Taking a small meander away from distribution to look at an example of what’s going on in the ‘indies financing on the web’ scene, “You and Charlie Wu” is a microbudget project ($35K) hoping to entirely finance through Paypal donations. They have created a referral scheme in which supporters receive ‘points’ for donations made by friends, and the points are worth certain credit levels within the final crawl (sort of like selling off your special thanks section, I guess).

Anyway, thus far they are at 5% with this plan, so perhaps it’s not quite sure-fire- but it seems like it might be a good way for certain projects to jump-start early funding from more traditional sources, if the filmmaker is able to reliably demonstrate a general excitement for the project.

However, an investment with no equity and no tax write-off might be a tough sell in the current marketplace.

There are a lot of people trying to get financing through the internet. Have you had any luck? Or any painful reality checks?

HT: Wil Wheaton

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