Crowd Investing - A New Alternative to Traditional Film Finance

Crowd Investing, not to be confused with crowd-funding, is when an individual contributor becomes an investor in a film, rather than simply donating without a financial stake like with Kickstarter, Seed&Spark, and Indiegogo, among others. The Atlanta-based production We're So Dead , a horror comedy made for the service industry by the service industry, raised $125,000 from more than 300 individual investors through a WeFunder campaign. The production team will discuss their relationship with influencer The Bitchy Waiter, who has 1 million food service worker followers on Facebook and whose audience served as the core of their financiers. They’ll discuss the different stages of their fundraising efforts, starting with their partnership with The Bitchy Waiter on food service worker sketch comedy to build an audience. They’ll share the legal nuances of a WeFunder campaign, how their self-distribution model since its release 7 months ago is working, and what they've learned along the way. Moderator: Alex Parkinson (Co-Producer ) Panelists: Ken MacLaughlin (Writer, Director), Michael Sokol (Executive Producer) Alexander Parkinson is an Australian-American-British actor, writer, and director. His debut feature film, Third , will premiere at the 2026 Atlanta Film Festival. Alexander's feature script, Ride or Die , won the 2025 Atlanta Film Festival Feature Screenplay competition. His film and television acting credits include Law and Order: SVU , Found , For All Mankind , I’m A Virgo , The Wonder Years , and Black Adam. Michael Sokol has been writing, producing, and directing in Atlanta for almost 20 years. He developed and produced two features, the dark comedy Postal (2019) and the recently released comedy-slasher We're So Dead. Michael has developed and produced content for Vh1, Comedy Central, Food Network, Adult Swim, Tube and BET. Other credits include Cake (FXX) and Mandy (SpectreVision).