Seriously though, here’s an outside perspective on the Race:

- I very much agree with some of the reasons you quote for its lack of success – multiple platforms definitely does not help, it really “dilutes” the sense of focused targeting of a specific goal (which I think is essential in galvanizing massive response); also, people get turned off in a major way when the goal targeted seems unrealistic – working with sums the size of your budget you may conceivably have lost the sense of perspective on this, but 300.000€ (even 50.000€!) is a huge amount of money in crowd-funding terms, and honestly I for one never expected you to get anywhere near that total – and not because I don’t believe in you guys – I really do. But that was never realistic, people felt it, and that didn’t help.

- I think approaching the crowd in a humble manner is essential and goes a long way. A certain Spanish production which had the misfortune of being let down by a major investor at the last moment did in fact manage to raise a sum quite comparable to 50.000€ in a matter of days instead of months in the same timeframe, while being (I’d say) a lot less visible (and certainly younger) than you guys are. However, their approach was quite different from the race’s “Good news everyone! We’ll allow you to give us a several truckloads of money, ’cause we kinda need some more!” – well, at least that’s how it sounded to me, anyway. They had emotional appeal, you did not.

- Another thing those guys learned was that 1000€ is a rather high barrier of entry for potential “investors” – much many more are willing to spend some money (even if they might not care about the actual investment part) if the threshold was lower, much lower (in the 100-200-300€ range). I strongly believe they would have got nowhere with their plea if they had a lower limit of 1000€ (as they originally did, for investment). This does not directly apply of course to the Race where that limit did not exist, but it does very much apply to the “investment” section of crowd funding.

- Crowd funding is _not_ a tap that one can turn on every time funding is short, nobody – and I mean nobody – should take it for granted. One might get people enthused over a promising production and cash in on that quite nicely with a bit of luck, but I think a second or third round of “hey, there’s a small problem” is more likely to be met with a feeling of “come on, I didn’t apply for a subscription, I funded you guys once already”. Again, I might well be wrong on this, but I do think that if the budget cannot be secured in one go, multiple rounds of funding need a _very_ careful approach if they stand any chance of succeeding.

I certainly hope you guys don’t take all this for what it’s not – it’s just the insight of a simple fan, not a critique, and definitely not malicious. I’m very much looking forward to see Iron Sky finished and in the theaters worldwide…

I wanted to ask you one thing – what was the reaction of people who gave you the money in keep-it-all model portals, when they knew that you didn’t get the needed amount, meaning for them – your project might not succeed?

My friend is thinking about seeking fundings for his first album on a crowd-funding website, but we are worried, if there will be no troubles, no harsh reactions from people who might gave us their support.

Maybe add an update or a footnote under the picture about it!

I really liked this post anyhow :)

Good that you learned something from it, and I hope you’ll stay around on Flattr. :) We’ll feature this post in this weeks weekly review.

I imagine that it differs a lot – some platforms are better suited for bigger donations and others for smaller and choosing a good combination of the both that enables both types of supporters to take part probably makes it easier to reach ones goal.

I’m a little disappointed many people don’t realize the importance of post production. Actually, shooting a film means baking the bricks and post productions means building a house with those bricks.
And this can’t be emphasized enough for a film like this with so many greenscreen shots where during initial editing you don’t even have proper images that come close to the final film.
And don’t forget sound design. If you see a cool spaceship but only hear a reverberating sound stage, it simply doesn’t work!