MIFF 2020, Open Forum 3: “Crowd-funding comes from your own sources”

For its third Open Forum, Indian Documentary Producers’ Association (IDPA) chose a topic that captured the fancy of several veteran and newbie documentary-makers, ‘Crowd Funding’. A four-member panel presented their thoughts, views and experiences, while Aditya Seth (Vice-President, IDPA) moderated. Panelists comprised cinematographer-director Priyanka Singh, Wishberry partner Anshulika Dubey, documentary maker Pradeep Dikshit and Crowdera’s Founder and CEO, Chet Jainn.                                                                                                                   

Singh has varied cinematography department experience under renowned feature film directors such as Dibakar Banerjee and Anurag Kashyap, has also worked in commercials. Her short film directorial debut, Maun, qualified for Oscars, after winning best short film award at the Academy Award Qualifying Film Festival, in LA. She began by expressing her gratitude to Wishberry, which came to her rescue, when she needed funds, for the post-production of her short film.

Started in 2012, Wishberry is a crowd-funding platform, which found that philanthropy is booming in India, but mostly for ‘bleeding causes’. Creative enterprise was far behind in the list of priorities. Wishberry burst the myth that crowd funding comes from random sources. “It comes from your own community, including the crowd you hang out with on Friday evenings and the groups that know you on Facebook, maybe they don’t know you well or have not met you, but they know about you, and don’t need to know you well,” declared Dubey, “The problem was asking, not giving.”

Nostalgic about an institution—Films Division (FD)--that has been his bread and butter for over 45 years, Dikshit recalled that he had made a film on the mammoth textile strike of the late 1980s, using crowd funding, and it was the curtain-raiser film of the first MIFF, in 1990. “Currently, I am making another crowd-funded film about a woman in Pune, who has been raising crores of rupees for NGOs, over the last 15 years. Since I had raised only Rs. 78,000 for my film, I am deeply indebted to persons like Marathi actor-director Vikram Gokhale, who lent me his camera for free, thus saving me several lakhs of rupees. I tried to get crowd funding, but my experience has been bitter so far.”

Whereas Wishberry has a commission-based model, Crowdera is based on the principle of ‘abundance starts with giving’, and calls itself a freemium crowd-funding and online fund-raising platform. Revealed Jainn, “Two persons who raised funds for their films on our platform are Rajat Kapur and Riya Mukherjee. Rajat uses his earnings from cinema to fund his theatre activities, so even a popular actor like him needs funds for making his films. (Former Executive Vice President and National Creative Head, Radio Mirchi) Riya Mukherjee has raised funds through us, for financing her short film (The Disguise, her debut venture). Twitter worked for Kapur while Facebook worked for Mukherjee. Whether you are making a 20 minute documentary or a 90-minute short, you need to make a 45-second show-reel and post it on our website.”

Giving details of how Wishberry works, Anshulika said, “You need to make a 2-minute video and also post a reward system. For example, you could say that anybody who invests Rs. 500 will get to see the film on a video link before its release, or that he/she would be invited to a special preview or that the investor will get a ‘Thanks’ title. If you need to learn more, browse the crowd-funding sites and spend time on them, to understand what is required. Two of our most recent successes are a film on BabaSaaheb Ambedkar and another called Bordelines. Both raised Rs. 25-30 lakh, from 200-400 investors.”