Kickstarting a Steampunk Webseries

The KickStarter page for “The Lazarus Machine” is now live!

And so begins our drive to build an audience for the project big enough to get it made. Crowdfunding is a wonderfully democratic method of funding, and it means there are no gatekeepers, no one person holding the purse strings and making a call on whether it is worth producing. If enough people want to see it, we can proceed. Simple as that.

The challenge now is making enough people aware of it’s existence so they can make that judgement. So if you’re reading this, please take a moment to let your social networks know about our little webseries. Some of your friends may be into steampunk, or independent film. Some might just like great actors like Timothy West and Sophie Aldred. Some might be keen on unusual music – and the bands contributing to The Lazarus Machine are as varied as they come:

retro-goth Vernian Process

cellist/vocalist Unwoman

anachro-punks The Men Who Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing

time-travelling raconteurs The Cog Is Dead

crazed chap-hopper Professor Elemental

and the indescribable The Tiger Lillies!

And some of your friends might just like something a bit different 🙂

Whatever the case, please let them know about us so they can decide whether they want to see it for themselves. Thank you!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adaddinsane/the-lazarus-machine

Social Networking with Scott Kirsner

I attended a seminar on Wednesday with Scott Kirsner, organised by North West Vision and Media (they should have a video of the event on their site shortly). He made a great presentation summarizing his book “Fans, Friends and Followers” with example YouTube videos and websites, and we had an interesting Q&A session afterwards.

I came away energised and (perhaps mistakenly) confident that I can use the internet to fund and distribute my work. Fortunately, Steve Turnbull mailed me an early draft of our new web serial “Winter” the night before, so I had something concrete to visualize applying these promotional techniques to. The key is to start early, and be patient – it takes time to build an audience. Let the promotion begin…

CrowdSourcing

Ted Hope of TrulyFreeFilm has an interesting post on crowdsourcing for film funding – notably the idea that nowadays filmmakers should demonstrate they can build an audience before seeking funding, and have a marketing strategy and ecommerce solutions in place. He makes a good point – many filmmakers see funding as merely an obstacle to getting their film made and don’t have any expectation of recovering it – and will often blame this on the state of the market and latterly the ecomony. But ultimately, if you don’t plan how to make your film profitable, then it’s probably just a vanity project. So why would anyone give you money to make it?

This is particularly applicable to my latest project, which like Steve, I’ll call “Winter”. The crowdsourcing, that is – not the vanity project…