funding

A community-led database of video fingerprints

Introducing a proof-of-concept for a community-run database of rights ownership claims for both Creative Commons and Web Monetizable videos, matched with their ISCC fingerprints.

An open way to structure, set and pay out royalties, deferrals and profit-shares

RevenueSha.re is building an open source, community-driven system for precise and reliable automated revenue sharing for creators, non-profits, coops and collaborators.

CiviCRM is regularly used to received payments in – donations, ticket sales or membership fees – but what about automating payments out?

“Staged financing must become the film business’s immediate goal.”
– Ted Hope, September 2013

Over a series of blog posts I’ve been looking at some challenges that film and documentary are dealing with online. In a conclusion to the series looking at what can be done, I explore the limits and opportunities around crowdfunding.

In 1997, Kevin Kelly in Wired Magazine set out twelve rules for the new economy. Rule five was the 'Law of Increasing Returns: Make Virtuous Circles – the idea that you could create positive ripples that self-sustain themselves: as a networked platform becomes useful, it gets users, therefore is more useful, so gets more users, ad infinitum.

Written by Adam P Davies, James MacGregor and Nicol Wistreich, with 40 experts from six continents. Published by Netrbution. Now available digitally, in DRM-free ePub, Kindle and PDF versions, it includes:

"So the guys who started this business all cheated somebody to get there, and now they're being cheated, perhaps, by all these crazy, geeky people all over the internet. I must say, my anguish level is not great."
Richard Dreyfuss

"although iTunes has 70% of the pay to download music market - only 1 in 40 of all tracks downloaded on the web are ever paid for. That's 2.5%"

After Netribution ran out of money at the start of 2002, founders Tom and Nic parted company and Nic joined ShootingPeople.org, a mailman email discussion list for indie filmmakers, as first employee. The two founders of Shooting People had borrowed £30,000 to make a subscriber version of the email list to fund the cost of daily moderation, online profile directories and expansion of new lists - with a seemingly impossible business model of "users paying to read early the content that other users pay to produce".

Written by Adam P Davies, James MacGregor and Nicol Wistreich. Published by Netrbution.

The reader - from beginner making their first short film, through to experienced producer packaging an international multi-million pound co-production - is guided through the entire process of raising finance, in a book packed with interviews, case studies, expert tips and details of more than 200 funds.

by Caroline Hancock and Nic Wistreich, published by Shooting People Press. A roadmap to film funding structures and opportunities in the UK, based on Netribution's free online funding resources, the publication was a co-production with Shooting People and sold 4000 copies in its first 18 months.