Last October we announced the creation of Crusader Pictures a production company founded to make movies that make a difference. We believe Conservatives need to match their successes at the ballot box, in talk radio, the blogosphere, cable news and the Tea Party, with success at the box office. And the opportunity to do so is here for the taking.
Findings in a recent Gallup poll (Mississippi Rates as the Most Conservative U.S. State, February 25, 2011) reveal that …”In the nation as a whole, Americans are about twice as likely to identify as conservative as they are to identify as liberal, a pattern that has persisted for many years.” And “The conservative political label continues to prevail by a significant margin in most of the U.S. states.”
Ronald Reagan famously said “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. It has to be fought for and defended by each generation.” We seek through filmmaking to promote and preserve freedom. And with the internet and social media we have the opportunity to do so by communicating and sharing information in ways that could not have been imagined in Reagan’s time.
In Karl Rove’s recent article in the Wall Street Journal (Political Campaigns Go Viral, March 10, 2011) regarding the role of social media in politics, he makes the point that “(But) in the year ahead, smart campaigns will devote a good deal less money to running 30- second TV ads and a good deal more to using the Internet to organize, persuade, motivate and raise funds.”
He further states that “The Internet makes it likely that more campaigns will be self-directed from the grass roots. The tea party movement, for example, would have been impossible to organize and coordinate without email and the Web. Thus campaign managers will have to rely less on activity in centralized headquarters and more on volunteers–working at their pace and in their way–to reach voters on their laptops, tablets and smart phones.”
In a March 15, 2011 blog in the LA Times, Andrew Malcolm noted that according to a major new study at the Pew Research Center, “a larger percentage of Americans (46%) get their news online than get their news on that paper stuff that leaves their fingers ink-smudged (40%)…The little-noticed development has many major implications for American politics, how they operate and how they are consumed.”
These developments also have major implications for filmmaking, as film funding has also gone viral and grassroots, offering filmmakers the opportunity to create film projects that garner support at the very inception of the development process, building a constituency for a film project from the grassroots up.
Most prominent among the online platforms making it possible for filmmakers to utilize technology and social media to fund and make films is Kickstarter, the world’s largest funding platform for creative ventures and intellectual properties. Time Magazine named Kickstarter one of the 50 Best Inventions of 2010 and Kickstarter recently announced a collaboration with the Sundance Institute.
Every month thousands of people utilize this unique online pledge system to fund projects ranging from film to music, art, technology, and publishing. Kickstarter projects are inspiring, entertaining and diverse. Project supporters receive smart, fun, and tangible rewards for supporting Kickstarter projects they believe in.
And this new film funding platform is yielding significant results. Sun Come Up, a Kickstarter funded short documentary was an Academy Award nominee this year, and The Woods, a film which opened at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, was largely funded by Kickstarter.
That brings us to our film project, the satirical comedy An Incorrect Man. It’s the story of John Wood, an ordinary family man and business owner who does something really, really bad. He commits the cardinal sin of throwing away a soda can instead of recycling it. And when he gets a citation, he does something even more outrageous. He decides to fight back.
Last week we launched a campaign at Kickstarter to generate grassroots support for this film. To read more about our campaign, including a short scene from the screenplay, go to our Kickstarter project page.
There is a great tradition in filmmaking of movies about one man’s effect on American politics–films like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Candidate, and Wag the Dog, to name just a few. We aim to add our film to the list of those that entertain while exploring the effect ideas and policies have on our lives.
And we hope others will be inspired to utilize Kickstarter for their film projects, so that in the future, instead of bemoaning the dearth of pro-USA, Conservative-friendly films, we’ll be celebrating their success in the marketplace.
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