largento

Kickstarter limits it to 60 days and encourages you to do it in 30 days or less. They claim their research shows that longer projects are rarely successful.

Going for that amount of money is really a battle. You've got to really get it out there and publicize it. I had a few suggestions I sent you earlier. You can't count on KS to help, so you have to do the heavy lifting. Tony is right about updates. Make it seem like the project is urgent and alive. Also, it might help to add some specifics to your story about what the money is going for. You don't have to do an itemization, but it gives people an idea of why you need the help. I let myself get discouraged last time and regret it. I waited until the very end to really fight for it. Go out there swinging ...or regroup. You can always cancel the project and relaunch with a focus on individual stages of the production.

Thanks for the purchase, Dale! Hope you enjoy it! There's definitely something to that, Rodney. I've definitely thought about it all year while I was sitting at my table at those conventions. If you only have one item, that's pretty much all you can sell to one customer. Some might buy multiple copies to give as gifts, but in most cases, it's for them and you have noway to build up more sales. With 2/3/4/etc. DVDs, I'd have the chance to increase sales with the same number of customers. Plus, some variety of subject matter, might draw a larger customer base. If only I were about 20 years younger, I could get to a pretty good selection. :-)

Thanks, Rodney. Every new project seems to involve me having to stretch more and more. At some point, I might even get good at something. :-) Making the set multi-purpose is something I started thinking about when I was working on the sets for Stalled Trek. I was so impressed by how the sets were designed to work within the confines of the studio that they had. Obviously, they couldn't have miles of hallways, but they could construct them between sets to allow them to be redressed and stand-in for various decks. It just seemed like a really smart idea to me, so I've been trying to think that way with these new sets. The hospital set was designed to follow through all the shots I needed to to get to the gags and had very little in the way of wasteful stuff. In this case, lack of space isn't an issue, but rendertimes are and you don't want to have to take a hit on time for elements that won't even be seen in the final picture.

Not gonna' lie. Doing backgrounds terrifies me. I'm just not good at even thinking in those sorts of terms. After much struggling, I've come up with most of the first set and started feeling okay about it. I'm using very simple shapes and trying to get some value out of it, but not make it so time consuming that it will be impossible to do what I need to get done by October. The results are pretty good. Obviously I'm using the same pine tree over and over again, but the texturing gives it some character in the background. I'm building the set with the idea that I can use it for different scenes requiring roadways. The center is an intersection with the four roads curving away, so that you can't see very far down them and then they join up with a circular road that goes around the entire set. So, the set kind of looks like a pinwheel. My thinking is that I can use that circular road to do driving scenes of any length. I'm adding the pine trees in the cho, so that I only need to add as many as I need to fill out the frame of a shot. I'm also playing with trying to get the desaturated look of the show. Red Giant has a nifty plugin with all sorts of different preset color grades, but it's $399 which is just too much for me to consider. There's a free option that has ten which I checked into and it's interesting, but not exactly what I'm looking for. Right now I'm just pulling down the saturation, upping the warm colors in the medium colors and upping the cool colors in the highlights. Then adding a warm photo filter and film grain. It's promising. Especially when you compare it to the original:

Wow! That was a long incubation period! Nice job, guys!

The part I found appealing was that it was much easier for people to buy stuff with. You can put a button on your website and clicking it brings up a pop-up that doesn't even take you away from the site. You don't have to create a log-in or anything like that. Simple and fast. I'm just reacting to people who have said they'd rather have a digital version than a DVD. I looked into Amazon's video service, but it requires the film to be at least 20 minutes and Stalled Trek is just under 16. My primary concern is with having their be issues with the file, like incompatibility or things like that. With a DVD, there's not really that concern because you put it in a DVD player and it plays. I don't want to have to do tech support for people who buy the file and my concern was that it would be more complicated than it looks, but Tony seems to have had a good experience with it. I would have to sell a lot of videos to make any real kind of money and I don't expect that to happen. Like I said, it's more about a convenience for people who'd rather watch it on their iPad or smart phone than on their TV.

