Buy! Sell! Crowd-funding helps boost Cannes films
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Stocks, bonds ... and now movies? Investors in France are stumping up cash online to help produce, promote and distribute feature films -- two of which have made it into the running for best picture at Cannes.
Palme d'Or contenders "Habemus Papam" and "Polisse" will both use money raised on a French web site to finance their promotion and distribution in France, where so-called "crowd-funding" is being test driven for studio productions.
Their success at the Cannes film festival hints that crowd-funding -- or raising cash online from many small investors -- could give fans a bigger role in deciding what movies end up in production and how they are promoted.
"We give people the chance to invest in a movie while bringing them behind the scenes to find out how it is made," said Serge Hayat, 47, a French film producer and co-founder of PeopleforCinema, the web site raising funds to promote and distribute "Habemus Papam" and "Polisse."
Already popular for musicians with U.S.-based sites like Kickstarter and Rockethub, crowd-funding tends to let users buy into a creative project at its inception, most often in exchange for gifts in the form of special promotional material.
With its high barriers to entry, the movie industry has proved more resistant to crowd-funding as multi-million dollar production budgets and fixed distribution networks kept financing in the hands of banks, studios and big investors.
"This is a lot more complicated than helping an artist record an album or financing an art show," said Hayat.
"The scale is much larger, there are more players involved, the financial stakes are higher," he added. "But we have a good sales argument, both for the users and the production firms."
PASSION VS GREED
Based in an attic office in Paris, PeopleforCinema shows members video clips of mostly completed movies and lets them make an "investment" -- films are advertised on the site with the message "Buy shares now" -- into the one they think has the best chance of succeeding at the box office.
If the film outperforms by exceeding a target of ticket sales, members are rewarded in proportion to their investment. If it flops, they lose, though gifts like DVDs and premiere tickets soften the blow.
Hayat says investors who bet an average of 150 euros can add more than 100,000 euros, or 20-30 percent to a film's promotion budget, and are serious about making money.
"There is a real investment mentality ... Some people are putting up thousands of euros, and making good money in return.
"In return, production houses get free viral promotion on the web from our users, who talk about the movies to all their friends," Hayat added.
Touscoprod, launched in 2009, takes a different tack by giving members the chance invest in a movie at the earliest stages of production, after watching a short or interview with the director posted on its web site.
It takes longer for investments to yield returns, and members are often compensated in the form of promotional material. But the sense of ownership is stronger, as investors get to see their name in the credits -- or cheer their films at award ceremonies.
Two films co-financed by Touscoprod users, Peru's "Fausta" and U.S. documentary "Waste Land," were nominated for Oscars in 2009 and 2011, respectively.
Co-founder Nicolas Bailly, 37, says Touscoprod depends more on members' love of film than any desire to get rich.
"Our approach is to tell our community to support movies that really need them," he told Reuters. "It's especially successful for documentaries, where smaller budgets mean that raising five or six thousand euros can make the difference between a film being made or not."
Having movies like "Habemus Papam" in the running at the Cannes film festival was a huge boon for the company, now working on deals to promote "Pirates of the Carribbean: On Stranger Tides" in France as well as Finnish film, "Le Havre," a festival favorite.
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