Kickstarter backlash

Already the guy who directed Clerks has decided not to use Kickstarter to fund Clerks III. If Zach Braff is ruining Kickstarter, then the backlash against him is helping to save it.

On the other hand, Kickstarter is a commercial enterprise itself and people scrambling to "save" it are no better than the dupes who donated millions to Time Warner to make a Veronica Mars movie.

There've been other complaints about Kickstarter. There are people who say they won't contribute to anyone who hasn't contributed to other people's projects, which doesn't make sense to me since, if they have money to give away, why do they need donations?

The only Kickstarter project I know anything about is a local no-budget movie. They raised a modest $900 on Kickstarter. No one's getting paid on the movie, the director of photography is a college student checking out equipment from his school. But the director is coming out of it with several hundred dollars worth of recording equipment he bought with the donations.

The guy has a job. He really couldn't come up with $900 on his own? He's like the Zach Braff of minimum wage workers, demanding donations when he could scrounge up the money himself.

And is a $900 movie really going to be that much better than a $100 movie? What's he going to get for $900 that he couldn't have gotten for $100? It'll have better sound, but would the sort of person who would watch a $900 movie care? Forty years ago, they'd be filming without sound on 16mm and dubbing.

If you're going to make a $2,000 movie, make it for $100 instead. That'll put you $1,900 ahead when you start counting your profits.

In fact, go down to the Community Access TV station and make it there for free.