I’d really like to thank those of you who are on my side of this weird situation, including Banquet Bear, Merneith, Cartooniverse, Frazzled, runningdude, and bobkitty, and all those who have offered advice on my precarious living situation.
I am acting on the advice, I will sort my rent out (partially, I expect, but better than nothing) and seek Government Assistance. I have a friend who may be able to help out somehow, perhaps a place to stay or to cover the other half of the rent, though he’s away at the moment.
I have regained some hope, and that is a good first step, I think.
However, if his goal is to entice people to support him, and those people are saying maybe there was a better way to explain himself, he’d be silly to ignore it. And further, I at least am not saying he was “wrong”, but perhaps could have simply done a better job of explaining things. You may disagree with it because you understand what he was saying from the get go. If a bunch of people didn’t really get it the same way, he can either dismiss them or learn to reach those potential donors, too.
Again, in reading my post I never denied he stated it. In fact I was the first to point out he did. What surprised me was that “living expenses” (or indirect costs) was listed as last of a list of other items but turned out to be the most significant and probably only item he was actually seeking funding for. By his own admission. Again I was surprised that most of the money was not going to direct costs, because in my experience that what I’ve seen before and there was little indication to the contrary. To say that those few words in the original thread told the story is simply oversimplifying the issue.
Again, as my said, it was an issue of proportion. You seem to want to turn this into a black and white issue: Were the donors naive or was the OP a fraud. I’m saying there’s tons of room in the middle, where he might learn to phrase things more clearly to the people who are not familiar with the process (not a detailed accounting but a simple explanation would do) and people who donate can be excited about supporting the artist.
As someone listed in an earlier post, there can be numerous ways an artist could be supporting himself other than using 100% of the donated money, so it’s not de facto. Is the OP a scammer, I certainly don’t think so. Could it have been done better? Yeah. That doesn’t make me stupid or clueless, either.
I said everything I need to. I actually donated to the guy and put money where my mouth is in support of him. I would think my feelings about it would be worth a little something. I truly hope it works out for him and he’s welcome to the money. I would like him to learn a bit so he can be successful in the future.
Y’know I was the one who in the third post pointed out that you did state living expenses were on the table, in support of you. Plus I actually gave you money the first time around. But because I’m trying to point out how someone outside of the artistic world might interpret your actions and how it could make a donor feel uncomfortable if it isn’t clearly laid out, somehow that’s not on your side.
If you want to reach people to support you, maybe it’s actually being on your side to show you how it’s coming across.
Anyway, as I said before I wish you the best of luck and hope it works out. I hope you take some responses to heart, even if they do have constructive criticism as part of them.
I guess my question is, if you’re looking for living expenses to be covered like you were (I feel you were upfront on this and have no issue with that aspect), then how long we’re you expecting it to take to make this film? If your expenses are covered, then the film should be your full-time day job. With that amount of time focused on the project, I can’t imagine it taking more than a few weeks to a month at most. Maybe two months? Feature films don’t even take that long to make. What I’m saying is, I can understand you looking for living expenses to be covered while you work 100% on this project - but how long are you expecting that to take? And how did you plan on covering expenses once you were done with the project?
…its not a donation. If you go to a bookstore and hand over twenty dollars for a book: is that a donation? If you go to a bands self-hosted website and spend thirty dollars on a CD do you get the vapours when you find out the band spent a dollar of that money on postage and a CD and the rest on booze?
Crowdfunding is simply paying for a product in advance. Spend money and you get something in return. It isn’t charity. If you can’t get your head around that simple concept than yeah, you are going to feel ripped off.
Not quite that simple and strict commerce exchange, because It’s actually in between a purchase and a donation. Unlike Kickstarter, if he never finishes the movie and I never get my perk, he still keeps the money. So this has an element of faith that the person I’m funding will finish the job.
Because it’s not about sides (or recognition). It isn’t black and white. My side your side. For or against. It’s a learning experience and it’s worth hearing from people who support you and from people who are not as happy.
That’s been my point all along- that there is room for multiple valid points of view and for you to grow and for people like me who are strident supporters of the arts, but not of the art world, to learn something too.
I’m talking about production, as I assume there is already a script for this thing. Plenty of movies have been shot in just a few weeks, or even days. Regardless, I’m still curious how long GL planned for this to take, even if the answer is two years.
…I wasn’t claiming “you” felt ripped off: it was a generic “you” to all the other people in the thread that felt ripped off.
From the Terms and Conditions:
“To fulfill all Perks and to respond promptly to all questions and comments regarding Perks. If you are unable to fulfill a Perk, you will work with the Contributor(s) to reach a mutually satisfactory resolution which may include, without limitation, issuing a refund promptly.”
GuanoLad can’t just keep the money. It isn’t a donation.
I have no dog in this fight, but I’ve been reading this thread with interest. It appears as though GuanoLad has learned a valuable lesson in public relations.
I think the lesson for those that donated to him and are now upset is this: Don’t throw money at strangers on the internet and then get miffed when they don’t spend it like you expected them to. You’re not dealing with a well-oiled machine like Amazon or iTunes, with well-defined products and transactions and customer-service reps and online ratings/reviews. You’re giving money to an individual that you don’t really know and who (not talking about GuanoLad here, but people on the internet in general) may even purposely mislead you about their intentions, just to get some money from you. A shocking idea, I’m sure.
