Yet More on Internet Film Financing: IndieGoGo Video and MyMovieStudio

Last Friday at the Making Media Now conference in Boston, I ran into Slava Rubin of IndieGoGo, and we sat down for a quick chat about how things are going with the site, which aims to help filmmakers raise money for their projects. (I've previously compared several of the sites trying to do this.)



(Aside: In much of the video, my nose looks like it is auditioning for the part of "The Nose" in a remake of Woody Allen's 'Sleeper.')

Before we shot the video, I mentioned to Slava that earlier in the week, I'd received yet another e-mail from yet another new site trying to help raise money online for films. This one, My Movie Studio, is co-founded by Glasgow Phillips, who has written a few episodes of 'South Park.' Users can post their ideas for movies (not scripts), and then vote on which ones they'd like to see produced. Co-founder Michael Bertin explains:

When we get a critical mass, we plan to form an investment vehicle and issue $100 shares for sale to members. We hope to raise $6 million (60,000 shares at $100 each) to finance the three most popular ideas as voted by the community—the three winning Movie Pitch authors will receive $25,000 and sole "Story By" credit on the movies based on their ideas.

Who's going to write the scripts? Bertin explains: "...[W]e're going to hire professional, credited film and TV writers to turn the ideas into scripts. We've got a really good network of writers so we're pretty confident in our abilities to get through any creative challenges from a scripting standpoint.

If the movies do well, investors will presumably be able to earn a positive return on their $100 shares. But dealing with securities regulations will be a challenge .... which is why IndieGoGo considers all the money its filmmakers raise to be "contributions" or "donations," rather than investments.