In order to start with the final touch of the post production we needed more money, at least the same amount for which we shot the film or even more, around 25 000 euro.
In August 2015 I started to build a crowdfunding campaign in INDIE GOGO. It was a completely new world for me and I had to study how the platforms were functioning, what were the tricks and how the hell I was supposed to get people to donate, or buy, or give away money for a Bulgarian micro-budget psychological drama in Bulgarian language. I listened to many podcasts, I was reading and watching lots of people who were sharing their know how and their success stories. However, our case was very unique and different from all of the cases even from the film funding stories, because most of the films were very much either strong and very popular genre films like comedy and horror, or socially oriented films with very big followings and big fan base.
However I learnt a lot about how a crowdfunding campaign was supposed to run. I felt that I was ready to start and implement it for NoOne. It took me the whole September 2015 to manage to make the Indiegogo page, the video teaser, to figure out what would be the perks and how I was supposed to manage and organize the campaign for the next one month.
The making of the video was a story deserving of an entire book, I had to reshoot at least 10 times my teaser video. It was hilarious and so painful to try to find the proper words in order to express and cover your desperation, anger and misery of the fact that nobody gives a shit about what you were doing.
I knew that the first and the last weeks are the most important weeks during the campaign and I was aware that it is best to start a campaign on the first date of the month especially if it is a Monday or in the beginning of the week. Thus I did too. I did a time schedule and a campaign planner. I had one very big problem that I was running the campaign by myself, a typical crowdfunding campaign needs a really strong back office and administration. It requires heavy use of social media and email marketing. It also requires publications and PR. Unfortunately I was alone in this endeavor and I had to organize and do all of the tasks by myself. So basically I had to devote two months only working for the campaign. I explained to Yavor that we would need to put our money on the first or second day in order for the campaign to move to at least 15 or even better 25% of the ultimate goal.
I set as a goal 20 000 $ and I really was budgeting all of them to cover the rest of our expenses. I needed 25 000 in order to pay for everybody and for all of the services.
So on the 1st of October 2015 we started the campaign, I put 1000$ from my credit card and Yavor put around 1000 $ so we raised our funding for two days to 4000$ and Indiegogo immediately put us on the front page of the campaigns. The first week was very strong and we reached around 6000 $. I was using Facebook and Twitter and I got really incredible support from Bulgaria and from Bulgarians abroad. Very few non Bulgarians actually gave money and predominantly 95% of the funders were Bulgarians.
After the first week the excitement drastically dropped down and the campaign lost its momentum, I was so tired of spamming and giving a shout to as many people as possible about the campaign and the goal which we were chasing. I was so tired at the end of the second week so I naturally released the push and thus the campaign somehow went on a free fall.
Last week I managed to get into some TV stations and online medias and again I somehow managed to bring the attention and the enthusiasm into the project. So finally we managed to raise around 8600$ from Indiegogo. However, 2000 $ were our investment and after all of the taxes we ended with 6000 $ for us.
In the beginning of 2016 I started to sell out all of my shooting equipment and of the production shooting equipment. I was very short with money and I have already invested more than two years working on the project.
However I finallyI managed to find an investor who put in 10 000 euro at the end of February 2016 so I found out that it would be impossible for us to go to a post production studio and do the color correction with our money and do proper sound design and mix and music at the same time. Actually the guy who is thought to be the best color grader in Bulgaria told me to quote me 10 000 euro only for the color grading. So I felt that I would have to do the grading by myself but for this story later on.
In February 2016 we had raised some decent money for our micro budget film but further away from the need to cover all of the expenses. And we were actually really short because of our constantly running expenses for the company's administration and finally I covered some debts here and there so almost immediately we started to spend money from the raised budget.
I was so exhausted from the entire process from the creative and the business standing points and I knew that if we had to find more money the only chance was to get in contact with some producers abroad who would eventually like to be part of the film as a co producer etc. I applied with the film to several work in progress sections in a few film festivals but we were only selected for the Sofia Meetings during SIFF which was happening in March in Sofia.
However we didn't get any other finance and what happened is that Yavor and I had to continue to spend our private money for the next an year and little bit more until the final theatrical release of the film.
So basically the entire cash which was spent for the entire film production, pre-production, post production, marketing, distribution and promotional process was around 40 000 $.
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