Re: #40 - the Pink Five Story

I pledged. Hooray!

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Re: #40 - the Pink Five Story

I just got an insurance payout (whoo hoo! Mom didn't need that leg!), so I contributed handsomely. Well, inoffensive-looking-ly.

Warning: I'm probably rewriting this post as you read it.

Zarban's House of Commentaries

Re: #40 - the Pink Five Story

Very happy to be in the 1st 20 backers! Hoping to contribute to the VFX too.

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Re: #40 - the Pink Five Story

I hadn't seen Pink Five until I came across this episode - great work, for sure. I guess my question really is what prompts people to want to work on fan films rather than developing your own original content?
I mean, I get that we all love Star Wars, and that's great, but at some point this is not just a tribute to Star Wars - when it's taking up years of work it becomes something that is about a love of film-making and the process.
Thanks!
Greg

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Re: #40 - the Pink Five Story

If you have to ask the question then this may not be the crowd for you wink

Extended Edition - 146 - The Rise Of Skywalker
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Re: #40 - the Pink Five Story

http://mmoreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/3b9f4cf5-burn-the-witch-burn-witch-kill-monty-python-demotivational-poster-1223816026.jpg

ZangrethorDigital.ca

Re: #40 - the Pink Five Story

TheGreg wrote:

I guess my question really is what prompts people to want to work on fan films rather than developing your own original content?

You can do both at the same time. It's not necessarily an either/or dichotomy. Everyone will have their own answer, but for me, I wouldn't have bothered if it wasn't enjoyable.

Some people play tennis for fun, some people make fan films for fun.

Oh. And the massive paychecks. That's another reason to make fan films. smile

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Re: #40 - the Pink Five Story

When it comes to fan fiction, fan films, etc, there's two components.

1) There's something about a show where you love it, but they're not quite going in the direction you wish they would. You could do it so much better.

2) Nobody is going to go out of their way to read your little amateur story, but make it about Buffy and there are whole sites where you can post it and get tons of readers.

I write stories! With words!
http://www.asstr.org/~Invid_Fan/

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Re: #40 - the Pink Five Story

It also provides an established framework and conventions, which gives new filmmakers a structure to work and learn within.

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Re: #40 - the Pink Five Story

Thanks! That makes more sense when you put it like that wink

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Re: #40 - the Pink Five Story

TheGreg wrote:

I guess my question really is what prompts people to want to work on fan films rather than developing your own original content?

In the particular case of Pink Five, Amy and I had made about fifty short videos of "original content" already - Pink Five was just another one of them.   But guess which one the internet decided to give a damn about.  smile    So once we had the beginnings of an audience, we decided to build on it.   

But at the same time we were making other projects - for example while making Return of Pink Five we won the Grand Prize in the National 48-hour Film Challenge, and that was an original film.    But Pink Five was still the big draw, so we kept going with it.

And it worked - Pink Five got me Ark, which got me Moby Dick (not a great movie, but my first feature-length credit, and that matters) which then led to me selling an original feature script, which got me into the Writer's Guild, and now I've got several projects that are "out to the town" as they say.  It's taking a while for those projects to work their way through the system, but it always does.

The reason I've decided to try this push to finish Pink Five now, is because if any of those other projects does get greenlit, I'll be completely absorbed in doing those - and god only knows when I'll have the time to ever get back to Pink Five again.   

I don't want the thing hanging over my head for the rest of my life - we're within striking distance of getting it done, and I think the ending's going to be a lot of fun.  Then the P5 team and I can get on with our lives.    Which hopefully involves working together on those new things, because the P5 videos also secretly served as an  "audition" for the entire cast and crew.  I'm happy to say that most of them passed the test.  :-)

Re: #40 - the Pink Five Story

'Cept me.

Having seen the last installment of P5, I - as a long-time fan, even before knowing Trey - was impressed and satisfied. I hope this KS goes through, because there's good stuff waiting to be finaled.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: #40 - the Pink Five Story

Trey wrote:

the P5 videos also secretly served as an  "audition" for the entire cast and crew.

... You mean we could have skipped the casting couch if I'd just learned to roto?

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Re: #40 - the Pink Five Story

All right DiF team - progress report time.  We're past the halfway point in our 30-day funding window... but not past the halfway point in actual funding.

However, there's a lot of good news here.  First of all, we're well out of the "death zone" - half of all Kickstarter projects die with nearly no pledges at all.  Statistically, just passing 30% of our goal means we're far more likely to go all the way.    Second, funding tends to pick up in the back half of Kickstarter campaigns anyway - people start to respond to the ticking clock.

But even so - we've stalled a bit in the past few days and we need to hit the gas again.   There's a direct correlation between Twitter/Facebook blasts and donations - we do the former, we see a rise in the latter.   But the thing about Twitter and Facebook posts is that if people don't see them right away, they vanish off the screen.    Or they see them and decide to check on them later, then forget.    So the name of the game is - keep doing it!   (All of MY Facebook and Twitter followers can vouch for how annoying I've been.)   

Also, Celebration VI is happening now, and we've got people there working the floor on our behalf.  And we're still working to get more writeups on blogs and news outlets, too - these things are especially good because they tend to last a bit longer than tweets, and can go into more detail.   

