Is film crowdfunding dead, or can it still work if you approach it the right way?
In this episode, writer-director Jack Judson joins us to break down how we funded a $40K indie feature film, what actually worked during our Seed&Spark campaign, and what we would do differently next time.
We get honest about the real numbers behind Pineapple Promise, including how much came from crowdfunding, why personal outreach mattered more than passive discovery, how professional branding increased donor confidence, and why we built contingency into the budget from the beginning.
Then we move beyond fundraising and into the realities of preparing a micro-budget feature: Keeping the crew lean, paying cast and crew fairly, writing around expensive production challenges, saving money on locations and travel, and deciding when it makes more sense to rewrite a scene than throw money at it.
Crowdfunding an indie film isn’t as simple as launching a campaign and waiting for strangers to find it. This is a transparent look at film funding, budgeting, marketing, and pre-production from a team about to put those plans to the test.
And after the shoot, we’ll be back to share what worked, what failed, and whether any of our carefully made plans survived production.
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Show Links:
Learn more about Pineapple Promise: https://www.patreon.com/cw/BuildingAnArc
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