Mass Communication: Living in a Media World, 6th edition
Ralph Hanson
Lecture Builders
Chapter 3
Lecture Builders
SPIKE LEE AND KICKSTARTER
Famed African-American Filmmaker Spike Lee has a long record of producing independently
minded films from his seminal movie Do the Right Thing to his biopic on Malcolm X, though he’s also
known for more commercial fare, like his thriller Inside Man starring Denzel Washington, Clive Owen,
and Jodie Foster.
But during 2013 and 2014, he made an extremely low-budget, truly independent film for a little
more than $1.25 million financed by more than 5,000 backers from the crowd-funding website
Kickstarter.
1
Da Sweet Blood of Jesus, a movie Lee describes as a “bloody, funny, sexy movie” about
people who are “addicted to blood” who are not vampires, was shot in 16 days in Brooklyn and Martha’s
Vineyard with a cast of unknowns.
2
Forrest Wickman, a movie reviewer for the website Slate, describes
the movie as “veering wildly between pulpy exploitation . . .and art–house filmmaking,” and notes that it
is unlike anything that would ever get conventional funding.
3
To get funding though Kickstarter, filmmakers (like everyone else seeking Kickstarter funding)
put together a video pitch along with written details about their qualifications and the film they intend
to make. Potential contributors pledge to fund projects they find interesting, but they only get charged if
the project reaches the financial goal the creator set. If the project doesn’t reach its funding goal, no
money is exchanged.
4
Assuming the project does reach its goal and gets funded, the people who pledge
do not get an investment in the movie as they might with conventional movie financing. Instead, they
get the satisfaction of supporting the project and very often some kind of reward, such as a copy of the
film or book produced by the project (though in the case of Spike Lee’s film, the reward at the $10,000
level was getting to sit courtside with Lee at a Knicks NBA game).
At the time it was funded in August 2013, Da Sweet Blood of Jesus was the third largest movie
project to be funded through Kickstarter (raising approximately $1.4 million), following behind a movie
1
Henry Barnes, “Spike Lee Raises $1.25m on Kickstarter for ‘Bloody, Funny, Sexy’ Film,” The Guardian, August
19, 2013.
2
Ramin Setoodeh, “Spike Lee on ‘Da Sweet Blood of Jesus’ and Hollywood’s Diversity Problem,” Variety, June
23, 2104, variety.com/2014/film/news/spike-lee-da-sweet-blood-of-jesus-hollywood-diversity-problem–
1201243416/.
3
Forrest Wickman, “Spike Lee’s Kickstarter Movie Is a Surprise Remake. Will Supporters Get What They Paid
For?” Slate, June 24, 2014,
www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/06/24/spike_lee_s_kickstarter_movie_da_sweet_blood_of_jesus_is_a_stealth_
remake.html?wpisrc=burger_bar.
4
David Carr, “At Sundance, Kickstarter Resembled a Movie Studio, but Without the Egos,” Media Decoder (New
York Times), January 30, 2012, mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/at-sundance-kickstarter-resembled-a-
movie-studio-but-without-the-egos/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0.
Mass Communication: Living in a Media World, 6th edition
Ralph Hanson
Lecture Builders
version of the cult TV series Veronica Mars ($5.7 million) and a Zach Braff film that raised $3.1 million.
5
Lee, along with Braff (a popular actor and the director of the film Garden State), has received criticism
for funding his project through Kickstarter when he had other options available to him, with the
presumption that the funding that went to him could have gone to other, more needy filmmakers.
6
The
founders of Kickstarter, however, responded through their blog to defend the celebrity filmmakers:
Almost five million people have backed a project on Kickstarter, and more
than a million have backed two or more projects. These repeat backers are responsible
for 59% of the total money pledged to Kickstarter projects—a whopping $444 million.
On average, 2,130 people a day have become new repeat backers this year. This is
huge! Future creators will benefit from more and more people using Kickstarter.
7
In his Kickstarter proposal, Lee says that using nontraditional funding to finance his films is
nothing new to him:
I’m an Indie Filmmaker and I will always be an Indie Filmmaker. Indie
Filmmakers are always in search of financing because their work, their vision
sometimes does not coincide with Studio Pictures. But I do put my own money in my
films. I self-financed RED HOOK SUMMER. My fee for MALCOLM X was put back into
the budget. The truth is I’ve been doing KICKSTARTER before there was KICKSTARTER,
there was no Internet. Social Media was writing letters, making phone calls, beating
the bushes. I’m now using TECHNOLOGY with what I’ve been doing.
