Film Microfinance

I'm trying to finance a short film right now. I don't think I'll be going this route:

Howard Dean managed to fuel his 2004 presidential campaign by inviting small donors to send him contributions over the Internet.

Now, an array of filmmakers and entrepreneurs are exploring the same approach to raise a production budget for an indie pic.

The tactic's been tried since the early days of the Internet, but a fresh crop of entrepreneurs thinks the time could finally be ripe.

I'd much prefer a single, serious investor to the drib-and-drab approach. Then again, no number on a check is too small for me to cash it.

UPDATE: Mike at HDforIndies donates his two cents:

Nobody's successfully done this yet, and there are a number of challenges as Scott points out, especially to traditional investors.

I think for this idea to work, somebody bigger than a nobody would have to step up to do it, and they'd need to lower the target amount to raise - $100K tops I'd think...but that's not much of a feature - you could make a nice short for that though.

Basically, the folks trying this need to dial back a bit - going for fully funded feature film is quite the leap.

Meanwhile, I wrote my horror feature, The Farmhouse, to be shot for no less than $100,000. Of course I could improve it dramatically for more. But I certainly think a $100k feature is possible in this day and age.