That said, I would say there is a broader set of ethics regarding how producers interact with fans that is more relevant to this Kickstarter than to others based on the way the platform is being deployed. Rather than using Kickstarter “wrong,” the choice to use Kickstarter in this way opens up a discussion about how fandom is commodified, and how financial barriers reshape meanings of fandom. And my point is less that Kickstarter is not or should not be compatible with their goals, but rather that working so directly against the dominant discursive understanding of Kickstarter requires more careful negotiation of these questions than a project where the “need” is clearly articulated.

I would have similar questions if the film had chosen to build its own crowdfunding infrastructure (which companies have done in the past), but the discursive relationship between this and other related but dissimilar projects on Kickstarter has entered this into a broader conversation that obscures and complicates its relationship with fans.

You’re right that the critical questions about the campaign are ones I asked personally, but I guess I would say that I see these not as questions that should preclude Kickstarter from being used, but rather questions that I think the Kickstarter in question needs to answer in order to negotiate its place within a broader understanding of fan engagement.

Firstly, from my reading, the tone of your piece (and tweets) suggest that you DO feel this is a cynical deployment of the Kickstarter model solely made to juice revenue and get marketing promotion. This would defy the ethos of Kickstarter.

My response to this is that we shouldn’t be placing prescriptive rules on the best way Kickstarter can be used. Kickstarter, as a company, is only 5 years old. In that time, they’ve experienced astronomical growth, having recently announced they’ve been responsible for 1 billion pledges. But while they were initially founded as a way for bootstrapping artists to get funding from friends and family, they’ve evolved to fund massive films by Braff, Spike Lee, etc. and games from the Double Fine guys. I highly doubt they’re done evolving yet.

So my ultimate point is this: Who is to say what is the “right” way to use Kickstarter? The company, as I mentioned, is just a few years old. After Facebook launched as an ivy-league-college only website, there were those who freaked out when people in high school and older adults were let in. Does that mean that the latter were using Facebook wrong? Or is it more likely that startups evolve to accommodate different people and more people over time?

I’d venture that the variety of projects on Kickstarter we’re seeing is a “historical accident.” There SHOULD be sites that accommodate fans in the way that would be more transparent than the project you describe above, and feel less “wrong.” But it’s really difficult to build a site like Kickstarter. They just make the process really easy! Their biggest competitor, Indiegogo, is still kind of a hot mess in my opinion.

As new Kickstarter-like sites launch, I’m hoping we’ll see crowdfunding for all kinds of projects that AREN’T allowed on Kickstarter, including the project above. But we’re not there yet, and in the meantime, I’m not ready to tell someone that they’re using Kickstarter wrong.