This is a bit of genius. Disrupting the disruption. Although sites like Indiegogo are normally used to raise front-end money based on potential, filmmaker Andrew Morgan is using the platform to sell a finished product. He’s releasing his documentary/fiction blend Yes No Yes Yes Go via the crowdfunding site at $1 for a 720p download, $5 for a 1080p and $20 for a DVD. There are other options as well. Your enticement to donate is instant access to the movie itself.
As of now, Yes No Yes Yes Go has scored a little over $600 (and they’ll give around $72 of that to Indiegogo and to credit card processing), but it’s unclear how it would have done on something more traditional like iTunes. And, yes, we’re now considering iTunes as a more traditional indie distribution method. Flipping a crowdfunding site’s intended use to find an audience for a finished film hasn’t been done nearly enough to draw any real conclusions about success or failure, but it’s still a very inventive move. The potential is gut-level obvious, but the percentages going back to the site seem more than a bit prohibitive (unless you gamble on a fixed funding goal instead of playing it safe with a flex fund). That is, of course, if you have any other options available to distribute your work.
Which is partially why there’s a kind of admirable directness to all of this. Crowdfunding is an excellent new tool, but here Morgan is essentially using it as a storefront to show his trailer and allow potential fans to buy his film off the same page that’s advertising it. To learn more, you can check out his interview here, and you can watch the trailer below:
Source: Indiegogo, Twitch