Well, I’m not sure what’s happening with our Kickstarter. We’re stuck at 3% with 22 backers. I don’t know if that’s because I’ve overestimated how many people are supporting us or if it’s because you’re disappointed with the results. Could even be I’m just talking to myself and a bunch of web crawlers here, and only imagine that anyone is following this. It could be that even our closer followers aren’t seeing all of these posts, with all the changes that have been happening in the social media sphere. There are so many things acting to lock you into a digital bubble.
Kickstarter Link: http://kck.st/1bPRPwb
Would Like to Hear from You
Regrettably I never got adequate spam-filtering tech working on this site, which is why I still don’t have any kind of comments feature or forum here on our site. Of course, it is possible to offer feedback through our pages on Facebook, Google+, or Diaspora. Or you can just email me personally at “digitante at gmail dot com”.
I’d actually love to hear from some of you who are reading this — just to know that you’re really out there. Also, serious suggestions are welcome.
I’ve been wanting to take the time to actually understand the software here and make the necessary upgrades, but I’ve been prioritizing the directing and producing tasks — I didn’t really want to spend a whole lot of my time this year on IT tasks. Alternatively, it would be great to hear from someone who knows Zope/Plone very well who might be able to help me figure out exactly what packages I need to install to get these features.
And unfortunately, this means I’m kind of shouting into the void here, or that’s what it feels like. I’m not able to see what your reactions are.
2013 Production Kickstarter
We had a decent first day on the 20th, with 16 people backing us fairly quickly. However it’s starting to look like maybe that’s entirety of our fan base at this point. I had been thinking it was closer to 100. I love you folks who are behind us on this, and I really feel great about the enthusiastic things some of you have said to me, but it’s looking like there’s just not enough of us.
I know that a lot of someones (or perhaps some-things) are subscribed to this RSS feed. The RSS link is the highest traffic URL on this site, averaging well over 1000 hits a day. But maybe those are just bots of some kind, with no one actually reading them? I know that Google Reader was shut down recently, so maybe those feeds aren’t really going anywhere now?
There are also some other communication blocks building up. Facebook made major changes to their “Page” policy. It’s no longer the case that just “liking” a page means you get their updates — apparently this is an anti-feature so they can now sell you advertising. I have NOT been playing along with that. And they’ve always used some crazy selection algorithm for deciding what are “top strories” and they always reset your viewing preferences to “top stories” instead of “most recent” (the latter should let you see everything, but the former only shows you the posts of the most active posters in your friend circle — this is actually exactly the opposite of the way I feel this thing should work).
Google of course, has turned the corner somewhere along the power-mad corporate crazy train, and is well on their way to becoming the new Microsoft. So Google+ has much the same problems. However, it does have the “Communities” feature, and I’ve made sure to post our trailer video on what seem to be relevant community pages: “Sci-Fi”, “Science Ficton”, “Short Animated Films”, “Open Content Works”, “Creative Commons”, “Free Culture”, “Blender”, and so on.
Diaspora is better about those things, but it’s a much smaller community and not necessarily the best place to find backers for a Kickstarter. It’s also a little more hassle to post links there, but I have been making sure all of our updates are mirrored there.
In fact, barring pauses for sleeping and eating, I’ve pretty much been writing updates and posting non-stop since the beginning of the Kickstarter. I’m going to have to lay off a bit or go insane at this point.
I also did some conventional advertising via Project Wonderful ads on web comics. I don’t think that was too awfully productive (though I think we did get one backer that way). I think it’s useful to have gotten our name our there, even if it was brief (I spent just $20 on this). I don’t really regret it though — putting money into the web comic world seems like a fair social positive to me.
I’ve heard it’s a mistake to advertise to a broader audience too early, and I’ve held off a bit on sending out press releases to more major blogging channels. I had hoped we’d get to 5% – 10% before doing that, because you need a little more show of confidence to attract those backers. With just 3% and that little tiny green bar, it’s not a strong encouragement for new people to support us.
We Need This
As I posted before, I really don’t know how we could possibly continue this project if we don’t get some support on this. I’m not saying that to scold anybody, I’m just thinking about some hard financial facts that I’m going to have to face if this falls through. I don’t really think I can afford to keep working these kind of hours on this. I’ll have to prioritize work that makes some money, and then I’ll have to choose between dragging “Lunatics!” production out into the indefinite horizon where open projects go to die, or just cutting it off quickly and mercifully.
And I don’t think I’m the only one in that situation. Last year we could do some work without any pay — the actors, after all, were only volunteering for a Saturday meeting and some home-recording time. Modeling and animating, though, are pretty intensive and time-consuming jobs, even if the requirements are fairly mild. I don’t really feel right about asking people to put in crazy hours like that with no pay.
If we had a credible alternative fund-raising plan, we could try that, but so far, I have not thought of one.
Not Sure What’s Wrong
Last year, when our Kickstarter went so poorly, I wasn’t shocked. I could point to a dozen serious things wrong with that Kickstarter, starting with the absence of the teaser trailer and the rather shoddy editing and sound quality on the pitch video. It was pretty easy to rationalize that as the result of just not being ready yet. This year, however, everything is pretty much as I planned — if people are turning away, I think they must have much more substantive problems with our project. Maybe it turns out that “Lunatics!” is not what they expected, and they just don’t really like it after all? Or maybe it’s because the trailer is a little unconventional?
The hyperreal directing style of the trailer is of course not the style the pilot will be in, but it seems liked a cool effect to try out, and it went with the PoV shot, which kept the modeling requirements minimal. It is of course a challenge to produce a trailer of any kind before you’ve made the film it’s a trailer for. But maybe it’s sending a wrong message about the tone of “Lunatics!” as a result?
Or it might be that the number of people watching it — just a couple hundred — is simply too small.
Or maybe people are waiting for payday, not realizing that it really doesn’t matter, because nothing will post to your bank account until August 20th (end of the campaign) — and then only if we make it, of course.
I cannot of course contribute to the campaign myself — even if I had the desire to and the bank balance to back it up, the credit card processors have rules against that. I’m not sure what kind of fraud that would be, but they don’t like it, so they don’t allow it. The closest I could probably get is to promise kickbacks to my Mom — but sshh, don’t tell anyone I said that! In any case, that would just waste money.
Not Over Yet!
We’re not beat yet, though. Regardless of our status, I’m going to start sending out press releases tomorrow. We’re also going to go ahead and start mixing the “audiodrama” version of “Earth”. There has been some comment that “Earth” is really a stronger script, and I certainly think it is funnier. Maybe having that out there will be a big pull. I think I’m going to try to find out.
Unlike last year, I will NOT be canceling this Kickstarter. I’m going to ride it right to the end, even if we just sit at 3% until
then. However, I would greatly appreciate anything you can do to spread the word about the project among your own friends and colleagues. Maybe we can get that 10% and start turning things around? There’s always the possibility that something will hit just the right button, or that some hugely-popular site will pick us up — and then “a miracle happens” and we get our funding.
Or, if you folks think there’s something missing or wrong with our presentation, maybe you could send me an email at “digitante at gmail dot com” and let me know what you think. I don’t think I’m going to get swamped with email for asking for that, so go ahead and hit me up with your ideas. Or scorn. Whatever!
