"Nightcallers" Kickstarter Campaign launch

[Gerry]

Dear fellow A:Mers - This morning I've officially launched a Kickstarter campaign for "Nightcallers". I'd be eternally in your debt if you'd watch my video, support the project, and share it with your friends and online networks. And thanks especially to this forum's members for their technical help and support in bringing this project to its current stage.

 

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1867950291/nightcallers

[Gerry]

I also wanted to mention that my video "This Is What We Do To Bugs!" is live on YouTube!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_7V4VbEC5w

[Rodney]

I'm in!

 

(But don't tell my wife I just sponsored a film about bugs! If you do, I'll be the bug your friends and colleagues are squashin' in that video!)

[Darkwing]

Wow! You have quite the team working with you!! The Met Opera Orchestra is stunning to say the least so having on of them working on music is pretty awesome if you ask me! Also...I need to really get myself a credit card to be able to start helping support some of these projects..

[Gerry]

I didn't mean to mislead anyone, I certainly don't have the Metropolitan Opera doing the music! Scott Brubaker plays French Horn for them and will be creating a music track from existing public domain works. It'll still be pretty good though!

 

EDIT: And Thanks Rodney (and you others!)

[largento]

Backed! Good luck, Gerry!

[Darkwing]

I didn't mean to mislead anyone, I certainly don't have the Metropolitan Opera doing the music! Scott Brubaker plays French Horn for them and will be creating a music track from existing public domain works. It'll still be pretty good though!

 

EDIT: And Thanks Rodney (and you others!)

 

No no, it was clear it was only Scott, but that's impressive still because he plays for the Met Opera, which means he's gotta be kinda pro!

[Gerry]

*bump*

[fae_alba]

I'm IN!

[Gerry]

So I see! Thanks, Paul!

[Gerry]

You may be interested to see the original comics pages back when "Nightcallers" was a webcomic of a different name. I just fixed a lot of broken links and formatting inconsistencies and posted all the original pages, 27 of them in three and a half chapters. I know they've been seen by some folks here, but not everyone!

 

There's absolutely no truth to the fact that there's a subliminal message in them that will cause you to back my Kickstarter project. Go ahead, try it and see! Backing the project will be a result of your own free will...free will...free will...

 

http://www.mooneyart.com/nightcallers_pages/ishapa.html

[Gerry]

You folks here who have backed this project so far are the greatest! Thanks for your support. I've still got a ways to go but I'm optimistic!

[Gerry]

*bump* cause why not?

[Simon Edmondson]

Gerry

 

My apologies that I can't offer fiscal support at present but, I sincerely wish you well with the project.

simon

[Gerry]

I appreciate that, Simon!

[Gerry]

Heading into the last few days of the campaign, and still not at 20%. Soooo, I try to work up the enthusiasm to do yet another round of emails, but without a better average up to this point, it's hard to get other folks excited about it!

 

So moving forward I'll be polishing up the bible and not worrying so much about the animation. I bit the bullet yesterday and signed up for pitch training to attend the Kidscreen TV conference in February, fortunately right here in NYC. I'll get the bible in shape and maybe have some small animation sample to show as well, just not that whole scene.

 

I also started my Project Management class two Saturdays ago and it's fun actually! I won't be able to use my new skills at my day job but it's a good skill set to have I think!

[Rodney]

I hope someone comes through and funds your project.

It'd be great to see you moving into full production on Nightcallers.

 

In the production management area I just posted elsewhere in the forum about my interest in an Open Source production Management program called Tactic. With the course you are taking it'd be interesting to get your take on it.

[largento]

Sorry to see this go down this way, Gerry.

 

I don't know how you feel about this, but I'd consider the fact that once the campaign has actually failed, you can't delete it. It will be there forever. You can, however, cancel it beforehand and it will be removed. My thinking is that it might not be beneficial to have that failure a google-search away for any prospective buyer.

[Gerry]

That's an interesting thought Mark. If it goes down to the wire maybe I'll delete it in the last hour or day.

