About this project
The documentary short-film series, Let’s Get Street Smart, chronicles the lives of people working on the San Francisco homelessness solution. The original series takes us to the street with visionary individuals to see what’s possible when we unravel the complex and painful web of homelessness and address different facets of the problem with the hallmarks of San Francisco's culture: innovation and activism. Most of all, the films offer a glimpse of what the city might be like when we embrace the idea that all lives are equally meaningful, even those of the most marginalized among us.
Do you know what's so special about San Francisco? What makes people proud to live here?
It's the culture - a special combination of creativity and caring. Innovation meets activism here and you can see it in how we eat, how we play and how we live. This is a place where movements that change the world are launched.
But, there's a disconnect when it comes to homelessness. People are increasingly upset and frustrated, yet don't know how to contribute to the solution.
So, we challenged ourselves to figure out how to inspire people who love San Francisco to be part of the homelessness solution.
Our answer, the Let's Get Street Smart short film series, chronicles the lives of people working on the San Francisco homelessness solution. With your help we can produce and distribute the series.
Funding of this project will cover 3 areas:
1 - CURATED CONTENT:
We are scouting for, casting and hand-picking 9 ridiculously inspiring people who champion 9 different solutions to homelessness in SF. These will be stories of organizations and impact. We'll meet social innovators on the front lines and people facing homelessness whose lives have been transformed by a hot shower, a job opportunity or an innovative network of caring and compassion. Each of the stories gives us a reason to celebrate SF culture and a concrete way to participate in a way out of homelessness.
2 - PRODUCED CINEMATICALLY
The films are being produced by the team at Micro-Documentaries, a company started 6 years ago to help social innovators advance their humanitarian missions through short films. During this time we have produced hundreds of films in more than 30 countries. Purposeful businesses and nonprofits like Stanford University, [RED] and Seventh Generation have counted on us to help them raise millions of dollars, secure meetings with the White House, advance legislation, recruit teams, inspire action and strengthen thought leadership.
This is our first independent film series and you are invited to be part of our debut.
3 - DISTRIBUTED STRATEGICALLY
The films are only going to have an impact if people watch them, so we are giving as much attention to distribution as we are to production. For this series we invented the idea of audience-pooling. In the same way that social innovators currently use our travel-pooling program to share travel expenses and reduce carbon emissions when filming on location, audience-pooling enables them to come together around common themes and objectives and share their stories with their collective audiences in order to increase reach and impact. We are super excited that current participants in Let’s Get Street Smart have already committed to a joint campaign launch to more than 100,000 people!
The films will live on a beautifully designed web page and on a YouTube channel. We will be pitching targeted bloggers and media channels to increase viewership. The films will be submitted to film festivals and to strategic distribution partners who might be interested in hosting the series for their audiences. Finally, we are counting on you to share widely with you networks so that together we can inspire the most people possible to be part of the SF homelessness solution.
USE OF FUNDS
$150,000 will cover the production of the 9 films in the series and earned media distribution. We have received a matching grant for one third of this amount, which will be disbursed once we raise the remaining two thirds. If we can raise $50,000 with this campaign, we feel so confident that we will be able to raise the rest, that we will advance the remaining third.
If this campaign raises more than $100,000 our stretch goals might include things like purchasing paid media to increase the distribution of the film series, producing a series trailer, adding more films to the series and/or other ideas.
Risks and challenges
Doing something for the first time always involves risks and challenges. These may be related to production or distribution, we might have setbacks related to the team or to our participants. Things that we can't even imagine might come up.
Although this is our first independent film series, for the last 6 years, our team has produced short films for social innovators to advance their humanitarian agendas, so we are not unfamiliar with risks and challenges associated with this sort of production.
While we cannot predict what they might be, you have our word that we will deal with challenges as they come up with the best intentions possible and in the most professional way we know how.
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Funding period
- (30 days)