Some have a great and splendid idea but do not have enough money to make it come alive. Some want to create art but do not have enough support. On the contrary, there are some who want to support people who have similar interests to them. There’s more - some want to show what they remember by telling others grand stories. The mindset of such people – ’we see you and support you’ – has become a cultural trend like ‘Crowd Funding’. In this article, I’d like to talk about crowd funding and some of its more notable examples.

 

Crowd Funding

  Before Crowd funding appeared,  only fandom and football supporters existed when a culture of support came to mind. However, as time passed, new methods of support appeared, such as talent donation and crowd funding. Crowd funding (a.k.a social funding) is a web community that is based on SNS. This allows people to advertise their creative projects and earn investments from people. As this method became popular in Korea, many projects have been successfully wrapped up and presented. The movie ’26 years’, an advertisement using Arirang to promote Korea, and an advertisement about the seriousness of the ‘comfort woman’ issue were all created thanks to crowd funding.

 

Various Forms of Crowd Funding

Social Support, ‘We Still Remember’

   Certain crowd funded projects seek to remind people of important social issues. Through funding, such projects tell people that the social issue has not been forgotten and that people who want the problem solved are being supported.

 

  One such project is the movie 'Spirits' Homecoming (귀향)’. In 2002, Director saw a picture that grandma Gang drew. That picture showed when she was dragged away by Japanese soldiers. Jo Jeong Lae wanted the issue of ‘comfort women’ to be made stark to the general public by telling the story of comfort women in a movie. To make this possible, he needed the production costs for the movie. People who invested over 10,000 won could have their name in the movie’s ending credits and receiving a preview ticket.  On the ‘Story Funding’ site, funding reached over 2509% of its intended goal. The minimum limit for success is 100%. Over 14,737 people supported this project and invested a total of 250,984,270 won. As crowd funding brought in an investment of 12 billion won, which is more than 50% of the net production costs by more than 75 000 people, the movie was completed in 2014 and is slated for a 2016 release.

  Another project is the publication of the book ‘We Need Language’. Due to the Gangnam Station murder in 2016, the feminism information producer union Femidia produced a book titled ‘We Need Language’ through crowd funding. The book brought the issue of feminism to a wide audience and explained the social importance of this issue. Femidia gained funding of 2,184% above their target and earned 43,695,500 won, which was more than 2,000,000 of their estimated maximum cost. The project started at June 5, 2016 and ended at June 24, 2016.

  Lastly, Team Seolrebal is composed of three Daegu college students, who wanted to bring a greater awareness to the issue of pet abandonment and pet shelters To this end, they produced a coloring book with pictures of cats enjoying a warm spring day. Funding ran from 2016 April 10 to 2016 April 30. They achieved 523% of their goal, which was 1,570,000 won. The original goal was 300,000 won. After that, they donated all money not used to make the coloring book and fund the rewards to the Korea Animal Protection Society (KAPS). The Inha Times met Kim Su Jeong, Team Seolrebal’s representative, to hear more about their experiences with crowd funding.

The Inha Times(IT) : Did you have any special reason to use crowd funding to let people know your purpose?

Kim Su Jeong : It’s been almost three years since we volunteered at the Korea Animal Protection Society (KAPS). As my time with KAPS grew, I became fonder of KAPS, but many people still didn’t know that KAPS was in Daegu. Through the Coloring Book Project funding, I wanted everyone to know about KAPS. A coloring book was the perfect way to get people interested in a simple and easy way.

IT : How did crowd funding help you accomplish your goal?

Kim Su Jeong : Before we started, we did activities that we could mostly do offline, such as campaigns or free markets. Funding was special and something different to us. We were worried that no one would recognize us and fund us. Fortunately, many people participated in the funding. We didn’t dare imagine that so many people would help us. Thanks to those people, we’ve been able to help more animals with the money received.

IT : What has crowd funding taught you – if anything?

Kim Su Jeong : Through our campaigning experience in the past, I realized something: The value we wanted people to be aware of is important but the actual quality of the means that will convey the value is important, too. So we started to concentrate on making the coloring book’s design, quality, price, and advertising all of a better quality. Personally, I think that the fact that we did our best to give people a good product resulted in good results. We felt a sense of accomplishment and were touched because, through this funding, we knew that many people understood our purpose to help animals. We were especially moved because we experienced terrible times in offline flea markets where we sold nothing. What did we learn? That online funding can be life changing..

IT : What was the hardest part of the funding process?

Kim Su Jeong : We thought we had prepared well before we started the funding process. We had a proper schedule and tried to stick to it, but it took a long time to actually begin production of the coloring book. We wrapped the rewards to be sent out to donators in our club room, where there was no air conditioner because we had nowhere else to go. Double checking and re-double checking the packages was also necessary - it was backbreaking back then, but it was also a fun experience when we think about it again.

IT : Based on your experience with crowd funding, what would you say to people who want to start a project related to a social issue?

Kim Su Jeong : Recently, many projects with great purposes have been blooming. Crowd funding has made this more possible. I think people who are planning to start a project have to come clear about where the money is to go, whether the money will be used partly or entirely. Updating the information about the project’s progress is necessary, even after the completion of the project. In additionally, the person in charge of the project must be well aware of those organizations or people who might prove resistant because of the social issue. If someone is ill informed about the issue in question, then starting a project might be doing that issue a great discourtesy. The project will be more than just a one-time event if you put your experiences into it and have sincerity.

