On a chilly afternoon last autumn Whoopi Goldberg found herself wandering toward a group of strangers in a tiny Appalachian coal-mining town, preparing to thank them profusely.  She was in Big Stone Gap, Va. to shoot a film of the same name (based on the novel by her friend Adriana Trigiani) alongside costars Ashley Judd and Patrick Wilson. The unfamiliar faces, perched behind monitors that allowed them to see everything the cameramen saw, belonged to the film’s financial backers. Goldberg introduced herself and expressed her gratitude to the starstruck group for giving her the job.  “ I’m always glad when anybody invests in cinema ,” says Goldberg a year later, recalling the episode from the lobby of ABC’s Manhattan studios. “It’s not easy, and Adriana waited 12 years to get this made. And I wanted to thank them.”  In the case of Big Stone Gap, the “anybody” is a group called Media Society. Founded in 2012 by venture capitalist Wade Bradley–an early investor in companies like Learning.com, Anvita Health and SnapNames, which invented the back-ordering of Web domains–the company aims to help accredited investors plow money into promising medium-budget films.  For a minimum investment of $150,000, these fledgling executive producers can become partners in a slate of three to five projects. Bradley, who says he’s raised more than half his goal of $73 million for the first batch, promises he’ll pay back each of his 90 or so current shareholders 115% before taking a penny himself; after that he and his company take 17% of profits. The investors get the rest, as well as a K-1 on tax day.  “What I liked about the entertainment industry is that it’s very, very similar to venture capital, in that everything is a startup,” says Bradley, 53. “From a venture capitalist’s point of view, it’s brilliant. … You bring these 150 people together for maybe six to eight weeks. They build the product, and then they all leave.”  Like the startup world, it’s also very risky. Hollywood is littered with the carcasses of scripts that never got filmed and flicks that flopped at the box office. Bradley knows as well as anyone: His first attempt at this business model, a company called IndieVest, not only produced two duds (Saint John of Las Vegas in 2009 and Knights of Badassdom in 2013), but he also got taken to arbitration by three disappointed investors.  “Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t,” says Goldberg. “ And I think it really is about who’s putting the money in and whether they realize that it’s not a guarantee .”
It's never been easier to make the ultimate alternative investment: financing films. Here's a road map for getting involved--but tread carefully.