Filmmaker Joe Avella tells the story of how he made a feature film with only $2000 raised on Kickstarter:
After several years of making shorts, I finally got into my first "real" film festival at SXSW, in 2009...
To my surprise, the film festival was a bust...
It seemed every other filmmaker at SXSW went to a film school and/or lived in an industry town, and had come with the notion of being discovered too. But unlike me, they were carrying around a big amount of film related debt and a bigger sense of entitlement...
I spent a majority of the time with people in the interactive portion, and the experience greatly shaped my filmmaking attitude and life today. At the same festival, intermixed with depressing self-entitled filmmakers, was a passionate group of young entrepreneurs who shared my ideas on pursuing your passion with limited resources, and finding creative ways to reach your goals. Everyone I met was so excited and happy, talking about new ideas and ways of distribution. I was meeting people who were successful at the thing I was trying to do: reach people.
They had a business, I had my movies. As I told people why I was at the fest, the conversations would sometimes reach a fever pitch about the possibilities of content online.
I haven't seen the feature yet, but Mr Avella's short film Action City Bathroom is fantastic:
The discussion on Hacker News is hit-and-miss, of course, but worth looking through.
