Bangalore, May 1: Three years ago, Pawan Kumar had a dream, and a movie to make.
He had a script, big ideas and some good online friends, but no inkling how or from where the money for his psychological thriller - Lucia -would come.
"There were days when I felt frustrated and lost," said Kumar, 32, an engineering college dropout who had written scripts for two Kannada movies - Pancharangi (Collage of colours) and Manasaare (From the heart) - that did quite well at the box-office.
He had even directed Lifeu Ishtene (This is what life is all about), which released in 2011. But that didn't fetch him enough to fund Lucia.
Coming from a middle class family in JP Nagar, a residential locality in Bangalore south, Kumar was also an avid blogger. He had quite a few people following his blog, which meant a fair amount of traction in cyberspace. This, ultimately, turned out to be the turning point.
"When my online friends got to know of my plans from my blog, they offered to contribute small amounts to help produce my film," Kumar said.
At that time, he was unfamiliar with the concept of "crowd-funding" films, which was already popular in the West. "I didn't know what I was about to do through my blog was somewhat similar to crowd-funding," he said.
Crowd-funding brings together people, even strangers, willing to chip in online to fund a project or a cause. Anyone can sign up on these online platforms, post his or her project and seek support from the worldwide community.
With the concept fast catching up in India, many such platforms have come up. Some of the more popular ones are Kickstarter, Indiegogo, RocketHub, Crowdrise and Tilt.
Among crowd-funded Hollywood movies are Veronica Mars, a mystery drama; Wish I was Here, a comedy; Buzkashi Boys, which was shot entirely in Afghanistan; and big-ticket films like A Hologram for the King starring Tom Hanks, and Triple Nine that featured Kate Winslet.
In Kumar's case, it wasn't "crowd-funding" proper as he had posted his plans for Lucia on his blog. "For some reason, my idea clicked and even strangers started offering me money," he said.
Some 30,000 Netizens liked his idea, about 800 offered him support and 110 - most of them unknown to Kumar -went on to become part-producers of his film.
In just 27 days sometime in early 2013, the 110 financiers pooled in Rs 51 lakh, a lakh more than Kumar's proposed budget. "Everything was like a dream. One day I was frustrated with no funds, and a few weeks later there I was all set to shoot," he said.
A few months later, Lucia premiered at the London Indian Film Festival in September 2013 and went on to rake in over Rs 6 crore. It earned critical acclaim, won the audience award at the same festival and was last week screened in Karachi.
Lucia marked a departure from conventional filmmaking in that it was wholly shot on a Canon digital SLR camera, not a movie camera. The Kannada movie is about an insomniac who buys a drug called Lucia, which takes him into a world of fantasy and makes him feel that he is a top-notch film star.
Some financiers of Lucia also went on to become its online distributors, called "affiliates" in technical jargon. "Apart from releasing the film across PVR cinemas in several cities, we went a few steps ahead by providing web links to our affiliates," said Kumar.
Any affiliate who forwarded the web link and won viewers received a share of the online viewing fee of Rs 150. "This way our producers turned distributors and made money," said Kumar.
An affiliate, Sharath Narla, and two of his friends even launched a separate website for the movie, which continues to draw viewers. "Online distribution has a much wider reach as anyone anywhere can watch it," Narla said.
"We logged more than 2,000 views from our site alone," said Narla, who has already earned Rs 6 lakh. "Even now, we make around Rs15,000 each month."
So enthusiastic is Kumar after the success of Lucia that he is planning a properly crowd-funded film, this time on the tobacco industry. As of now, it is called C10H14N2, the chemical name of nicotine.
Although the Kannada film industry, called Sandalwood, churns out 120 films a year, it receives no corporate funding. "It's just a few moneybags who finance film production and Indie films are not so easy to happen," said a film industry source.
But there are hints that crowd-funding is here to stay. An ad filmmaker, Sithesh C. Govind, has the script of a feature film ready. Titled Meals Ready - a typical signboard found at the entrance of local eateries - his film is budgeted at Rs 60 lakh. "I'm looking to raise funds through Kickstarter," he said.
Govind claimed he had big producers approaching him for the film but he wanted to keep it small and manageable.
"I have an offer from a producer ready to invest Rs 30 lakh. But I want to go in for crowd-funding since it will enable me to retain my freedom and not buckle under market pressure," he said.
The only other crowd-funded venture in the south so far is the Malayalam feature film, Oralpokkam (Six Feet High). It went into production in mid 2013 but was released last year.
