This isn’t true in all cases. I’ve contributed to a few crowd sourcing projects where the money went to pay concrete costs for the project, things I’ve verified because I happen to know some of the participants. There is no single rule that handles all cases.
People are buying the finished movie, the product. Like all art patrons, they have to pay the artist to make the movie.
All money spent everywhere eventually goes towards paying for someone’s rent or mortgage. How far down the line you want this to happen is completely up to you.
I think this line of reasoning is pretty much off the mark. Raising money to buy a piece of equipment or a tool that is needed for an organization probably pays someones mortgage somewhere down the line, but it really isn’t the same.
To be clear, I wouldn’t personally contribute to such a project, because the possibility of the project going bankrupt would be pretty high. This happens all the time with even movies backed by the studio. Investing is a game of chance; revenue can be squandered, expenses can be higher than anticipated. Sales could be non-existent. Studios gambles millions on movies, and only a few successful ones make up for the massive losses.
With crowd-sourcing, the risk is spread out over 10’s or 100’s of donors who each gave $25 hoping to one day see a finished movie. It would be naive to expect an artist to go homeless to finish the project; no one is really hurt if the project doesn’t finish.
Similarly, the artist is taking a gamble that “patrons” will support him. If they don’t, then he should walk away from the project and find something else that will support him.
I thought it was understood that in crowdfunding a project, a person must also take into account the creator’s time as well. His/her salary should be built into the project cost.
Say the project creator is a fashion designer and part of the project goals is to have someone professionally silkscreen a pattern onto what will become the fashion designer’s new line. The fashion designer then takes the printed fabric and sews the clothes. Naturally, the silkscreener demands to be paid for their time silkscreening custom fabrics. Nobody questions that this person needs to be paid for their work. So why is it suddenly crazy to think that the fashion designer themselves don’t deserve a salary for their time spent creating the same project?
This is cited as the main overlooked cost in crowdfunding projects. Lots of creators forget to pay themselves. We as a society have trained artists to think that they’re “not worth it” and that they should be doing their work for less and less because “it’s easy” or “it’s a hobby” or whatever else. Your own salary should absolutely be built into the cost of your project, just like person A and B that you have to pay in order to hire. Whatever you paid them definitely goes towards THEIR rent and food. That’s certainly what my salary pays for. You shouldn’t be expected to create content at wholesale cost just because you had the idea.
Even if a creator has a day job, they should absolutely be paying themselves a salary out of the crowdfunding pool because they are spending time. Time working. In this case it’s OVERtime, to be precise.
So no, I’d have no problem with you paying rent with your project’s money. You are a creator, you create, and this is part of your salary. As long as you do your job (deliver the goods) then you get a salaray and therefore can use that money to pay whatever expenses you need to get the job done.
Of course, now that you’re in this predicament all you can do is get up and find a different job and put the dreams on hold for a little bit. You can do it. Good luck. And keep your head screwed on tight and maybe stay out of this thread for a little while until everything’s sorted (which looks like that’s what you’re doing).
Sorry, but you don’t know what you’re talking about.
I know a filmmaker who is a tenured professor and has made a slew of notable films. She’s currently trying to crowdsource another. She has a child. If she was waiting for a patron or a crowd to pay her rent, they’d be homeless a million times over. Good thing she’s got her day job to pay the bills while the crowdsourcing fuels her passion. Compartmentalization. It’s a wonderful thing.
Art is whatever a person intentionally creates to evoke thought and/or feeling. A person who slaves away at a boring-ass job for eight hours a day, daydreaming about the moment they can get off work and work on the creation they’ve put their heart and soul into? He’s every bit an artist as the guy fortunate enough to have a wealthy patron (or family) to support him.
If Michelangelo were begging for money on the internet, I’d tell him to get a job too. He can quit when the Pope comes knocking on his door.
