Thursday, January 3, 2008

INDIE MAVERICK

Over at Microcinemascene there was this article posted about another open-community based investor website called Indie Maverick, a UK based company. But the twist here is that it's aimed at us the indie moviemaker. The premise is that you sign-up and post some details about your film and your projected budget. Then investors sign-up and invest whatever dollar amount they so choose into your film.

When the budget is met, Indie Maverick contacts you to see if you are indeed legit and then they notify the investors and from there you go through some more hoops and loops to get the money needed for your project.

In return Indie Maverick seems like it will try to distro your flick (I am unclear on that point), make a trailer, a limited-edition DVD, and all of that jazz and you get a 70/30 split (70 for you and 30 for the distro/investors) with investors being paid on a timely schedule. Really I am just paraphrasing the whole process. The full details of how to do this can be found here.

Now this is really a cool idea. There is a immense amount of potential to be had here. Yet I am not so sure about the whole Indie Maverick taking your flick to distro, especially for a 70/30 split.

Not only that, but some of the budgets versus the actual project seem unrealistic. In fact alot of these flicks seem to be a bit talky to be. It may be the Arkoff in me, but I would not invest in most of the films I see on the site. What does everyone think about this new site?

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I have a film on that site. I think it is a wonderful opportunity for all filmmakers.

I'd like to see investor have the opportunity to contact the filmmakers. I think that would be a useful tool. We'll see what happens, I think filmmakers have to be smart not put all their financing hopes in that site. 30% is a lot of money to give them for what they offer.

I think personally 10% is more then fair but they're the only place to go currently.

Tim Shrum said...

The investors should have a opportunity to speak with the filmmaker, and you are right, they should offer that as a option.

30% seems to be standard with most indie distros, but I would really like to see improvements there. A 10-15% fee would be definitely be more reasonable.

What film do you have on their website, and are you having any success?

Anonymous said...

Not as much as I'd like. I have Ho Ho Homicidal on the site.