Last week, Daniel Radcliffe and Dane DeHaan called out their famous peers for abusing public funding. The co-stars in the upcoming film “Kill Your Darlings” collaborated with MTV to produce a fake Kickstarter campaign.

Through this prank, Radcliffe and DeHaan satirically chastised celebrities who feel that traditional methods of producing a movie are below them. They also poked fun at these celebrities by calling their potential donors “common folk.”

Kickstarter is the one of the most popular crowd funding web sites to date. Crowd funding is the idea of using public donations to support short films, features and other expensive projects.

Although Kickstarter provides an opportunity for underground artists to fund their dreams and share their voices, celebrities have posed a major problem for the site.

Kickstarter is now 4 years old, and successful filmmakers are exploiting their fame and the site itself by taking advantage of public crowd funding.

The fresh, intimate and young voices of filmmakers everywhere are being silenced, or at least illegitimated by the likes of Spike Lee, Zach Braff and Rob Thomas. These relevant, successful filmmakers are using Kickstarter to fund their films. And succeeded. Each of them reached their multi-million dollar goals for the films.

Some people don’t think this is a problem. Indie filmmaker and Kickstarter user Chris Steinberger said, “Huge studios that finance films kill the creativity of the writers and filmmakers, even big names like Zach Braff and Spike Lee. … Audiences will get better movies and the filmmakers will be able to tell their story the way it was meant to be told.”

That’s iniquitous. Lee is an Oscar nominee and Braff is incredibly wealthy. He made close to $350,000 an episode while on “Scrubs.” The show now runs in syndication, so money isn’t really a problem for him. Good storytelling shouldn’t require hundreds of millions of dollars. And exploiting your popularity to get the public to open their wallets is underhanded.

During a time when those in mainstream Hollywood are concerned with producing high-budget, special effects films in which robots rise from the sea, the small indie voice is lost on big-name production houses.

Because of this, Kickstarter is essential to amateur and indie filmmakers. It allows them to reach out, get publicity for their projects and turn around with a success.

Another indie Kickstarter user, Connor Strader, said, “The ‘big wigs’ have access and dominate just about any form of social media site on the web today.” They, therefore, silence the voice of the young, beginning and struggling filmmakers who are trying to spread the word of their campaigns through social media and other means. Many of these young filmmakers don’t even reach modest goals of hundreds, four- or five-figure goals.

Kickstarter was created so that everyday people without Hollywood connections could accomplish making a film. Meanwhile, celebrities sensationalize and make incredible projects while the less famous seem illegitimate by comparison.

Famous people should stay off Kickstarter unless they‘re donating to young, struggling artists. Filmmakers, especially the inexperienced ones, should receive a fair deal. The wealthy and over-hyped celebrities should stop ruining it.

Cassie-lee Grimaldi is a senior television, radio and film major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at [email protected] and reached on Twitter @cassiegrimaldi.

Published on October 21, 2013 at 1:31 am