The Comprehensive Pre-Crowdfunding Itinerary

I’ve been asked before if there’s an ideal amount of time to prepare for a campaign, and how to break up that preparation into manageable chunks. The truth is that the ideal prep time is “as much as you can wrangle” and there are variables depending on your intended goal, how much material you already have about your project, your experience in both filmmaking and crowdfunding, and the number of emails you already have on your outreach list.

That being said, I do have opinions about what a solid 2 months (my usual recommendation) of pre-production would look like for a crowdfunding campaign. And this is my blog, and my job, so I thought I’d share!

2 months pre-launch

Begin brainstorming & collecting assets for campaign

• What are the themes of your campaign? Pick 2–4 distinct ones that make up what makes your project unique yet universal (eg: mental health, female representation, social justice, transracial adoption, horror movies, practical effects)
• What content have you already created for your project? Location scout images, camera/wardrobe tests, storyboards, pitch decks, mood boards, sizzle reels, playlists, etc. Collect this in one place to pull from for your materials
• What are things unique to your team or your project that you can easily iterate on at scale? IE- what are things you can offer, with some degree of either variety or personalization, that relate to what makes your team/your project special and can be offered as incentives/rewards for contributors?
• Who’s on your team, and what are their strengths and weaknesses? How can you play to people’s strengths while adding support and structure for their weaknesses?
• Who’s on your email list, and why is this a project they’ll enjoy?Organization will happen later- as long as you note where this name is from with a pre-made category (friend, newsletter subscriber, coworker, etc) so you can refine later, that’s all you need!

1.5 months pre-launch

Begin building your campaign draft*

• Write a pitch video script, prep to film, make sure to have supplemental video/graphic content for visual variety (use that “content you’ve already created” collection)
• Plot out your incentives tiers, holding 1–2 fun, limited availability options to reveal later in the campaign
• Draft your “story” and shareable social media copy (pre-written, copy/pasteable social media language at the very bottom of this page. The easier you make it on people to help, the more likely they’ll chip in! See this in context in the “SPREAD THE WORD” section of this campaign’s story section)
• If there’s content you know you want to include (highlighting cast/crew, craft deep dives, trivia, etc) that doesn’t really have a natural place on the primary campaign page without drawing attention away from the Big Picture stuff from all the templates, make a note of it in a separate doc. We’ll come back to it!

*if you need help laying out each of these sections, and picking what information is most relevant, I have a crowdfunding template pack available with all those answers and more!

1 month pre-launch

Finalize your campaign page

• Film, edit, and refine your pitch video.
• Make consistent graphics for each incentive tier (yes, each tier needs a unique image, differentiated enough to help supporters filter through them), for your main Story section categories
• Make a pitch video thumbnail along the same lines
• Refine your wording, focused on making it feel authentic tonally and conversationally to you and the project, as well as making it readable. No big blocks of text- paragraph breaks, bulleted lists, and graphic interstitials will help!
• If on Kickstarter or Seed&Spark, submit for approval at this point. Your project doesn’t need to be truly final, but there needs to be something in every section to give their teams enough information to ensure the project fulfills their requirements and doesn’t go against their terms of service. Not planning to use a fixed funding platform like these? Read this before you commit!

3 weeks pre-launch

Begin planning your outreach

• Organize your email list and start adding “small talk” (ie- the personalized first sentence of your email outreach that makes this feel like a real 1:1 message, versus a big templated blast) to each contact row
• Write your initial outreach email template, share with teammates so they can personalize for their own missives
• Remember that supplemental content that’s a bit too advanced for the initial campaign, but you still want to include/talk about? That’s what your updates (the messages sent from the campaign to the active supporters) are for! Start pre-writing these and laying them out on your outreach plan schedule, following this suggested timing
• Use the themes you picked at the beginning of this process to structure the arc of your outreach marketing; instead of trying to emphasize all of them at once, go week to week.

For a standard 30 day campaign, week 1 is traditionally about announcing your intention (first impressions, high-level details, emphasizing the stuff you included on the main campaign page), week 2 is about what inspired the intention (deeper dives into the craft, the characters, the story, the themes, etc), week 3 is about the team and tertiary themes (broadening your scope beyond the project itself to the other folks bringing it to life/comps), and week 4 is FOMO- making sure folks are aware of all that you’ve been up to since week 1, doubling down on what’s seemed to resonate most, and emphasizing how badly you want to get to work.

2 weeks pre-launch

Finalize your outreach plan

• Have a solid daily to-do list built out, with as much pre-written as possible (Instagram/Twitter captions, hashtag research in easily copy/pasteable form, updates, milestone goals, etc)
• Batch your email outreach: of your total emails you want to send, break them into segments for your first week (best for workdays, so if you launch on a Tuesday, your “first week” is Tuesday-Friday) so you’re emailing the people you’re most sure of immediately, and the people you’re less confident will contribute when the campaign is at its most successful (after your sure things have already contributed). Don’t send all your emails on the first day!
• Pre-write your thank you messages for each incentive tier (you’ll likely need different things from your supporters at each level, whether it’s their Instagram username, an image, etc) and organize them in an easy to access way
• Send a broad missive to newsletter subscribers (if you have an existing one) that a campaign is coming, posts on social that a campaign is coming. If you can pair this announcement with a question, poll, or action, something concrete that they can do or be a part of, even better! (ex: “what would you want as a reward for contributing” // “follow the campaign page at this link” // “do you like the blue or red graphic best”)
• Send a targeted, personalized missive to your ride or dies (aka the people you know will give money) to emphasize the importance of them making their contribution within the first 48 hours of launch, telling them when that will be and promising to send a reminder

1 week pre-launch

Picture perfect

• Finalize all graphics and graphic templates for incentives, marketing, etc
• Finalize all copy planning- captions, email outreach, updates, etc (yes, you can absolutely pre-write a “thanks for helping us hit 50% funded!” message beforehand! The details may shift, but the sentiment and whatever happy offering you’ll use to celebrate will remain the same!)
• Make your cheat sheet and send it to your stakeholders- all teammates involved with the campaign, even tangentially; any friends/family wanting to be part of the hype team
• Last looks & quality checks- are there typos on any of your templates or campaign segments? Are all the links, images, and copy you’ll need to share organized for easy access?

Need help with pulling all this together?

I can help! I have 5+ years of film crowdfunding expertise, and while at Seed&Spark as their Manager of Creator Success I personally advised filmmakers launching over $25M collectively, with an 85% success rate.

Bri Castellini is an independent filmmaker, a romance author, and, regrettably, a podcaster. She’s known for the 2017 short film Ace and Anxious (writer/director, 160k+ views on YouTube) and for her podcasts Burn, Noticed and Breaking Out of Breaking In, covering the USA television show Burn Notice and practical filmmaking advice, respectively. She can lick her elbow (not clickbait). Full work history and ways to hire her as a consultant can be found on her website BriCastellini.com