Directing a short film is expensive. How to crowdfund it

Crowdfunding can not only raise the money you need but also help build an audience for your work. To get some advice on how to start, The Times talked to Yu and Castellini; Kayla Robinson, who successfully crowdfunded her short film “Ball Is Ball” in October; Jim Cummings, filmmaker and founder of FilmFreeway’s The Short to Feature Lab; Will Haines, Indiegogo’s vice president of product and customer trust; and Ryan T. Husk, producer and campaign manager of The Star Trek Voyager Documentary, the most funded documentary on Indiegogo. “If you could shake the money tree of Hollywood and get financing to make short films, that’s great and good for you,” said Cummings. “What a lot of people who aren’t seasoned veteran crowdfunders don’t necessarily realize is that it’s not an ‘If you build it, they will come’ situation,” said Haines. “People sometimes feel shy about doing this, but if it were me, and I had a $10,000 goal for my film, I would literally have a list of people that I’ve already reached out to who I know are going to donate, and when it launches, you reach out to those people, and now you suddenly have $3,000 raised.” Once you start to show traction, you’re much more likely to get contributions from people who are outside your network, he said.