 

I still feel like doing one last blast of emails in the final week, just to see. But I'd feel more confident if I was anywhere near 50%. I was even prepared to do an end run and have my wife kick in the last thousand bucks if we had gotten close.

 

And Rodney, if only I *could* move into full production! One crucial weak link in my KS was that there wasn't a full, complete project coming out the other end, just a single scene. It's like a musician asking for help completing half a song instead of a whole cd!

 

I can still pitch the project and I'll continue working on the script and bible, and the animation is still very much alive.

[Gerry]

Hm, got a couple of pledges from folks I don't even know! Gonna do my last big push, why not!

[Darkwing]

If I may, here's some potential insights into why the pledges are relatively low compared to your target goal (mind you it could probably be reasoned out to the end of time, you'll never really know).

 

Anyways, these are my quick two cents. If I were a passer by that scans kickstarter for cool campaigns to start (I've read people actually do surf kickstarter with the intent of finding interesting projects to back that they feel will have some sort of success) this would probably be the first thing that pops into my head.

 

Goal: 9000 dollars.

Why? "My current plan, and the reason I'm here at Kickstarter, is to complete the first scene from the story to use in pitching the project to movie and animation studios, and also to enter it in film festivals where TV programming scouts often look for new content."

 

Probably one of the first thoughts that runs through someone's head is: why do you need 9000 dollars to do that? You must be one of them crazy people, you'll never reach 9 grand for that! Next please!

 

See I think (I don't actually know, I'm no expert on these things, I'm just rambling!) that people need to see the target as being reasonable for what you're describing as to why you need/want the money. Frankly, that one sentence description as to why you want 9 grand doesn't really cut it. You *might* have better success with fleshing the why bit out more. Outline where this money will go in more depth so people who are ignorant as to how much it might cost to pitch and do the festival thing will go "oh I see why he needs 9 grand!" I'll try and make this analogy (yes, it's a movie analogy, I know I use those somewhat frequently...) how many people go nowadays to see a movie simply because some big name celebrity(s) was slapped into it? Not many actually. So George Clooney's in it. So what? If all the marketing division for that movie said was "come see this movie cause George Clooney's in it" people would be like (and actually are, at least from my perspective working at a movie theatre) "pft, whatever." People still need it layed out to them as to why they should invest that 2 hours, and probably 30 bucks (between ticket and concessions) to see that movie. Is the plot any good? Is it going to be entertaining? Is this a good director? When was the last time they made a good movie themselves? And there's more of course, but I think you probably get the drift and hopefully draw the comparison which makes sense in my head (mind you crazy things make sense in my head so...)

 

 

Anyways, I'm not trying to be condescending and hopefully I'm just being critical in a constructive and helpful way. That's my goal. I'm not trying to be mean and say "you're doing a bad job you might as well give up!" That's not it at all! I'm just saying even the big name kickstarter campaigns that ask for 70 grand and have Tim Russ running them needs to describe to the public why they want 70 grand for their project.

 

I dunno, like I said at the beginning, there's a lot of rationalization that could be done and probably could get pretty fantastical pretty quickly and you do still have a few days to go, you never know, maybe you'll still reach it yet!

 

On another note though, seeing you reach even a thousand dollars makes me a bit more confident that something like kickstarter could work for small budget amateur/indie films and stuff!

[Gerry]

that's a good point, Chris. I still think though that it's more to do with the end result being only one scene and not a finished "thing". People know animation and movie making are not pocket-change endeavors. And suppose I'd asked for say, $3000 (which would never have been enough) I still would only be halfway there. I'm not sure that asking for less would result in more backers, I don't know but I don't think it works that way.

 

I'd been following Michael Dorn's movie project for which he was trying to get $700,000, somewhere in that area, and he never even got to 10%. Here's a guy who is probably one of the most well-known TV characters around and he couldn't even raise lunch money.

 

In his case, the fatal flaw in my opinion is that it wasn't just him in the movie, it was Marina Sirtis and several other ST character actors (from DSN etc.) and seriously, who among all these actors' fans want to see them in a romantic comedy? Probably around zero. So in an attempt to work up a paying gig for all his friends, he sort of undermined his whole effort.