Thanks, Tony! One of the challenges I'm facing with this production is creating a lot of real world things that I don't see as being in my wheelhouse. This is pushing me to get over that. A big one of these is automobiles. I wasn't one of those guys who drew pictures of cars. I had some struggle with this. It's still got a few little details left to add, but overall it's satisfying enough. Puppet on patrol!

Thanks, guys, and I'm relieved to hear that, Tony. I only found out about this site recently. Want to make sure it goes smoothly.

Let's hope so! I'm aiming at having it finished and ready to go in early October (in time for Halloween). The new season of TWD should start in November, so my timing may work out. I don't know that Bill Gaines ever actually wrote anything for Mad. I'm pretty sure he wrote or at least came up with plots for the EC horror comics, though. He could have written real stories for The Walking Dead. :-)

This is kind of experimental. I found out about this site, Gumroad that lets you sell digital media and I want to give it a shot and see how well it works. It's set up so that all you have to do is give them your email address and payment info and you get an email with the link to download it. You don't have to sign up for anything. Starting now, you can purchase a digital download of Stalled Trek: Amutt time for only $3.99! Significantly cheaper than the DVD and no shipping! The file is an mp4 and should work on mobile devices. The price may go up if I decide to make this permanent, so get yours now if you want one ...and let me know how well the process works! Just click on the link in my signature...

I'm not entirely sure that people realize there is a difference between liking and sharing. Or maybe they don't know how to do it? (Being so difficult to identify the link that says "share" and clicking on it.) :-) That was a great frustration for me. I personally messaged several of my friends specifically asking them to share the link on their timeline and was put out when some of them didn't. Almost to the point of unfriending them, but eventually I thought better of it and some of them came through later on. I think in the end, there was only one who didn't and I just figured she was too busy saving lives to find time to do it. The first time 'round, when I wasn't asking for that much and met my goal so easily, it was all fun. Each new backer was a bonus. This time, it was exhausting and stressful and I may have had several years shaved off of my life expectancy. :-)

Since my KS succeeded, I've got incentives to work on! I've added a poll to the top of this thread. Please only answer it if you backed the project at a reward level.

Looking good! That's the greatest part of these threads! Especially for the creator. Proof you've actually been working on it. :-)

Well, another reason why it would be beneficial to go lower at first with your goal and try to meet the goal early. Clearly you don't want people giving for the wrong reason. You want people who are excited about your project and want what you're selling. That person that gets bitten by betting you wouldn't make it isn't likely going to help you the next time around ...and if they don't honor the donation, then they end up short-changing the project, which can jeopardize the creator's ability to finish it. You also don't want to feel like you are pressuring people to fund you. I'm hoping I didn't do that with my campaign. I tried to keep most of the messaging in the phrasing of "help me get the word out" until the final push, and then I tried to include "if you can" in my verbiage. I didn't directly approach anyone and say, I need you to do this. In fact, the generous backer that got me over my goal came out of the blue (even though it was someone I knew) and voluntarily upped their pledge a couple of times to get it over. I was actually just frozen with fear, watching the seconds tick down and thinking how much it was going to suck to have it fail so close to the goal. :-)

Well, that's enough looking back ...I've got a 30 minute movie to make! :-) I just wanted to put down my thoughts in case I ever go this route again. To be honest, with as many favors as I've called in, I might not have this as an option again. :-) If anyone else finds them handy, you're welcome to them. I think all cases are different, so take it with a grain of salt. Nobody knows what the masses are going to like and attach themselves to. For now, though... it's a success! I get to make my puppet zombie masterpiece!

