Reaction to Kickstarter

So, everybody I know by now has heard about how Veronica Mars is easily on its way to becoming a movie thanks to earning two million dollars in its first day as a Kickstarter project.  Now, there's talks of doing Friday Night Lights the same way.  There's talk of trying to fund a Pushing Daisies movie or Chuck and I have to admit, this shift has me pretty concerned.

Now, I love Kickstarter.  I mean, I haven't contributed any money to anything yet, but I love seeing the variety of projects that get funded.  I love how small artists can get, well, their start (a kick, if you will) to finally be able to express themselves.

I mean, heck, if I thought I could get away with doing a Kickstarter so I could just blog all day, I'd start up one of my own.

But there's a darker side to Kickstarter, and it's starting to make itself known.





Okay, Veronica Mars takes in, as of this writing, about four million dollars to make their movie.   Considering they only wanted two to begin with, it seems pretty likely Warner Brothers was going to have to pick up more of the bill.  There's insurance, rentals, union labor fees and negotiations, and many, many other things that I'm pretty sure Warner Brothers will have to chip in on.  Yes, Warner Brothers is also going to distribute it.  But here's what I think a lot of people don't realize:

A)  You, the viewer, are still going to have to buy that movie ticket to see it in the theater.  Well, that is, unless you spent enough to get to see the premiere...which might involve buying a plane ticket if you spent enough money.  If you paid for them to bring it to you, well, congrats, you just rented a theater for a large amount.

B)  You, the viewer, will get no cut of the profits from this movie.  The studio, the cast, and everybody else involved with this movie will get to rake in the profits from the film, except now the studio gets to count off a chunk of what they spent as "outside" money.

C)  There's no guarantee it's going to be good.

Let's look at the first point a bit more.  Star Wars: Episode IV cost eleven million dollars to make.  Twilight cost 37 million.  But let's look at a smaller scale, since I doubt Veronica Mars will need spaceships or vampires or super strength.  Shaun of the Dead cost about four million to make, and that involved explosions, zombie make-up, and a bit more than I'd expect Veronica Mars to.

Now, in most major films, the theater gets 40-50% of the ticket price, the rest goes to the studio.  Shawn of the Dead made thirteen million dollars and was seen as a huge success, profit-wise.  Now, imagine what those profits will be for the studio when they can completely discount four million dollars.

What does this lead to?  Well, it leaves me afraid that Hollywood will realize that you can hold other properties hostage unless people fund them on Kickstarter.  Imagine Joss Whedon decided he wanted to do another Firefly movie (which I really hope he never does, the whole point of the last film was to tie up those loose ends).  Now, a studio that owns the rights to it might say "yeah, well, we know you have a lot of fans, but we're worried that they just might be a small, extremely vocal group of fans.  Tell you what, if you raise some initial funding on Kickstarter, then we'll look at it again."  The studio isn't running the Kickstarter campaign (which would violate the rules), but it allows them to manipulate the public into not only paying to make the movie but then pay to watch the movie.

You just know there's meetings going on in major studios wondering how they can get a cut of that action and what licenses they have they can milk.

That also sums up B as well.  Sure, you might get a shirt or a DVD if you pay at a low level, but considering how much it costs to make a shirt or DVD, I look at it akin to paying an exorbitant amount for a shirt that just has one of those little polo horses on it.  You're buying a brand, not quality.

And that brings us to C.  With Kickstarter, there are no guarantees.  A video game company makes several million dollars to make a game, I have no promise it's going to be worth playing.  I won't get a refund if it turns out a game studio made the worst game ever.  I won't even get a guarantee that it's that game that my money went towards.  If a game studio makes X money to help a game get made, they aren't going to open a separate bank account to store that money in, and only pay people from that bank account when, and only when they're working on that specific game.

I'm not even going to bring up the fact that there's going to be some people who put money into a Kickstarter project and then complain endlessly once it's out that it "wasn't what they expected their money to pay for."  We're nerds, we love to get our hopes up that bringing back something will mean it's just as good as it originally was, just to be sorely disappointed afterwards when we realize "oh, maybe it was a good thing that it ended then and didn't drag on."

Plus, there's all types of ways people can flat out hide information in their Kickstarter projects.  A major one that's taking a lot of heat lately is this Kickstarter campaign.  At first, it appears nice and sweet, sending a girl to camp so she can prove to her brothers that "yes, I CAN do this and be good at it!"

But here's the rub.  The girl's mother doesn't need the money.  She's seriously wealthy (you can find pictures of her online hanging out with Warren Buffet) and is ranked one of the most powerful women in entrepreneurship by media sources.  She's spamming the link to the Kickstarter campaign everywhere from Ellen to Lady Gaga in hopes of getting the word spread.  She's thrown her own sons under a proverbial bus by making them out to be "bullies."  She's also spending her time online bragging about ridiculously priced shoes (seriously, what shoe could be worth fifteen thousand dollars?) and...well, let's sum it up.

She's leeching off of people's good intentions.  In the world of Kickstarter, she might even get away with it, because you don't need to prove you're too poor to fund something, just that you don't want to fund it yourself.

Before I even spend one dime on anything Kickstarter's doing- well, okay, one dollar since that's sometimes the minimum payment offer, I want to know who this person is, what they've done, and what the previous quality of their work is.  I want to know the people involved, I want a sample, ahead of time to know what to expect.  That means, painters need to be able to show off a painting, movie makers need to demonstrate some basic knowledge of film making, comedians need to prove they're funny, and game designers need to give a breakdown of a game.  Otherwise, how is this any different from people standing out on the streets holding up signs that say "well make hippie bracelets for money?"

With major companies watching Kickstarter and the integrity of the people running projects now unfortunately being called into question, it just leads me to think that it could easily slide down a slope into something dark, where it's no longer about trying to get your voice or vision out in the world, but instead to see how you can skip paying for things yourself and spend other peoples money to make a bigger profit.  I hope it doesn't, but I think I'll keep my money for right now.

Sorry, Nikola Tesla.