 

Support Towards Individual Ones, ‘We’re Always Cheering for You’

  We are always filled with passion and ideas but lack the money to do anything with them. Other individuals suffer from a lack of support to start a campaign or project. These people use crowd funding to present their project to the public to find supporters from amongst them. People who support projects give the message ‘we are supporting your dream and running with you’.

  Do you know what ‘barrier free performance’ is? ‘Barrier free performance’ means ‘a performance that disabled people can enjoy like they have no barrier with people who are relatively free’. They have equipment that can provide narration and subtitles including onomatopoeic words, such as ‘hush’. This performance is very precious to people for whom going to see a performance is very difficult.  Thus, Studio Musical came up with the idea for ‘Only You’, a performance tailored for the blind and deaf. They uploaded a video of an amateur blind actor and a professional actor practicing their lines readings for a blind audience to hear well. As a result, the project, for which funding ran from 2014 December 12 to 2015 January 11, received about 1,110,000won - 111% of the maximum cost of 1,000,000. And the performance was successful, too.

  Next, the CEO of Hannahpad, Jang yeong min created a cotton sanitary pad when he was at college, which he then set out to provide to women from low-income backgrounds.  He turned to crowd funding and promised two sanitary pads to be sent to donators as a reward.  Funding for this project ended on 2016 July 22; however, after only 17 days into funding,  828% of the funding target, or 41,429,534 won, had been achieved from 1333 patrons.

  Our last crowd funded example involves Team Deep Focus, which started in Chungang University, Seoul campus. Team Deep Focus is a student team that makes short movies. They uploaded the details of when and where they would shoot the movie, a synopsis and posters, and how the money would be used to the funding site. Funding proved so successful that they went over the estimated maximum amount of 2,000,000 won by receiving 2,165,000 won. The Inha Times met Bak Heung Su, Team Deep Project’s representative, to hear more about their story.

 

The Inha Times(IT) How did you get to know about cloud funding and what made you to decide to do it?

Bak Heung Su : I knew about such funding from one of my Department of Theater and Film class professors. That’s when I started to research in detail about funding and found articles about it. After that, I learned that there are many projects being funded at many sites, which meant that they are popular.

The fact that our team makes movies means that we need lots of money to finance each project. So the lack of money was always a major obstacle to us. We were only a ‘start-up’ so the possibility of investment from outside was low. Thus, crowd funding was perfect because we could make plenty of money to start a project and advertise our team to a wide audience.

 

IT : What was hardest thing while doing your project? Did you overcome any hard points with crowd funding?

Bak Heung Su : As I mentioned above, the biggest problem was production costs. In 2014, when we first started, we had to collect money from each team member. This was possible during the early days when we were young and passionate. As our team began to organize properly, the number of team members began to increase to about 15 to 20 people, and we needed more money to run our project with all those people. With crowd funding, we could cover the lack of money and create an operating fund. Owing to that we could even think of more creative scenarios. To summarize, I could say that crowd funding lowered the pressure about the lack of money.

 

IT : What reaction did Team Deep Focus earn from people while doing crowd funding?

Bak Heung Su : Team Deep Focus’s project funding ran for about two months. At first, people who were in a close relationship with us helped us a lot, but that was not enough to match our estimated minimum amount to start the project. People were not very keen on helping strangers though we promoted our project on SNS and many community sites. However, after we updated our project-related information on our funding page -  information about making the film, current project process, casting list, movie poster and so on – people then began to show an interest and donate money..

 We earned about 150% of our first estimated production budget. To thank the people who had shown an interest in our project, we gave them tickets to a pre-release viewing and a pre-view meet and greet. They were very pleased to have been such an instrumental part of the production process.

 

IT : Could you tell me if crowd funding had any influence on your team’s atmosphere or project or yourself?

Bak Heung Su : As our crowd funding went smoothly, our team became more enthusiastic because we could afford more than we ever could before.  As for me, as a team leader, I then had the added pressure of producing real quality so as to not let down all those people who had supported us. In fact, I believe this was true for Team Deep Focus as a whole. Thanks to funding, we could film a scene exactly what as we wanted to put in the movie. Many production companies have to give up something from their project because of a lack of time and money. Regarding this, our project funding freed us from the financial problems associated with movie-making and allowed us to focus only on our art. Some of the people who had funded us even promised to support us constantly. Among the benefits of funding were the many new members that joined the team, and their passion and creativity. This has strengthened my resolve to turn Team Deep Focus into a major studio..

 

IT : Based on your experiences with project funding, what advice would you give to any college students with a passion for movie-making?

Bak Heung Su : Based on my experiences, I see project funding as an easy way to finance projects. However, I think students, who want to continue with crowd funding, should be careful of a few things. Though crowd funding is an attractive way to gain investment, students should be sure to explain their project in detail and also develop a pitch as to why their movie should be made in the first place. If you need to earn investment from people who are not close to you, you have to move their heart first. Making your idea appealing and attractive through self-presentation is also important. And you should keep your word and give rewards to those who have donated to your project. If you break your word, you will be lucky to see any funding in the future. Students must strive to be honest, open and passionate to their potential investors – without them a movie will remain just an idea.

 Oh, and if you search for ‘Deep Focus’ on Facebook, you will see our team page. I appreciate your interest. Thank you.

   Crowd Funding connects people to make dreams come true and show that ‘We See U’ and ‘We Support You’. Anyone can participate or start a project because it costs very little money. Why not find or start a project yourself – show some support or reach out to others – there’s a big world out there and it can make dreams come true.

조수진  chosujin96@naver.com

<저작권자 © 인하프레스, 무단 전재 및 재배포 금지>