Day 2

sort of

At the end of this post I will be listing everyone who has backed me thus far and believe me when I say that I am extremely grateful to all of you. As I'm typing this I'm at 31 backers and $2,604! how crazy is that! it's an amazing amount in just over 24 hours and I still have so far to go. Like a rocket I have burned out my first set of engines or whatever... (do they still do that?) and I'm hoping they got me far enough that I can burn steadily from here on out.

[don't judge me for my lack of accurate rocket knowledge]

3, 2, 1, LAUNCH
bbbbrrrctrctrffff (rocket blastoff noise)

I started off the morning tweeting a lot which included talking directly with @hybridvigorfilm. He was nice enough to give me networking/marketing advice even though I couldn't donate the amount specified for the marketing package.

I launched my campaign and already have 8 backers, totaling $265 which is great!

the campaign link is http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2050552348/a-greater-binghamton-area

I've been networking for hours now spreading my link and informing people about my documentary. Twitter has become an essential source of information/communication and I have amazing friends who have been helping me spread the word. I am a lucky man.

More to come. this next few days will be turbulent
now I need to figure out how to effectively use the Updates function on KickStarter.

Hopefully I can reach the staff pics or popular this week section sometime. that would be awesome.

Spread the word, folks!

-KEvin

The Wait Is Over
and in a few days we will approve or deny your project


Woohoo! Amazon Payments account has been verified! now KickStarter says I should submit my project and they'll approve or deny me within a few days.... Wait, what? Oh My GOD I am so tired of waiting for approval before I can start fundraising! <so frustrating>

In other news, I showed up an hour early to my interview with Caroline Quidort and it went swimmingly. She was very helpful and also passionate about my subject matter. she gave me people to contact about different things and helped me brainstorm and gave me basically really great information. Although I have begun to realize that with each new good piece of information my project becomes ... wider. so now I have more information to sift through for THE prime nuggets of knowledge for storytelling.

Anyway, my video is done I just have to figure out how to export it from FCP7 so it is less than 500mb but also good quality... possible?

So yeah. today went well and the countdown is on to the actual launch of my campaign. I am so worried I just haven't marketed effectively through social media and all that.

Idk how @HybridVigorFilm does it, man. such hype around something so vague!

more updates tomorrow.

-Kevin

Good News and Hiccoughs

Hicchough is spelled weird

I went to the bank first thing this morning and they couldn't help me access online banking but they did give me a printout of recent transactions which I then used to verify my checking account with Amazon Payments. WOOHOO!
But... now Amazon Payments for some reason needs to communicate with KickStarter or something which could take 7 days. it shouldn't take 7 days I'm sure it could realistically take 5 minutes, but if it's not done by the time I'm done with my interview tomorrow I'll call Amazon.

Oh Yeah, I'm meeting with Caroline Quidort tomorrow afternoon. She is the "Acting Director of Planning, Housing, and Community Development at City of Binghamton". Tonight and tomorrow morning I have to craft up some questions for her. I've been so caught up in preparing my KickStarter campaign that I almost forgot about this interview. Seems ironic, right? I have been focusing so much on getting funds for my project I've forgotten about the project itself, isn't that more important? I have a feeling I might encounter this distraction more than once in my lifetime but hopefully, armed with this realization, I will be able to recognize another possession-in-progress before it's too late.

• So this is where I'm at:
• Interview tomorrow
• Finish KickStarter video tonight
• Launch campaign as ASAP
• curate curate curate

After I'm done with this fundraising process I'll get to start focusing on my actual documentary again 100%

I traveled around with Rosanne Grigoli today and found a new picture for my KickStarter thumbnail picture which is actually perfect:

This is a statue in front of Binghamton City Hall, created by Italian Sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro, and it is exactly what I want to get at with this documentary.

Here's his Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnaldo_Pomodoro

Anyway, yeah. time to get back to editing. I'm having trouble making it informative AND watchable. I cut two minutes out of it today which is good but also a sign I might just be butchering it because I know what the video is supposed to be saying so I fill in blanks with my brain.

Goodnight all.

-Kevin

Day of Shooting

all out of bullets

My good friend Kaitlin Mooney drove around with me today trying to find strangers in the community who were willing to let me talk at them about my project for my KickStarter video. As it turns out, nothing is open on Sunday, so we ended up finding someone Kaitlin knew at Cyber Cafe West, and we were privileged enough to have the owner of the Water Street Brewery sit down with us, but after that it was difficult to find anyone who wasn't camera shy, so I ended up cheating and talking with my friend Quan as my third person. I've been editing that together and have just finished recording myself filling in the blanks.

Hopefully the video turns out well, but I've been working on it for ten hours today so I'm going to just import and finish my rough-cut before bed.

Tomorrow hopefully the bank will be up and running again so they can help me verify my Amazon Payments account then I just need to touch up my campaign description then 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, LAUNCH!

I'm getting nervous, guys!


Things I've learned today:

• Twitter can actually be very useful and strangely networkable. I started following some production companies and I retweeted a few things and suddenly all sorts of documentary related Tweeters have started following me.
• I can strap my Tripod to my bike pretty easily and it looks totally Badass.
• Few people are ok talking to a stranger with a camera.
• I was right, despite what a lot of people on the internet told me, gear quality does matter. Because my gear is so legitimate, people take me more seriously than they do when I don't have my gear set up yet.
• "Mic out" on the Beachtek is not where the headphones go. :p
• Organization is key, Determination is another key, and a smile is a lock pick

Alrighty, time to finish my rough cut and go to bed. today is possibly a very big day for me.

Wish me luck, Dear Readers

-Kevin