INDUSTRY. ALTERNATIVE FUNDING
over this issue,” he says. “You really need to reach into your pocket and give money for a doc to be made. And, of course, we made no money from it (though we helped pull the UK out of the EU – yeah).” Durkin also self-funded The Great American Race Game and Firepower to the People – two more controversial films. “The first one explores the murky politics behind the Democrats’ embrace of anti-racism,” says Durkin. “It won best international documentary at the Anthem Film Festival – but you can’t eat awards. The second is a robust defence of the Second Amendment and the right of ordinary people to keep and bear arms.” A warning – these have not made their money back, and Durkin says he’ll be surprised if they ever will, for two reasons. “First, it’s incredibly tough to sell controversial libertarian docs of this kind, because broadcasters won’t touch them,” Durkin claims. “Second, selling them direct to consumer online needs a huge advertising budget, which we didn’t have. Viral marketing only gets you so far.” Durkin’s other self-funded content includes a six-part series called True Evil – each episode profiles a leading Nazi. However, he warns that certain projects require some money in the bank. “ True Evil cost quite a bit to make, but we’ve got back double or triple
before the builders came. We sat down, wrote a script and just made it. We were feeding everyone on credit cards. Anyway, the film ended up on Prime Video.” CROWDFUNDING FMW’s most recent effort, The Man You’re Not , is a romantic comedy about a man who agrees to pretend to be other people to ‘practise’ how to date, failing to see that love was there all along. The feature is currently in the hands of distributor Rights Booster. “We got a little crowdfunding and a few backers, but it was a very small budget,” says Wren. “I think we’ve had better budgets for shorts. A lot of it is ‘let’s just do it and something will work out’.” The Man You’re Not is expected to go to Prime Video and Netflix. Filmmaker Martin Durkin, the man behind The Great Global Warming Swindle , has completed several projects via a variety of funding methods. He made Brexit: The Movie , a 90-minute, crowdfunded polemic in favour of leaving the EU, which premiered at Leicester Square and was released for free on various platforms. Durkin says this model isn’t easily replicated, but he managed to tap into the zeitgeist as there was ‘no hotter topic’ at the time. “The issue was huge – it’s not often so many people feel as heated as they did
“We made back double or triple what we spent on it. This was because we had a distribution arm that knew what it was doing”
HIGH IMPACT Martin Durkin’s libertarian documentaries rely on guerrilla marketing to make waves and find a big audience
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