Some thoughts from my POV: 1) I think a feature, although an impressive accomplishment, is unwise for a small, indy production with no budget. The only way to really make money on it is to sell it to a distributor, but it's most likely not going to have that appeal. It's going to lack celebrity and high-end production values. An indy, no-budget feature would be better suited to film festivals, where shorts are just (if not more) acceptable. Alternatively, if you wanted to show it online, internet users are less likely to invest the time in watching a feature-length film they stumbled across than a short. 2) When I was desperately looking for a project to latch onto, I threw out a ton of group project ideas and they were almost always ignored, dismissed out of hand, or suggested as great ...if I did them myself. :-) I think, even with group projects in mind, people still have their own ideas about what they want to do and finding an idea that appeals to that many people equally is probably impossible. 3) Even a short needs a director There has to be decisions made and somebody needs to be the final word. Sure, there's stuff like vision, intent, etc. but bottom line is somebody needs to be that go-to guy. It requires a benevolent dictator ...and those ain't easy to find. 4) Collaboration works best when the collaborators aren't competitive. I've sought out help from people in the forums before and I've almost universally found that if the person helping is doing something I'm not particularly good at, it's easy and great. If they are doing something I can do, then I unconsciously start to become judgmental. If they are doing something I love to do, I become jealous and wonder why they are getting to do the fun stuff I want to do.

More on the do-over thinking: >I'd have spent the preceding months building audience. Let's face it, Kickstarter brings in some people, but your success is tied to how many people *you* bring in. Attempting to buddy-up with fansites at the last minute with a "Hello ---pay for my project!" doesn't work very well. I had more success on the Star Trek sites by reaching out to the blogs when I had the Paunk Show pilot to show than I did when the Kickstarter was in play. I should have concentrated on doing the web series first. That could have potentially built up audience, too. >Consider the day and time that I launched the campaign with thought to when it would end. I got excited and launched the campaign as soon as I got home and saw it had been approved. I don't think that was smart. For one thing, it was very close to the end of the day and the tracking sites viewed the 15 minutes as a day and showed that I got zero pledges. This impacted their projections in a negative way. It didn't matter that I had $870 in the first 24 hours, it divided that by two for the first two days. Again, I think there's some psychology that causes people to say, hey, this isn't tracking like it's going to be successful, I'll look for a sure thing. That said, on my first campaign, I launched it first thing in the morning and so my last hours were in the wee hours of the morning, where you're not going to have much traffic and you can't call somebody an ask for help. I'm thinking I would aim for it starting and ending maybe mid-day. That way you get that initial burst of traffic for the tracking sites plus it ends when people are awake. I'd also want it to end on a Friday, preferably just after the first of the month. People get paid on Fridays or at the beginning or end of the month.

If I had a do-over, this is what I would do: >I'd have set my goal at a more attainable point to start. I think psychologically, folks are more predisposed to bet on a winning horse. On Stalled Trek, I reached my goal in a day and yet continued to get backers right up to the end, getting to 367%. I think people who wanted the DVD were more likely to do it when they knew it was a sure-thing that it would be finished. Anecdotely, I was told by several people that they were getting the DVD as a gift for a Trek fan they knew. I'm not sure they would have bid on a gift that might not be made. I received $2300 in bids for Stalled Trek. If I'd set the goal at $2K, i think I would have had a better chance of reaching the goal early on. I could have done this by limiting the final piece. Offering up a 15 minute animation to start with. Then, when that goal was reached, I could have offered a stretch reward, expanding the film to 30 minutes if it reached $5K. I think that would have worked much better. Being so far away from my goal for so long surely soiled people on pledging, because they couldn't see it being successful.

Had a long trip back today and was collecting my thoughts. I'll expand on these later, but here are some things I learned from my second Kickstarter campaign: 1) Miracles can happen 2) Raising $5,000 is much harder than raising $600 3) It's much more stressful when you reach your goal on the last day rather than the first day 4) Don't give up (see #1)

I'm excited, Will! I'm going to wait a few days before I share it on Facebook. After the last few days, I think if I post another Kickstarter request everyone is going to unfriend me. :-)

Color me super-surprised! I have some really great friends and family that stepped up at the end to push me over!

Time to make it officially official! The Wobbling Dead is in production for an October release! Thanks to all of you for making it happen!

You would have called 911!

I almost had a heart attack! I still can't believe it!