Comment by marquis

I think filmmaking and other pursuits like music will continue to bring great authors without any community funding. Every great artist just got started with limited means and their work shows for itself. A good artist doesn't need a few thousand dollars to get started, they just get started, and that initial work is either good enough for the artist to move forward or it isn't. Peter Jackson started his first film in his backyard with his friends on the weekend, and through sheer persistence just kept going with it long enough, and with interesting enough ultra-low budget footage that he got a grant to finish it, based on the quality of his work. Every other successful artist I know just had the hustle built in: the act of producing. You can't pay people to find out if they are going to make great work. It's there or it's not.