 

I guess I could have published a budget, but very few KS projects do anything like that. It's "here's the amount I need, isn't my project cool?" and it's off to the races.

[largento]

I took part in a panel on crowd funding at that convention I did a couple of weeks ago. I was the only person on the panel who had run a KS campaign, but there was a lady who had backed over 45 of them.

 

We came to a few conclusions:

 

•KS is a shopping destination. Backers are looking for cool things to buy for themselves or as gifts.

•Backers think celebrities have their own money they can use

•Since they view it as a shopping destination, they are looking for something cool and unique

•You have to convince the backers that you can deliver your project and in a short period of time

•You must be doing the majority of the work. They like the money to go for definable things (like printing or manufacturing costs), not salaries. They want you to profit after the KS.

 

We all agreed these things go out the window if you have an existing audience base of "true fans" who will back everything you do. :-)

[robcat2075]

We came to a few conclusions:

 

•KS is a shopping destination. Backers are looking for cool things to buy for themselves or as gifts.

 

 

Recently there has been some buzz about them trying to change that and get back to funding "ideas"

 

http://boingboing.net/2012/09/21/kickstart...ts-to-idea.html

 

http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-is-not-a-store

 

 

Although, since then, I still see things listed that seem to be very much "store" items.

[Darkwing]

that's a good point, Chris. I still think though that it's more to do with the end result being only one scene and not a finished "thing". People know animation and movie making are not pocket-change endeavors. And suppose I'd asked for say, $3000 (which would never have been enough) I still would only be halfway there. I'm not sure that asking for less would result in more backers, I don't know but I don't think it works that way.

 

I'd been following Michael Dorn's movie project for which he was trying to get $700,000, somewhere in that area, and he never even got to 10%. Here's a guy who is probably one of the most well-known TV characters around and he couldn't even raise lunch money.

 

In his case, the fatal flaw in my opinion is that it wasn't just him in the movie, it was Marina Sirtis and several other ST character actors (from DSN etc.) and seriously, who among all these actors' fans want to see them in a romantic comedy? Probably around zero. So in an attempt to work up a paying gig for all his friends, he sort of undermined his whole effort.

 

I guess I could have published a budget, but very few KS projects do anything like that. It's "here's the amount I need, isn't my project cool?" and it's off to the races.

 

And I'm by no means saying you should have reduced the goal! I don't think it's necessarily so much about how high your goal is. If your goal is 20 bucks and your project looks like 20 bucks isn't justified, you'll still probably only get half the backing. Look at the Space Command kickstarter campaign. They wanted 70 grand and they surpassed that if memory serves. So target money may not be so much a factor. Now mix that with what Mark said and I think there might be a recipe for this sort of thing brewing. I'll admit, Space Command looked really frigging cool and I woulda probably backed it, even a little if I had a credit card (mind you, I woulda backed yours too!)

 

I took part in a panel on crowd funding at that convention I did a couple of weeks ago. I was the only person on the panel who had run a KS campaign, but there was a lady who had backed over 45 of them.

 

We came to a few conclusions:

 

•KS is a shopping destination. Backers are looking for cool things to buy for themselves or as gifts.

•Backers think celebrities have their own money they can use

•Since they view it as a shopping destination, they are looking for something cool and unique

•You have to convince the backers that you can deliver your project and in a short period of time

•You must be doing the majority of the work. They like the money to go for definable things (like printing or manufacturing costs), not salaries. They want you to profit after the KS.

 

We all agreed these things go out the window if you have an existing audience base of "true fans" who will back everything you do. :-)

 

Those are very interesting points. I was reading the other day how KS implemented the new reasons why this might fail type thing and other "failsafes" essentially because the admin don't want to treat it like a store. Thing is, if that's how everyone else treats it, then it basically makes KS a place where people "shop" for projects and has to be treated as such by people looking for backers.

