The Social Freelancer: Media, Music, TV & Film

Independently creative people from all around the world are turning to crowd funding this season to fuel their creative ventures and for good reasons.
READ LATEST POST: Personal from Trace: Please Buy, Share and Support Indie Music and Film this Christmas

Indie Artists thrive when you buy

Secondly, if you are self funded or self employed at your business, you know the old adage is true: “Time IS Money.” It is a struggle for people to devote time, mental energy and limited financial resources to creative projects when its tough to just keep groceries on the table and gas in the car.

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Dallas based freelance Audio Engineer Skip Frazee will be honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Texas Association of Film and Tape Professionals (TAF/TP) Holiday Party, Friday, November 30th. Frazee is known for his outstanding work for more than 35 years in countless films, documentaries, episodic TV shows and commercial productions. His professionalism on set as well as his

Audio Maestro Skip Frazee

It is shaping up to be a great evening, celebrating Skip Frazee’s career and the rebirth of the TAF/TP, a non profit organization that has weathered a terrible blow, an embezzlement of funds, which is being criminally investigated, that threatened this important organization with extinction.

Where’s the Party? What does Skip have to say? What happened with this organization? What is the future of TAF/TP? – READ ON Read more…

Your neighbor plays in a local band, and they’ve just released an indie produced CD. You know about it, but never heard him play. But you do see him lugging his gear in and out to gigs from his house. You also see him in the mornings, dressed for business, driving off with a friendly wave as you take out the trash. You’ve never thought much about it, but chances are, your neighbor is a passionate musician, with a fair amount of talent, who is trying hard to keep bread on the table for his family while pursuing his artistic side. The world is full of stories such as this, and most of us have friend like this neighbor, or a family member who is an artist, musician, filmmaker or has related creative pursuits.

Just show up!

On one hand, there are more free or low cost ways than ever before to attract new fans, or attention for a project (Facebook, Twitter, Indiegogo, Kickstarter, etc.) The flip side to that is that millions of others have the same opportunities. We are ALL experiencing “information overload”.
What can one person with limited finances do to help his or her indie artist friends? A Lot. Read ON>>> Read more…

Indeed, lots of buzz lately about Kickstarter, Indiegogo Gofundme and other “crowd sourcing” platforms for independently produced creative projects. But do they work? YES. If you WORK IT.
Many people hear about crowd funding, get excited and jump to creating a project, only to have it not reach a large enough audience and fail.

See kickstarter.com

The lesson is one that is common throughout life, business and the arts: Marketing takes time to develop. Great relationships don’t happen overnight. There is no “silver bullet”. If you want to achieve something, anything of value, you have to roll up the sleeves, and work.

Don’t know what I am talking about? Go to Kickstarter.com and investigate it for yourself.
What I have Learned
I have been researching crowd funding options and published this post you may find interesting: Indie Filmmaker Seeks Best in Crowd Funding

My takeaways?
1. Have clearly defined goals for your project that people can easily understand.
2. Offer good “perks” or incentives for people to donate to support your project.
3. Have a solid mailing list of individuals that you believe would be interested in your creative work.
4. Be ready to heavily promote the project once you have it listed.
Be prepaared to spend your time spreading the word, no one is going to do it for you. These platforms give you the mechanism to raise funds, they are not there to do all the work for you.

SEE the Graphic below. What is your “takeaway” from this? Comments please!>>> Read more…

Like so many others with creative endeavors at hand, I am intrigued about Kickstarter and Indiegogo, the big leagues of “crowd funding” as ways to bring creative / entrepreneur visions to market in the real world.

What is Crowd Funding?
It’s the idea that a lot of unconnected people can contribute to funding a project, because of a common interest.

“I have an idea, and a solid plan to execute, but we can’t afford to make it happen. Would you be interested in helping?” – the essence of “crowd funding”

Platforms like KickStarter and Indiegogo are simply facilitating the process, allowing people with good ideas but few resources to reach a large audience.

Wikipedia defines it like this: Read more…