Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Kickstarts & Pickups at Year's End

Has it been a month since my last post? I guess we've had a lot going on...

The final tally on our Kickstarter campaign was beyond our wildest dreams. After surpassing the initial $3K funding goal, the pledges kept rolling in to the tune of $6360 (for the statistically inclined who want a bit of quantitative analysis in their blog-reading, that's an
achievement of 212%). Our deepest, most humble thanks to our 73 backers, and everyone who helped us spread the word. Which was necessary, because we're speechless.

For those backers who are awaiting thank-you gifts, the first batch is in the mail. For folks who have official Now, Forager t-shirts coming their way, these have been custom-ordered.
I hope to have all the gifts shipped out by the first week of January--thanks for your patience.

Also, we will have a
few extra shirts (all cotton, dark gray with black screenprinting) in various sizes plus cloth shopping bags left over--all featuring our wood-cut morel logo. Shoot me an email if you're interested in making a direct swag purchase in support of the film.

Though the holidays have been creeping up on us, we've stayed pretty darned busy with NF-related business. We shot a day of pickups right before Thanksgiving (when I posted this on Facebook, friends from my hometown in Oregon reminded me that "shooting pickups" has a more literal meaning involving firearms, rusty trucks, and abandoned quarries). We also submitted two lengthy applications for grants to raise some more budget for post-production, and took a meeting for some in-kind post resources. All good stuff.

Julia has also been getting the editing process under way with the help of Assistant Editor, Alec Beard. The raw footage has all been transcoded, the audio synced, and scene assemblies are under way.

The last big item on our plate for 2010 will be a couple last days of production--shooting our winter exterior scenes. Now, Forager takes place over the course of a year--the only way to show this believably is to actually shoot in different seasons. While this sucks in terms of scheduling, continuity, and production momentum, it's really our only choice to make a micro-budget feature with ambitious production value. We couldn't do it without a cast and crew who were committed to the project. (Thanks again guys.)

I'll hopefully post one last production report before 2011 comes a-calling. And I think I'll have some very good post-production news to announce shortly, once it all becomes official. Stay tuned...