8
Kickstarter began in April 2009 and as of May 2014 had funded more than 60,000 projects. (Full
disclosure: Your author has helped fund several music and Web comic projects through Kickstarter.) Of
the more than 14,000 film and video projects that have been funded as of the summer of 2014, 70 have
been screened at Sundance, and more than 100 have been screened at the SXSW festival in Austin,
Texas.
9
Beyond being a new source of funding for filmmakers, Kickstarter represents a new way of the
movie industry looking at the Internet and the people who inhabit it. As New York Times media blogger
David Carr points out, the legacy movie industry, represented through the Motion Picture Association of
America and the National Association of Theatre Owners, sees the online world as a scary place where
5
Barnes, “Spike Lee Raises $1.25m on Kickstarter.”
6
Aaron Couch, “Kickstarter Defends Spike Lee’s Campaign: ‘This Isn’t Charity,’” HollywoodReporter.com,
August 19, 2013, www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/kickstarter-defends-spike-lees-campaign-609233.
7
Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler, and Charles Adler, “The Truth about Spike Lee and Kickstarter,” Kickstarter Blog,
www.kickstarter.com/blog/the-truth-about-spike-lee-and-kickstarter-0.
8
Spike Lee, “The Newest Hottest Spike Lee Joint,” Kickstarter.com, August 2013,
www.kickstarter.com/projects/spikelee/the-newest-hottest-spike-lee-joint?ref=live.
9
Paul Kendall, “Power to the People: Kickstarter Began as a Website for Complete Strangers to Help Fund Off-beat
Ideas. It Worked. But Are Millions of Investors Now Being Short–Changed?” The Sunday Telegraph, May 18, 2014.
Mass Communication: Living in a Media World, 6th edition
Ralph Hanson
Lecture Builders
movie pirates reside, while independent filmmakers view it as an exciting source of support to make
movies Hollywood isn’t interested in making. And this makes Kickstarter an example of both Secret
Five—New media are always scary—and Secret Two—There are no mainstream media.
SLIDE HINTS: Good images for your slides can be found from the annual reports on each of the
major media companies’ websites. Here are links to many of the major media company corporate sites:
• http://www.ralphehanson.com/2012/01/24/link-ch-2-who–are-the-owners/
Making Money with American Idol
American Idol, produced by a division of Bertelsmann and airing on Fox Broadcasting, might be
the most profitable multimedia property of all time, with a total value of $2.5 billion. That’s more than
the gross domestic product of the European nation Moldova, according to news site MSNBC.
10
Mike
Brunker, who leads a special projects reporting team for the news channel and website, writes that
American Idol draws that astronomical amount of revenue from a wide range of sources:
• Advertising—For 2007, American Idol was expected to bring in approximately $500 million a
year in advertising revenue from traditional commercials. Idol was charging $620,000 per 30-
second spot for the 2007 season.
• Product Placement—During the 2006 season, Idol had 4,086 paid product placements
during the show. This involves a sponsor paying to have its product featured during the
show itself rather than during a commercial slot, when viewers can tune out. The
Amazing Race was a distant second in the number of product placements, with only
2,790.
• Licensing—Bertelsmann’s Freemantle Media division, which produces Idol, has licensed
Idol merchandise to more than 40 companies and was looking to add an Idol ice cream,
an Idol Monopoly game, and an Idol theme park ride.
• Online Advertising—Freemantle sold online advertising to go with the streaming version
of the program that airs on the Internet after the broadcast version is over.
• International Broadcasting—Idol programs air in more than 150 countries.
• Concerts—After the series is over, Idol stars go on national tours.
• Text Messages—During the 2006 season, viewers voted more than 64 million times by
sending text messages. The cell phone company that partnered with Idol to provide the
voting shared the revenue produced by the text messages.
• CD Sales—Even in the depressed CD market, Idol stars such as Carrie Underwood, Kelly
Clarkson, and Chris Daughtry have each sold more than a million copies of their CDs.
