had posted to be well received reaching the majority of the people that liked the page. I also find strength within my graphics as they show a consistency of style, also the inclusion of before and after images add appeal to artists and creative members of my community.
However, I do feel that I do not upload enough to my page as I do not like uploading unfinished things which makes it look like there is no progress towards the next update. This will change in the future as it lets hype die as I work on a completed product. This is possibly backed up by the statistics Facebook generated throughout my project.
While these stats are from the beginning of my production they show how my content became relevant for a brief window and then teetered around no likes or views. I believe that this is from me not posting very often, which allowed my page to go from reaching many people to vanishing off their feeds rather quickly.
This second image shows the last week, at the time of righting, stats. You can see that my page stagnated as how it reached only 13 people, and while the post engagement is up the page views and likes were down rather drastically, as far as a 75% decrease on the actual page.
If I was to do this campaign again I would hope to upload on a regular basis. This would hopefully grow my audience and keep engagement and interest with my project.I would also hope to upload images regardless of their completion because as it stands I was reluctant to upload unfinished bits of art due to the feeling of being a completionist as audiences tend to engage more with companies and projects when they know more about it.
Case Study
A great example on why not to go silent on social media is the Twitter account of HelloGames, a games company based in England who created a game called No Man’s Sky, which many believe was oversold and falsely advertised. A diagram of their twitter activity was made in late September.
As you can see from this diagram, Hellogames was rather active in the early days and particularly active around the game’s PS4 and PC release however, after the PC release the number of tweets quickly dropped before cutting out completely, leaving the audience in the dark. The problems with doing this are that the community can feel like they were ripped off or don’t mean anything to the company. This can be extremely detrimental to a company’s reputation as it can lead to the public to lose trust with the company and might be skeptical to give money to future products.
psychological rewards & punishments – The use of the idea that the audience is getting something more or is missing out on something if they don’t help you.
Identification & imitation – connecting audience to the product and copying what other successful
agreement with values – Audiences are more likely to
celebrity endorsement –
Research on crowdfunding sites –
Kickstarter —
On Kickstarter a project must have it’s goal met to be funded. If the project doesn’t meet it’s goal the money isn’t transferred.
If a project is successfully funded Kickstarter takes a 5% fee, Kickstarter also takes an extra 3% + £0.20 per pledge in the UK, if the project isn’t successfully funded there are no fees.
At the time of writing, this project raised £1520 of its £1500 goal. The way that I believe it achieved this was through incentives and confidence, for example the video that is on the page is an animatic of the final piece, showing that the creators have a solid image in their mind. The incentives that are shown are getting the music video and being able to be in the credits, both of which have a limited edition early bird option which are slightly cheaper allowing people who wouldn’t have enough money for the normal rewards.
GoFundMe —
On GoFundMe any donations you get keep. If the project doesn’t meet it’s goal the money is still transfered.
If a project gets a donation, GoFundMe takes a 5% fee, GoFundMe also takes an extra 1.4% + £0.20 per pledge in the UK however this does not include VAT.
At the time of writing, this project raised $2200 of its $4000 goal. The way that I believe it didn’t achieve it’s goal is the lack of incentive within GoFundMe itself as it does not seem to give the options of rewards for backing. As such I will most likely not use this for my production as it seems like you are just asking for money and not willing to offer rewards in my opinion.
IndieGoGo —
IndieGoGo has two forms for funding; Flexible, the creator keeps all contributions even if they don’t hit their goal, and Fixed, all contributions are returned if the creator doesn’t meet their goal.
If a project gets funded Indiegogo takes a 5% fee, Indiegogo also takes an extra 3% + £0.24 in the UK.
At the time of writing, this project raised $330 of its $500 goal, however this project is on a flexible goal meaning they get to keep the $330 even if they don’t make their goal they keep the money. While this is good if you were planning to make the project anyway and the money was to improve the production I believe that it is unfair to donators because if the project required all the money that was required and the creator was allowed to keep it even if the project failed to reach it’s goal it could be used to fund other things than the project.
