Equity Crowdfunding – a dream of democratic participation, if the regulations are right.
At the moment, crowdfunding is restricted to what entertainment lawyer David Whealy calls patronage funding. He emphasised the term to a breakfast seminar on crowdfunding he chaired for Screen Producers Australia.
Crowdfunding is important to the screen sector, even though the amounts are usually small and budgets run easily into the millions. It is a valuable source of production cash for shorts and independent features which are vital to emerging filmmakers, but it can also help at the development stage. Producers also confront the dreaded ‘gap’, between the total raised from all the traditional funding sources and the actual budget – here a tiny bundle of dollars makes all the difference.