• Publications—Winners such as Taylor Hicks have written books about their lives, and
there is always American Idol: The Magazine for those looking for something shorter.
Who is the source?
The report on American Idol’s success comes from MSNBC’s website, a division of NBC
10
Mike Brunker, “‘Idol’ Empire Conquers New Multimedia Worlds; Hit Show’s Creators Find New Ways to
Squeeze Out Financial High Notes,” January 15, 2007, www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16580677.
Mass Communication: Living in a Media World, 6th edition
Ralph Hanson
Lecture Builders
Universal. The story is based, in part, on a story published in Advertising Age, a major advertising
industry trade magazine. What do you know about MSNBC and NBC Universal? How credible is the
company’s report on American Idol? Who are they trying to reach with this story? How do you think
MSNBC makes money?
What does the report say?
What are the sources of income for American Idol? In addition to broadcasting on Fox, on what
other media does American Idol content appear? Who are the companies involved with producing and
distributing American Idol? Why do you think these particular companies produce the program? Who is
the audience for American Idol?
What kind of evidence do they provide?
What kinds of data does the report present? Do those data support the assumption that
American Idol is a big success? What doesn’t the report say about the show and its audience?
How do you or your classmates react to this report?
Do you watch American Idol? Why do you think people watch the program? Have you bought
any of the tie-in products related to the show? Do you know people who have? How do you feel about
the product placement on the program? Do you think the program is too commercialized?
CONTROVERSY AS CORBIS PHOTOS SOLD TO CHINESE COMPANY
Some of the most famous news photos of the 1980s were those taken during the Tiananmen Square
protests in China in 1989. The most famous of these was of a solitary man in a white shirt standing in
front of a line of tanks. (That photo is on page 72 of the textbook, Mass Communication 6th edition). The
Corbis, the photo agency that has handled sales of these photos, among many others, was recently sold
to a Chinese company. Although there were fears that this could lead to suppression of these photos,
the photos are actually owned by news agencies Reuters and the Associated Press. For more on this
controversy, follow the link below:
• http://time.com/4193862/tiananmen-square-corbis-getty/
And for more about the Tank Man photo, get the full story on it here:
• http://time.com/2822322/iconic-tiananmen-tank-man-photo/
NOTES:
AMERICAN MEDIA GOING GLOBAL: BET: In addition to serving the American community, BET
has gone into the international market, including Africa. BET International is distributed via direct
broadcast satellite throughout Africa, the only practical method of bringing pay programming to a
continent where only 5% of the households have television sets. BET faces a number of challenges with
this new venture. First, there is the problem that the cost of a BET subscription is equal to the average
monthly income for residents of the poorer African countries. There is also the problem that many
Mass Communication: Living in a Media World, 6th edition
Ralph Hanson
Lecture Builders
African nations have state-controlled media that are very uncomfortable with the notion of a free press.
The network’s programming plans include jazz, along with mildly prodemocracy public affairs.
CONSOLIDATION OF OWNERSHIP NOTES: NEWSPAPERS: Media critic Ben Bagdikian points out
that during the latter half of the twentieth century, the wide range of businesses that make up the
media industry started consolidating, with fewer corporations owning an increasing proportion of the
nation’s media outlets. For example, in the years following World War II, approximately 80% of
American newspapers were independently owned. But by 1989, that proportion had been reversed, so
that only 20% of newspapers were independently owned, and 80% were owned by large newspaper
chains, or holding companies. These newspapers are also generally publishing without direct
competition from another paper. In 1900, 559 cities had competing newspapers. By the mid-1990s,
fewer than 30 cities had competing dailies owned by two separate corporations. (In most cities with two
newspapers, both publications are owned by the same company.) But in 1900, to be fair, newspapers
were virtually the only source of news within a community. By the 1990s, local news was also available
on television and, to a lesser degree, on radio. So the loss of competition may not be quite as dramatic
as it would initially seem.
NOTES ON CORPORATE MEDIA: When students think about “the media,” they typically think
about the channels that they see―the cable networks, the movies, the newspapers, the CDs, the
magazines, and so on. These links can be used to take students to the corporate side of the media
business rather than the entertainment/news side.
Who Owns What
Want an up-to-date list of what all of the major media companies own or control? Columbia Journalism