$6,101 : 120
Today was a weird day. After hearing about the events in Aurora, Colorado the last thing I wanted to do was self-promote my project. Granted it’s a Friday and Friday’s are usually big days, but it just felt wrong, or cheap to me. Granted I tweeted a bit about it, and we have gained 8 more backers today bringing us up to 120 as of this writing (many thanks again to all of you) but today is another stark reminder of how random and tragic life can truly be. I wonder how many people in that theatre, or even worse some of the dead held off on pursuing something they really wanted in the hopes that someday they would get to it. “Someday” is guaranteed to know one. If you’ve seen Dead Poets Societyand I’m sure you have – the one truism you need to take away from that movie is Carpe Diem. Seize the Day. Make your lives extraordinary.
It’s definitely something to keep in mind while running one of these campaigns. I think my mind switches from “you have no chance” to “you might make this” to “we’re definitely gonna make it’ about twenty times per day. By simple math, we’re way behind. But when I see the amount of people who tweet about it, like us, talk about it – I’m ever hopeful because the word is getting out there and we’re building an audience. $100,000 is a massive amount to try and raise especially with small donations like we’ve been getting. But with each backer, however small their pledge we add a new ambassador to the project.
Tomorrow starts the first weekend since the campaign launched and I’m assuming a major slow down. We didn’t have many new backers today, I think 9 new ones, but we raised around $700 or so. I’m guessing Saturdays and Sundays will be…well dead:
We created a new reward at the $75 level as I mentioned last night. This reward includes everything at the $50 level (name in credits, DVD, HD download) but we also create a personalized eye chart for you as a poster. You can check out the personalized posters on our Facebook page to get an idea of what we mean.
Another cool thing today, we were approached by a business interested in our Product Placement reward. This particular business sells T-shirts and inquired about having our characters wear them. This is exactly what we were going for with the Product Placement reward. I know many film makers would ge aghast at this, but we gotta raise the money somehow. I think this might be our next strategy: To reach out to actual businesses in Chicago to see what their level of interest is in placing products. Like I’ve mentioned many times, our backer count is pretty good, but our average pledge amount is on the low side. So getting a few more $1500 pledges in the mix would really help.
So if you know anyone who runs a business and is interested in placing their products in a cool indie movie. Let us know!
Day Six starts in an hour. I’ll be sleeping in and watching Chris Hayes in the A.M.
Make sure to stop for a minute today and think about your family and loved ones and think about the poor souls who just wanted to watch a cool movie on opening night and won’t have the chance to ever do that again. Senseless violence is a damn shame.
4 of a Kind- The Kickstarter Campaign 
You may find Saturday or Sunday will surprise you. On my campaign, one of those days (never both) managed quite a nice spike in pledges. You may be surprised, fingers crossed.
I remember approaching PalmerCash.com five years ago for a dozen women’s t-shirts that our main character would wear in exchange for a “wardrobe furnished by” credit. I don’t know any modern filmmakers who would find such things distasteful. So you’re in good company. 🙂 We’re all willing to hustle.
Good luck!
Perhaps the one who don’t need to hustle as much might find it distasteful 🙂 I’ve been surprised by just about everything so far in this campaign. It’s still somewhat amazing when a complete stranger gives you $100.00.
Thanks for reading Zak.