'Inocente' makes history as first Kickstarter-funded film to win Oscar | Hacker News Reader

'Inocente' makes history as first Kickstarter-funded film to win Oscar

theverge.com

43 pointsitsybaev8 comments

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the film finished and accepted to film festivals before they started the kickstarter project? The KS funds mostly went to finishing a website and companion material to the movie. Excerpt from the kickstarter link below.

"INOCENTE has been accepted to several film festivals including Hot Docs International Film Festival, Cleveland International Film Festival, the Melbourne International Film Festival, and the San Antonio Film Festival. It has also already won two awards: the Special Jury Award for Inspirational Filmmaking at the Arizona International Film Festival and the Short Film Spirit Award at Awareness Fest. Thanks to the generosity of our producers and post house we have completed the film's production and editing but still need to pay deferred costs and to complete final deliverables (creating HDCam tapes, Digibeta tapes, Blu-rays, and DVDs in the correct formats) for TV and community film screenings. We also need to complete production of a website that provides information on Inocente, the film, screening dates, the filmmakers, and the issues documented in the film. We also are designing and printing posters and key art to help market and promote the film at festivals, screenings, and special events. Finally, we are also writing free, downloadable companion curricula for teachers and creating an arts workshop template for community organizations that will incorporate the arts into core subjects and explore the themes and issues of the film to make it more attractive to the educational market."

Innocent is the first Kickstarter-funded documentary short (i.e., roughly 30 minutes in length or less) to win an Oscar. Very few documentaries, especially documentaries short, are funded by normal Hollywood sources. Most documentaries are funded by some combination of grants, the film equivalent of angels, or self-funding.

So yes, a milestone for Kickstarter, but by no means is this a milestone for independent documentaries or the beginning of a sea change in how films are financed.

Wow, this is huge. No longer do we, the people, have to let the in crowd decide what we get to see. This is real validation for this new form of financing, when will a kickstarter film get best film?

The "in crowd" is just trying to pick winners. To the extent that Inocente is a success, the "in crowd" would like to fund it. This is revolutionary when it becomes a reliable way to fund flops. But "we the people" don't want flops, by definition. So, there's something incongruous or self-contradictory in your comment, I think.

You can watch the entire short film for free (legally) here: http://www.mtv.com/videos/inocente/1702321/playlist.jhtml

This is indeed monumental. As starving artists find more micro-patrons, we might see another renaissance-like leap in our lifetime.

No mention of it in the link. Here's a post on mashable.com http://mashable.com/2013/02/24/inocente-oscar-kickstarter/

When you see a giant screenshot of a video at the top of an article you are looking at a website that is treating you like a fucking idiot.

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