That’s hardly a universal rule. Take me as an example. Suppose I started a Kickstarter project to make some work of art - let’s say a statue of my mom. I want fifty thousand dollars to buy a big piece of marble.
Now if I get my money, I’ll buy my chunk of marble and get to work. But if I don’t get my money, I don’t buy the marble and I don’t make my statue. (I send Mom a nice card instead.) The success of my Kickstarter project is directly related to whether or not I make my work of art.
But it has no connection to my living expenses. Those I’ve already got covered regardless of whether or not I make money off of Kickstarter.
I have a friend who just funded her last album through indie go-go. Her living expenses were paid by touring and her girlfriend (soon to be wife :)) and the funding paid for studio time and the labor of everyone ELSE who worked on the project. She was very clear that the funding goals were set to pay everyone else, plus costs, first - she did exceed her funding goals and that was her “salary.”
As I said, it is an artist’s risk to take to try to support himself on art. It is a small business, subject to failure just like any other business.
I’m not addressing the claim the claim that making any particular piece of work is worthwhile; that is up to the people willing to sponsor the artwork/movie/etc. I am not even addressing the merits of begging for money on the internet. I am addressing those who are naive enough to believe to believe their money, in sponsoring an “artist”, goes strictly to materials. A plumber pays himself handsomely; he does not work for love of toilets. If someone wants art, they have to be willing to pay an artist a wage to make that art.
Art is a business; artist’s must make compromises to attract funding. It is the sponsor’s responsibility to ask how the money will be used, and to contribute accordingly. Getting mad and accusing dishonesty (as seen here) shows poor market research; the sponsor made an investment in an insolvent business and got embarrassed because he assumed it was a donation to a hobby. You know what they say about people who assume…
I think I am going to quit my job and ask for money from strangers to support my hobby, which means pay my bills so I can goof off.
I think there was enough assuming on both sides of the equation.
I have no problem with requesting money for living expenses while creating art either; it’s certainly a viable and respectable way of funding. But it’s not the only way people raise funds for art or use crowd sourcing. Yes, it’s the sponsors responsibility to ask the right questions. It’s also the artists responsibility to be up front with his request.* For the most part I feel that GuanoLad met that, but it could have been more clear.* That’s really my only issue with this entire situation. I don’t feel he was dishonest nor am I mad at the request.
I don’t think this is fair to GuanoLad or other artists in the same situation. If people want to contribute to an artist and they feel good about the results then why would I care? More power to everyone in this situation. It may not be what I want to contribute to but I have no problem if others do so. Give the guy a break.
I just want to drop by and point out that I didn’t quit my job to pursue a “passion project.” What happened was the Managing Director was stealing the employees money, and we all were forced to have to leave as we hadn’t been paid for multiple weeks. I am owed over $8000, it is going through the Supreme Court, and the jerk responsible is probably going to prison for it.
And all through the time that I have not had a job since, constantly looking for work (I sent three applications for jobs yesterday), I have been living off my own money, as you would expect. And now it’s run out.
Now this is not any excuse for me being in the position I currently find myself in, I do not deny that I have been making some poor decisions, but I wanted to lay out some facts.
While I think this is too harsh, it’s a fantastic username/post combination.
Thanks, and you are right it was too harsh. I didn’t realize the OP was busy looking for another job. My apologies GuanoLad and I hope things turn around for you soon.
Which means you’ll probably never get your money. Sucks, man. People are such assholes.
I was in a similar situation once. The company abruptly shut it’s doors and staff was owed about 3 weeks pay. This was in July. We all sort of figured we’d never get the money. Then one day in October we all got a call telling us to meet at the public library. When we got there a rep from the department of labor gave us checks. It was a nice surprise.
How could we readers realize facts not presented? What I was seeing agreed with your take, that the artiste was just too precious to bother working a mundane day job and felt entitled to demand funding from people who had put their own “creative vision” dreams on hold to deal with real-world needs like self-support.
He explained the situation about the job loss in the tenth post in this thread.