A new tool for filmmakers: The Film Funding Fairy 🧚
Find funding for your film. Built with AI in an afternoon.
I built a thing this week: The Film Funding Fairy! 🧚
If you’re a filmmaker, you’ve probably thought: funding shouldn’t be this hard to find.
The grants are real. The fellowships are out there. But the information is scattered across a hundred websites, newsletters, and bookmarks — and a lot of us miss deadlines not because we weren’t ready, but because we simply didn’t know in time. (Or we click something that sounds perfect… only to realize it doesn’t apply to our project.)
So I built a lil something to help with all of that.
The Film Funding Fairy asks you a few questions about your project, then returns relevant grants, fellowships, and labs — sortable by what’s open now vs. opening soon—with a quick note on why each one might be a fit.
It’s early and film-focused for now. If people find it useful, I plan to expand it to other funding verticals down the line.
How I built it (and why that matters)
The first version came together in an afternoon using Lovable — AI-assisted prototyping, or “vibe coding” if you’ve been seeing that term everywhere lately (if you haven’t, good primer here, and a more in-depth discussion here). Then I made a few small refinements over the next couple of days.
I’ve worked as a product lead building apps and websites before, with full teams of engineers and designers. This isn’t my first vibe-coding experiment, but it’s one of many that’s amazed me with how fast and powerful these tools are.
What keeps surprising me isn’t just the speed — it’s how quickly you can go from “this should exist” to something real and usable. Product experience helps, of course. But these tools are increasingly accessible — which means more of us can build the tools we wish existed.
How does that matter to you if you’re a filmmaker? Filmmakers have always been resourceful. Now we have tools that let us turn that resourcefulness into infrastructure and purpose-built apps and sites.
Here are a few things you might be able to create in an afternoon with Lovable similar tools (Replit, Claude Code, Cursor, etc):
A clean landing page for your film (trailer, press kit, screenings, email sign-up)
Prototyping a side hustle idea fast enough to know if it’s worth pursuing
A submission tracker for grants and festivals that reminds you about deadlines and keeps everything in one place
An impact hub: screening request form, partner outreach, automated follow-ups, donation link
Custom tools for research-heavy or investigative projects (read about what NYT is doing in this vein for inspo)
…and much more.
If you’re already using vibe coding for your projects, I’d love to hear how! If you want to hear more details about how I built this, I’d love to hear that, too!
The Funding Fairy is VERY NEW, just shared it, and I’m sure there’s room for improvement. Please respond to this email with any feedback — what works, what’s missing, which funders or labs I should add.
And if you have a filmmaker friend who you think might like the Fairy, please share it with them!
xoxo,
Kris
This is pretty exciting -- I love closing the gap between "i have this idea..." and an actual finished, working thing. I've enjoyed seeing the way you're using these tools as an independent maker, and I look forward to trying out The Funding Fairy.
Here's a question. Someone types in their project into The Funding Fairy: can they feel confident their idea is protected, isn't being shared all over the place? I don't think you're a nefarious actor, not at all; it's a hypothetical question that comes from someone who has stayed away from allowing AI systems to scan their face in exchange for fun profile pics. I am super cautious about what we voluntary share, because they are black boxes. And really, our ideas (and our biometrics) are all we have.
I was at your Sundance Institute presentation, and very impressed. This confirms why:) Great AI use case. It's exciting and also daunting; it's really hard to keep up.