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

First Steps to World Domination

So, it’s been a while. Sometimes I get very busy at work, so not a lot of filmmaking happens. But this weekend writer Steve and I met for a discussion of the Winter project and set some short-term goals, so it feels like things are moving again.

The chief difficulty with a greenscreen project is that it requires vastly more preproduction than a conventional shoot – although actual production is logistically simpler. Every virtual set needs to be concepted, blocked out, lit and tested in a rough cut beforehand. The actual shoot will be entirely in one room with very careful lighting changes, and focused on helping the actors feel comfortable performing in a green void. I’m inclined to shoot chronologically on this project because the whole story will feel so much more coherent to the cast that way.

But to get that far, we require the application of considerable artistic talent, for an unreasonable length of time. It’s hard enough to find collaborators who can generously spare a weekend for shooting, let alone weeks of late nights hunched over a computer. The guerilla filmmaking model doesn’t really work for what we’re trying to do.

Fortunately, it’s not a roadblock – just an uphill struggle. We have a plan for building a pool of committed talent, and as Steve refines the script I’m going to refine the list of assets we require – replacing some full 3D sets with digital mattes, and re-using assets wherever possible.

Step one is to kick things off with a signature image – our first item of pitch material. This will be our best tool (other than our winning personalities) to attract talent and investment. I’ll let you know how that goes.

There’s also the small but critical detail of coming up with a name for our alternative steampunk universe, which I suspect will be by far the hardest task…suggestions welcome!

Teaser details for “Winter”

Scriptwriter extraordinaire Steve Turnbull has announced details of our latest project on his blog, adaddinsane. This is the flagship project in our shared story-world, which is very exciting because the setting Steve has created is far too rich to fully explore in one short serial.

The words “epic” and “independent” are strange bedfellows, but I think we have the right mix of skills to pull it off. I’m particularly impressed with the script – it’s technically draft 2, but in practice it’s a complete rewrite, bringing the core storyline into our shared world. Somehow Steve has managed to fix all the issues various readers had with draft one, AND throw in a host of additional layers of story.

Head on over to his blog for some tantalising hints about the story – we’ll reveal more details once pre-production starts in earnest…

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…

Planning ahead

So, here’s my current plans for 2010 – outside work, at least. I’ll post about my TT projects when they’re announced.

• Write making-of posts for the rest of my films. I’m doing them in chronological order, and the more recent ones are bigger projects and fresher in my memory – which means the posts take much longer to write.

• Cut a trailer for Monsters to enter in the inaugural Trailer Festival. Ironically, this was our original plan, until I persuaded everyone that the mini-pilot format would be a better use of the budget. The ideal trailer would have more characters, more locations and more VFX, which takes money (and/or big favours). So I’m going to try some experimental editing…

• “Winter”! This is a brand new script by Steve Turnbull, written specifically as a web serial. It’ll be the most ambitious project I’ve worked on – the biggest new challenges for me are directing action and doing our own publicity. Lots to plan, and we’ll be keeping a production diary too. This is the focus of the year.

• I’m working on a feature script of my own, which is still an incomplete outline. I’d like to get a few drafts done within the year if I can, mostly to prove to myself that I can write a feature.

Should be a hectic but rewarding year!

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…