Brian Carroll is making a movie. Okay, he’s also a comic artist and he’s been making movies for 10 years, but now he wants to make a real feature film — with a budget of a quarter-million dollars.
That sounds like nothing for a movie, but it’s still a substantial amount of money. So, to fundraise, he’s selling shares in the movie — 5,000 at $50 apiece. Somehow, he guarantees that you’ll make your money back even if he doesn’t finish the movie, and even if it doesn’t sell, he’s pledging to pay you back within three years.
Frankly, that part sounds fishy — or over-optimistic.
I tried to check out some of his “investor graphs” and other documents, but in between me opening his website in a new tab (a couple of days ago) and blogging about it (today), the site’s gone haywire. According to what’s up there now, he raised over $18,000 in 24 hours — far above what he was prepared for. So, the site’s down for a bit, until he gets everything sorted out. He also mentions something about running stuff past a lawyer, which somehow both worries and alarms me.
I have high hopes for these sorts of microfinanced projects — I think there was an amateur Star Trek production done along these lines? — and I hope this works out. I’d check back in a couple of days to read what he has to say.
In the meantime, think about it. Fifty bucks is what you might drop on a night out where you have a couple too many drinks. It’s not an obscene amount of money. It’s not an unreasonable amount to spend. So if it’s burning a hole in your pocket, it might be okay to finance a film with it.
(Other microfinance projects tend to be third-world and “green” development projects, which is cool, too, but I like the idea of financing someone’s movie or music or TV dream — creating something that’s between Big Hollywood and Amateur YouTube.)
Another thing you could consider is buying into this film as a gift for someone.
Here’s a clip of a movie he made before, so you know what he’s capable of:
Grant Hamilton
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