This to me sounded like he could keep the money if he didn’t finish the goal (making the film). Perhaps he meant goal in another way (funding target, perhaps?). His assertion to provide the perk sounded like a personal commitment, not a contractual agreement.
I have answered most of these questions already. I anticipate six weeks of finishing up time, but I’ve been wrong before, it’s so hard to anticipate how long these things take. This has not been my full-time project, it is a hobby. Some here are suggesting I should be searching for a job full-time, while others seem to think I should be working on the film full-time. In truth it’s been somewhere in between, though mostly in the evenings.
Feature films take about two or three years from start of project to the release date, with 500 people working full time variously throughout. This is me, doing every single post-production element myself.
[ul]
[li]Write the script[/li][li]Organise the shoot day[/li][li]Fund the film, including costumes, props, hair and makeup, studio hire, sundry equipment like sound recording (cameras, lights, and dolly my friends already owned), and catering. The cast and most of the crew worked for free, not including wardrobe and hair[/li][li]Direct the film, on a greenscreen. It took one day[/li][li]Mux the audio to the video clips[/li][li]Edit the film, which took about two weeks off and on, with constant adjustment since[/li][li]Make 3D models of the airship, the building exterior, the building interior, and the vortex chamber. Each of those took weeks of work[/li][li]Texture the models, that also took weeks of work, a lot longer than I had anticipated[/li][li]Animate and render the backgrounds. This takes ages, because there are a lot of reflections which takes a huge amount of Graphics CPU power. Some scenes were two hours per frame (I think one scene was four hours per frame) and most shots had at least 50-120 frames. That’s days of rendering time per shot, not including re-renders to fix mistakes or changes[/li][li]Key out the greenscreen on every single shot, which is tricky enough but really difficult on characters with messy hair[/li][li]Compositing. There are around 90 shots in the film, each of which use multiple elements like smoke and lens flares and vignettes and electricity bolts and cloudscapes in motion. It is painstaking work that has taken the majority of the time[/li][li]Sound effects. This is relatively new for me. We have a guy who has done the sound for our other films (I didn’t direct those, I was just miscellaneous crew) but I don’t think his skills are up to scratch, so I have taken on this job myself. It’s what will take most of my time as I finish up now, maybe three or four weeks to go[/li][li]Colour grade. This is a process I have been half-doing on the way, because it’s a tricky thing to get right. It’s adjusting the colour on every shot so that it has a consistent look and style[/li][li]Music. I will be handing over the finished edit after the sound effects are done to a friend who is talented with Cubase, but I will need to sit with him to get it right[/li][li]Perks fulfilment. Once it’s done I can make the posters and DVDs, etc, to send through to everyone. I don’t know how long or expensive that will be[/li][/ul]
As you can see, for one person to do all those things to a competent level, some being a very eye-opening learning experience, it takes a lot of effort, talent, skill, and, most importantly, time, and that is what you are paying for. The fact that I subsequently use the money to pay for rent and food (only for the last couple of months of the project) is really none of your concern.
Let me say up front that I’m on your side in this. I understand how you pitched your project and think you did what was necessary to cover the basis on how the money breakdown would go. But all that said, here’s what I don’t get: if you don’t think anyone needed to know the fine details of how you spent their money, why on earth did you tell everyone about this? Or if you just had to to get some advice, why wouldn’t you lie your fool head off about how your project was going and that everyone’s contributions were still secure in the way they expected them to be? Because if that had been me, and I felt like the above quote, there’d be no way I’d open myself up to this and garner ire, lose potential possible revenue and help, or bad press, etc. for my work. The whole thing just makes no sense in light of how you feel.
Yes, that is exactly what I meant. I will fulfil the perks. Yes, it is a personal commitment, but it’s an obligation I made when I signed up to Indiegogo, and it’s also the right thing to do. I did not go into this funding project, nor the film project, naively. I did start this thread naively, though.
…if you had been following along you would be well aware that there is not only a script, but filming is already complete.
The last movie I made took a minute. It was a very exciting cell phone video of my dad eating dinner. But if you had been following along you would well know that GuanoLad 's movie had already been shot: so what you have just said is irrelevant.
You can’t imagine this taking more than a few weeks to complete. “Maybe two months? Feature films don’t even take that long to make.” Lord of the Rings was in post-production for a year. I’d be surprised that any effects heavy feature film (and GuanoLad’s movie is extremely effects heavy) spent less than two months in post. Heck, even thewiki on post production states “Typically, the post-production phase of creating a film takes longer than the actual shooting of the film, and can take several months to complete because it includes the complete editing, color correction and the addition of music and sound.” So if you have any examples of feature films out there that take less then two months to go through post production, would love to see them.
As to your second point: a time frame is reasonable, and would be one of the questions a potential contributor should be able to get an answer to.
Because to me it seemed so straightforward and clear that I didn’t anticipate any troubles, let alone this unfathomably weird problem. I am completely dumbfounded and mystified that even after all this explanation they still aren’t happy. I have hidden nothing, and yet am being accused of hiding things. I have not misled, they have misinterpreted, and yet apparently that’s my fault. Still some people are saying they want more transparency, while others are saying I should’ve said nothing.