Patreon —
Patreon is a monthly donation service where donators choose how much they donate per month and creators can set goals and rewards for their donators that are delievered on a monthly basis
At the time of writing CorridorDigital $5,833 per month of it’s 3rd goal of $6000. Patreon allows the creator to set multiple goals as the project goes on, however it seems thats Patreon is more suited towards people funding a company, rather than an individual project as it pays out the money each month meaning people would be more likely to give maybe $5 as it would not be much taken out of their paycheck.
PLANNING MY INITAL CAMPAIGN
Kickstarter —
[Note I can’t actually release a Kickstarter campaign as I am under 18 and I do not have the rights to make money off the song that I am using.]
This is my plan for the Kickstarter campaign that I would make if I owned the rights to the song. My target was £50 which I believe was pretty reasonable as I would require to get more pens and paper for the commissions. The idea that the campaign would run for 30 days is from how as I wouldn’t require that much it would hypothetically be easy to collect that amount from donations.
Rewards
If I was to actually make this Kickstarter campaign I would have 15 potential commission slots with 5 of them taking priority. The fact that the rewards are limited edition and the priority rewards are slightly cheaper makes the viewer believe that they are more important if they take the cheaper one. I strategically made the more available reward slightly more expensive to counteract the increased work load. The fact that the prices are so close also suggests to the viewer that the priority commissions would be to the same standard of the others.
While working my weekend job I was approached by a representative of Humbledinger, an independent film and video production company based in Sheffield. They asked that I sent them some of my artwork as they were looking for animators at the time.
Permissions
At the time of writing I have not sent a request to Riot Games (holder of the rights) but I intend to in the near future.
EDIT: After emailing Riot support I have been given the go ahead to make my video however I will not be promoted by Riot Games in any way.
The following is the response that I received from a Riot games employee.
Evaluation:
How I intend to distribute my film and why
Plan A: I intend to distribute my product onto Youtube as my main aim is not to monetize my production but rather to seek online exposure for my graphic design and animation. I intend to showcase my work to multiple audiences and interconnected subcultures with an emphasis on networking with professionals. The audiences that would be reached if Riot Games (The company that holds the rights to the songs that I intend to use for my production) promotes me are the League of Legends community (the game that Riot Games developed which has a estimated 100 million active players) & Vicetone (a music creator with 226k youtube subscribers).
Plan B: If Youtube fails me I will upload my production to Vimeo as it has a large professional following but again I’m more focused for online exposure for my graphic design and animation. I intend to showcase my work to multiple audiences and interconnected subcultures with an emphasis on networking with professionals.
Cross-cultural consumer characteristics categories people in terms of their personal aspirations.
Mainstreamers
The largest group, Concerned with stability and security, Usually Conformist & conventional,Buy recognized brands, suspicious of change; anything new, In this section I will discuss how an audience is targeted
Aspirers
Seek to improve themselves, define themselves by buying high status brand names, The absorb ideologies of the products as their own, Believe their status is established by this consumption, may subscribe to the american dream
Succeeders
People who feel secure and in control, In positions of power (though they may not be), They buy brands which reinforce their feelings of power, Materialistic, individualistic & conservative ideologies
The four C’s –
Consumer (wants and needs)
In most cases you have to discover what people want then create that;
“build it and they will come” – J.P. Cancilla.
Don’t make something that already exists
Costs
Consider the price of going to see your product as well as the cost of the of the product itself. Don’t overcharge if you want to make profits
Convenience
Consider the place your chosen media is most widely consumed; E.g. Internet (Youtube, Vimeo), in person (Cinemas, film festivals) as this will allow you to tailor your product to the chosen sharing media.
Communication
Good advertising is a give and take relationship, if a producer doesn’t interact with their audience the advertising is usually doomed to fail as the producer won’t know of the pitfalls of their own production and cannot use the audience feedback to create a better, more profitable product.
Initial Idea for Unit 13
I intend to create a music video animation for the song Project Yi, I want to use a mix of 2D and 3D animation.
The plot would revolve around the idea of change and will hopefully incorporate both 2D and 3D animation
Audiences – I believe that my audiences would be gamers, and like-minded teens with a passion for music and art.
