6Q with Dan Ast of Claire

Dan Ast is the writer/director/executive producer of Claire - a story about a high school student's life that spirals out of control as he investigates if Claire, a girl he never met, had a romantic interest in him before her death.

Claire has crowdfunded over 70% of it funding goal on IndieGoGo to-date - making Claire an indie film of the most DIWO-kind.  Read Dan's 6Q and watch the Claire trailer below.

1.  What are your goals for Claire?

Claire is the first feature for the entire crew. Along with creating what we hope is a strong film and compelling story, we also hope the project will act as a springboard for more projects in the future.

Another goal of our project was to create a beautiful movie with strong production value for as cheap as possible. Claire is (and was) a total rag tag production, working with what we had available to us when it was available. I saved up working a day job for about a year, and after a couple false starts, we were finally able to put our project into motion during the spring of 2009.  Everyone (both cast and crew) donated their time. The camera and sound equipment was loaned to us by one of our producers, David Schatanoff of D Studios productions. Much of the movie was shot on weekends for the entire summer and capped off with a ten day stretch in early August. We shot in friends houses and apartments and begged to have other locations donated.

This is going a long way to say that this project was made with very little money and a lot of hardwork and heart from the cast and crew.  We want to prove that the quality of the film is in its filmmakers, not in its budget. Ultimately, Claire has cost about 20k and was shot with the Panasonic HVX200 and we're very proud of the production quality of our project.

On a side note, I wouldn't mind spending someone else's money on the next one. Investors? Anyone? Is this thing on? *tap tap*.

2.  How are you identifying, reaching and building your audience?

The internet was our main tool in generating buzz for Claire. We utilized Facebook to send as many friends, family, and even strangers to our IndieGoGo page as possible. We've created our own webpage you can find here: http://www.claireisdead.com/, but have mostly stuck to IndieGoGo as a main avenue when directing others to a site for information on the film. We sent e-mails to everyone in our email contacts, posted constant updates on Facebook, and then begged others to do the same.

We also created short pitch videos before we began filming that highlighted aspects of the story or locations we thought were interesting, and continued this trend over the summer during production with short on-set videos usually highlighting how much we were doing with so little money and how far even the smallest donation could carry us. To save time and money, we shot these videos during location scouts or after productions meetings.

During Comic-Con 09, our producers handed out free "Claire" drawstring bags with website information and other bags of swag in an effort to send people back to the internet and discover more about us.

3.  What tactics did you use for financing? Any advice?

Financing was tricky. There was none. Having saved for a year or so, I put my entire savings toward this project (And then there was an economic depression. Yay.) We never had a set budget at the beginning of the project. We budgeted per weekend shoot based on what I saved during that work week and whatever donations we had acquired. We created perks on IndieGoGo that would make our donors apart of the project. We offered specific on screen credits to donors and the credit was dependent on how much was donated to the project. Also, for those donating a larger sum to the project, other perks such as posters, t-shirts and screenings were added.

As far as advice goes, I would say building buzz on the internet via social media is the cheapest and most effective way to get a film with no funding off the ground. Keeping the film low cost is another matter. We often found ourselves altering or consolidating the shooting locations in order to keep things cheap. "Do we need a new location for this scene? Can't they just discuss this at Jack's house?" "Hey, this school has a patch of woods behind it. We can also get some non-school scenes here" or our favorite "How about we make this interior night scene exterior day?" Things like this helped us cut costs drastically on location permissions and equipment rentals.

4.  What role does the Internet and social media play in your DIWO (Do-It-With-Others) fundraising or audience-building efforts?

As I mentioned before, Social media has been a huge help for us. I linked a Twitter account for our movie to my Facebook updates (because I almost only ever updated about the movie, anyway) in an attempt to broaden our reach even more.

Much of the online interest in Claire was started when I created a Facebook group for Claire on a whim and people just continued joining.  Interest from friends, family and even people we didn't know continued to build and we began using Facebook as a main hub to direct people to IndieGoGo.

Also during Comic-Con, our producers ran a 'Guess The Location' contest where fans could see a photo and read a short blurb about the location and based on information on the 'Locations' pitch video on our IndieGoGo page, would post the name of the location as a reply and win prizes.

5.  How do you connect your online campaigns with offline fundraising
and audience-building?

Our campaign was almost exclusively online because it's free. We just plain did not have the money to spend on advertising and fundraising in any other capacity.

6.  What is next on your radar?  And where can folks follow your efforts?

We're pushing through post as fast and steady as possible. We're hoping to get cuts of the project off to major festivals in the next month or two and seek out distribution from there. We all hope this project can grab enough attention to be a first step in what we hope will be long careers in doing more of the same.

I would like to direct a horror film next that a friend and I have had in mind for a few years and hope Claire will open a few doors in that direction.

Folks can continue to keep up with us on IndieGoGo and when our next project comes up, I'm sure they'll be able to follow us there, too.

Claire - Teaser from Dan Ast on Vimeo.