 

EDIT: What Robert said. His post got in there while I was typing mine

[largento]

Those implementations seem like legal protection initiatives to me. Their lawyers are realizing that some of these million dollar funded projects could explode in their face if they turn out to be vaporware and folks could turn around and start demanding money back from KS.

 

There is no guarantee that if you fund a Kickstarter campaign that the project will be completed. In the case of "things" (rather than creative projects), this can be because reality or business reasons can interfere.

 

The two initiatives are

 

1) Answer a question about what challenges you face in doing your project. i.e. Accept responsibility for trying to do something that you might not be able to accomplish, so that the backer is made aware that the project is difficult.

 

2) No photo-realistic renderings of what a product will do. i.e. Don't make them think your product already exists, and can do things you're not sure that it can do.

 

Both of these things seem aimed at covering KS' butts and are clearly more relevant to products, rather than creative projects.

 

Whatever their claims, the fact remains that KS has allowed several campaigns that seem to stray far afield from their charter, I suspect because they are profitable and if they are profitable, help to promote KS. For instance, the Penny Arcade guys recently ran a KS campaign that was aimed at getting enough money from users so that they could take advertising off of their website for one year. How is that a creative project?

 

I was attempting to type that last post on my phone between jobs at a freelance gig today and neglected to cover one of the most important things we discussed in the panel: gratitude.

 

The panel moderator, a musician, was quick to point out that part of what made KS attractive to backers is that they can interact with the creators. Reaching out to them and thanking them and including extra little things is a big factor in not only getting your project funded, but in creating a future audience.

 

I related the fact that I emailed everyone who contributed to thank them and realized early on that I needed to do that right away. I had a few instances where someone would donated money one day and remove the donation the next. Those seemed to stop when I made it a point to thank the person as soon as the backer made their pledge. The person making that donation is less likely to question their donation if they've heard back from you how important their donation was.

 

That kind of personal interaction with the creators was certainly part of the motivation of the woman who had backed so many campaigns. She showed some really creative little things artists had included as surprises with their fulfillments. Things that didn't cost them more than a little time, but clearly meant a whole lot to the recipient.

 

I know I've come across at least one blogger who supported my campaign who felt a special kind of coolness in having a DVD that they had some part in bringing to be.

 

It was a really cool panel. It's clear that this is going to be huge going forward and how and why things succeed will be endlessly debated.

 

I got a big laugh when I told the folks gathered there that I couldn't tell them how to do a successful campaign since I had no expectation that mine would even get funded, more or less get 3.5 times funded. :-)

[Darkwing]

I'm really fascinated by all of this kickstarter stuff because when I was first introduced to it a few years ago, I didn't really believe that it would ever work, especially for someone who's an amateur like me. But seeing what you'd accomplished with it Mark and those points you pull out, I just find it fascinating. It might help encourage me to actually attempt a film someday or something and see about getting backing from a kickstarter campaign. I think these are very useful points and would be interested in charting other people's success and failures with KS and see how these topics apply to it.

[Darkwing]

Duplicate Post

[largento]

Ideally, I think the best way to approach it is to know that crowd-funding is an option. So that when you do find you have a need for cash while working on a project, Kickstarter could be a way to get it.

 

In other words, I'm thinking that coming up with a project just to get money from Kickstarter is putting the cart before the horse.

 

That said, I'm sure there are tons of people doing that very thing. :-)

 

It wouldn't surprise me if they do start making you jump through more hoops to get your project listed. I know that when I first filled out the forms, it took them a week to get back to me, and they told me that they were changing their policies and I would have to resubmit. Where before you just filled out some forms, they now wanted a complete pitch (including video) before they would consider your project. Thankfully, you had the option of revising your pitch before the campaign actually went live. I think I came off more like "I'm so poor and I'm so desperate, please feel sorry for me and donate!" in the first pitch. :-)

 

Remember, too, that Kickstarter is not the only game in town. There are several crowd-funding sites out there now. IndieGoGo, RocketHub, ArtistShare, etc.

[Darkwing]

Yeah, there's a web-series I follow on Youtube and he's raised almost 10 grand for it but it wasn't with Kickstarter, it was someone else but I forget who