BEN DOBYNS, INDIE FILMMAKER OF JOURNEYQUEST + STROWLERS ON THE ART MAKING YOUR BEST INDIE FILM + THE SCIENCE OF CROWDFUNDING IT (MF GALAXY 112)

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IS WORK-LIFE BALANCE POSSIBLE IN FILMMAKING? MAKING CREATIVE COMMONS TV, THE ONLY WISE INVESTMENT IN INDIE FILM, THE BEST WAY TO CROWDFUND, SHOOTING SHAMANS IN ULAANBAATAR
 
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 You ever dream of being a filmmaker? Maybe writing or directing television? Maybe you thought about it and figured that moving to Hollywood was out of the question, or even if you were willing to go, that climbing the ladder in Hollywood was too long a shot?

Or even if you were willing to try the long slog, you wouldn’t want men in suits ruining the stories you really want to tell by replacing all your egalitarian ideas with offensive stereotypes, or shoving all your most ingenious character creation, plots, and world-building into a blender to turn them into mass-market pablum? Because it takes millions of dollars to make a movie, which you could never raise on your own?

What if I told you that you could stay in your home town or even home country, tell the stories you want to tell and the way you want to tell them, and that it wouldn’t be Hollywood paying the bills, but your most loyal fans? Sound too good to be true?

It won’t sound that way to maverick indie filmmaker and pioneering crowdfunder Ben Dobyns, because that’s exactly what he’s done and doing.

Dobyns is a film producer, editor, cinematographer, composer, writer, and director, and one of the founders of Zombie Orpheus Entertainment, or ZOE. He also has a minor in Latin. He worked for years in Seattle and has now relocated to Vancouver BC. He and ZOE have just completed their third season of their indie-TV comedy-fantasy series JourneyQuest.

They’ve also produced Strowlers, a forthcoming series about a world in which magic is suppressed and regulated by a xenophobic, oppressive government.  

In today’s episode of MF GALAXY, Ben Dobyns discusses:
  • What Hollywood film-makers should be learning from French film production to make their workplaces better for workers
  • How getting ripped off by a Hollywood distributor led him to create a Creative Commons business model
  • Why indie film is a bad investment while his company Zombie Orpheus can repay investors within twelve months
  • The 1000 True Fans concept, how his team invented Patreon before Patreon, and how they crowd-fund today
  • Why your films should be ads for your company instead of selling ads for your films
  • How best to use Kickstarter and Patreon simultaneously, what his different backers want from each, and one surprisingly delightful physical reward
  • How he gets to make exactly the films he wants, and why selling his company’s stories and worlds to a giant media company would probably destroy their value
  • Why he’s heading off to Mongolia to work with the shamans of Ulaanbaatar, and
  • What makes human beings and societies stronger
We spoke by Skype on February 15, 2017, and began by discussing the critically-important question that a mentor asked him about what price he was willing to pay for success in filmmaking.

LISTEN/DOWNLOAD

Ben Dobyns IMDb http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1389141/

Zombie Orpheus Entertainment YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/ZombieOrpheusEnt

Zombie Orpheus Entertainment is fan funded and creator distributed. Support them at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/zombieorpheus

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