Pros – Doesn’t rely on actors, can do things that can’t be achieved in real life, no props or equipment required.
Cons – Very time consuming, lot of drawing required.
Analysing and researching outlets to reach my audience (week 2)
Youtube
In my research I have found that Youtube likes to be very vague with their terms of service regarding monetization and advertisement
“…it’s not like my most recent video was age-restricted, even though the videos I used weren’t age-restricted themselves, and the ones that were I applied heavy filtering, black bars all over the screen so anything sexually explicit would get fully censored. But no that’s clearly not good enough for Youtube because they hit me with that good old age restriction thanks a lot guys but you know what Youtube wouldn’t stop there they thought; ‘an age restriction that’s not harsh enough so you know what else we’ll do we’ll take all the money generated from that video… … meanwhile Zoie carries on exploiting herself for views and money totally unaffected.”
“…video was age-restricted, even though the videos I used weren’t age-restricted themselves…” This one quote shows Youtube’s, and in turn Google’s, hypocrisy as the youtuber in question, Pyrocynical, made a video showing how another youtuber, Zoie Burgher, uses her body to bait people into viewing but then Pyrocynical, who used clips of the un-age-restricted videos gets age-restricted himself.
Even though Youtube is unreliable with their terms of service I still intend to use it as it is the largest platform on the internet and as such readily available to the public and as I don’t intend to monetize my project I don’t have to deal with youtube’s monetization service.
Social Media campaign
I will most likely use Facebook for my social media campaign as while twitter is useful the organisation of a twitter page is rather new to me. Another reason I will use Facebook is that a lot of people do use Facebook and is arguably more available for the public and significantly easier to create a page based as I won’t have to learn any new systems to work with. Facebook also adds a level of interactivity between the content and the audience. Facebook is also useful for the potential for impact ripples.
Analysing and researching the audience for my production (week 3)
Setting up my focus group (week 3)
To get my focus group I created a survey on Survey-monkey, with this completed survey I put it on Facebook to which I got 13 results. I would have liked more responses however I will have to make do with the results I got.
Various Graphs showing collected data.
Using this information we can see that the slim majority of respondents usually watch animations which is good as I intend to create an animation. The results also show that most of the respondents watch short films on Youtube which is also good for me as I intend to release my project onto Youtube. While I am not collecting donations, due to legal concerns, my focus group say that they would give £0 – £20 with the average towards £5 which would reach my hypothetical goal within 10 donations.
I also bounce ideas off my friend who is very in tune with design as shown by the below
Commissioning & analytics (week 4)
Channel 4 states on their Comedy Blaps page that they are looking for, “looking for ideas that work brilliantly as shorts, but have the scale and potential to develop further and possibly get a full pilot” An example of this is a Blap called, Outsiders, which, in classic channel 4 fashion, is based with controversial topics such as gender and ethnicity. While this doesn’t directly connect to any of my ideals however the idea that my product can be it’s own thing as a short but still be able to be expanded on is something to think about.
“We need a full treatment that explains and sells the idea, detailing who will be involved on and off screen, and a clear breakdown of what the three separate Blaps will be. One line about an idea with no supporting material won’t be enough to catch our eye in a sea of pitches. Be creative to help stand out from other pitches.”
This tells us that commissioners want full fledged ideas with thought and casts and production teams in mind rather than simply just someone explaining their idea, which would be a problem for me as I usually make plots points and fill in the blanks as I go.
Kick-starter case study
My evaluation of a successful kick-starter campaign: Kung Fury
Kung Fury is an action comedy short film that earned $630,019, over three times their goal of $200,000. The fact that the project overachieved it’s goal shows that the project was successful. I believe that the project was successful due to the fact that the film was mostly shot before the campaign even began, meaning that the audience and backers could see a short proof of concept to base their judgement to back or not on.
The project also knows who it’s audience is as it seems like a rather niche subject matter, as it is an 80’s inspired, over-the-top, action comedy, however there is clearly a market for it as proved by the sheer amount of people that backed (17,713 people).
The project used rewards dispersed initially at $5 intervals which escalated to $10 intervals to entice the potential backers into donating.
Tom Allen 