The biggest reward of making Sketchy Students was being able to apply practically, and experiment with, the audience research we have done prior to the campaign. Although we did not actually crowdfund for the project, a lot of thought had gone into making the decision to focus on audience engagement rather than taking a huge risk and jumping straight into crowdfunding. Most of the research pointed to the importance of building and establishing a fanbase before even thinking about crowdfunding. This is not only essential to convincing the audience or patron of your skills, product and credibility, but also ensures at least half the work is done by the time the crowdfunding commences. I gained more insight into crowdfunding when I had to question what is it that we have that is marketable to an audience.
Through process of making, and online engagement, this campaign revealed insights that we would not have gotten from reading articles alone. For example, the timing of the release of our final episode “The Final Hurdle” during everyone’s final assessments that week; or learning how to communicate and collaborate effectively within a large group.
I also learnt that in a campaign like ours, and for the purposes of crowdfunding, the characters and talent is much more important than the little stories we tell in each sketch. This emphasis is mainly due to the interactive nature of our campaign, and our sketches are not serial but rather self contained stories. Therefore, what remains our constant sellable product are the overall features of the project, the characters, talent, and style. Creating capturing characters is very important. This may not be representative of all crowdfunding or social media campaigns, but a large number of them rely on marketing their talent and assets as a testament to the value of their product to their investors.
In the management team, the nature of our tasks overlap across all three teams. So we worked closely together although we were initially delegated to different teams as “communication officers”. I learnt that in an attempt to centralise communications between three teams of the campaign, the existence of a management team resulted in the isolation of each team. This structure discouraged other team leaders to interact and work with each other. And that interaction was compromised in an attempt to keep a consistency of the project’s aims across the entire campaign. Moreover, the management team should not really exist outside of each of those aspects of the campaign, there is nothing to manage if we exist as a separate entity from the rest of the teams. This also lead to expectations of the management team being somewhat overseers or head of the campaign, having to come up with the structure and direction of the campaign for everyone else. Whereas it would have been better to have this done as a class before the campaign started.
To me, Digital Directors was different from the other studios and projects I have done in the past. First of all, I was able to produce something which had an audience outside of the class environment and the studio presentations. Although releasing episodes every week was a stressful and intense process, knowing each week we are actually getting responses and views from the real world – albeit mostly friends and family – it was all worth it.
The next thing I want to explore is the practical applications of our crowdfunding research and campaigning experience in a real project outside of class. I believe the Digital Directors studio has equipped me with skills to source diverse and alternative funding in order to become a well informed producer or director and to sustain a career in media.
More about the process of making here.