So anyway -  anyone who wants to help out, get out there and spread the word (again)!   Hell, even though we didn't get a lot of traction from Reddit, we still saw donations from it.   Totally worth it.   

Don't think you have to limit yourselves to Star Wars-centric zones, either.  We got huge numbers from a sound-mixing blog post, and Owen's wacko scoring of a retweet from Gun's N' Roses' guitarist is probably the biggest single pledge-generator we've had.   Who wants to try to top it?

Thanks everyone for all the help thus far... now, ready and.... go!

Re: #40 - the Pink Five Story

Trey wrote:

In the particular case of Pink Five, Amy and I had made about fifty short videos of "original content" already

Say no more. wink

/begins searching "original content" sites

Warning: I'm probably rewriting this post as you read it.

Zarban's House of Commentaries

Re: #40 - the Pink Five Story

Unfortunately, we realized too late that that kind of "original content" would have been far more profitable...

Re: #40 - the Pink Five Story

Thanks for that insight - I certainly recognize the phenomenon that you do a lot of stuff, and are really surprised when something gets recognized and you think 'really? you like THAT best?'

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Re: #40 - the Pink Five Story

Officially pimped.

And just to make it official, I'm down for VFX.

ZangrethorDigital.ca

44

Re: #40 - the Pink Five Story

Has anyone pimped Pink Five on the Twitters at high-profile Star Wars fans like, say, @simonpegg, @nickjfrost or @wilw? I don't see evidence of it, but twitter's search engine isn't the best.

Note that, between them, they have 20 times the followers of the official @starwars account, and they do actually interact with fans on Twitter all the time, so if we can catch their attention and their fancy, I'm sure there's a decent chance they'd retweet it to their (literally) millions of followers.

There are surely many others like them (are any of @badastronomer, @jerilryan, @neilgaiman or @neiltyson Star Wars fans?) that it's worth Trey (or even everyone) pinging them and asking for a RT.

(@jimcameron has more followers than @starwars too, but he doesn't seem to be doing much with the tweeting and the stuff lately.)

Even though I'm not the publicly pimping kind, I'm happy to try a couple and see what sticks.

Re: #40 - the Pink Five Story

fcw wrote:

Has anyone pimped Pink Five on the Twitters at high-profile Star Wars fans like, say, @simonpegg, @nickjfrost or @wilw? I don't see evidence of it, but twitter's search engine isn't the best..

A little bit, yeah.    But it's a darn good idea and we could do a lot more of it.  :-)

We did get a lucky hit by someone posting the kickstarter link and just adding Bonnie Burton's twitter handle in the tweet - so it wasn't even sent TO her really, but still showed up in her feed, and she retweeted it.  (She used to run the official SW blog)

Pegg, Wright, Frost, WilW, all great targets... feel free to luv-bomb them.  smile   The real jackpot target, I think, would be Grant Imahara.   Huge SW nerd, he was even involved in a SW fanfilm kickstarter project himself.     if we could get his attention enough to get a RT.... booya.

I think the best trick is to have multiple people do it at various times - then hopefully the tweet will be at the top of their inbox whenever that person happens to log on.  Or, if you see somebody like that is tweeting at that moment... fire!  smile

Re: #40 - the Pink Five Story

Per iJim's suggestion, here's a sample list of possible people to tweet at (Margarine man already took a shot at Grant Imahara, nice one!). 

I think it stands a better chance of working if it comes from random folks and NOT us asking for attention ourselves.   You might try appealing to some of these folks on a fan-to-fan level - "Hey, have you seen the Pink Five series?"   But that's up to you.   Personalize as you see fit wink   

Feel free to have at it - if we got a retweet from the GnR guitarist, anything's possible!

@grantimahara
@donttrythis - Adam Savage
@ThatKevinSmith
@DeathStarPR  - SW themed comedy twitter with 200K followers
@BadAstronomer - Phil Plait
@neilhimself  - Neil Gaiman
@GeorgeTakei
@edgarwright
@simonpegg
@nickjfrost
@wilw  - Wil Wheaton
@io9 - major sci-fi news site
@kyle_newman - director of Fanboys
@feliciaday
@pattonoswalt
@NathanFillion - because why the hell not?

Re: #40 - the Pink Five Story

Have you guys tried to hit up the Tumblr community yet?  Putting a promo image and the link into the SW tracked tags may help bring in some more cash.

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Re: #40 - the Pink Five Story

Well, _I_ haven't, because I've never used Tumblr and don't know what promo images and tracked tags are...   

But is that something someone else could do?  wink

Re: #40 - the Pink Five Story

Oh, Trey, you're so out of touch! On Tumblr, you tag your posts (like a hash tag on Twitter). People track tags for things they're interested in, like shows or characters or people.

I only have a few hundred followers, but I'd be happy to start promoting the project there. Anyone else have a blog and interest in helping?

Last edited by Allison (2012-08-25 06:38:43)

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Re: #40 - the Pink Five Story

Ok, I thought Tumblr was a picture thing.  Or is that Flickr?    Whatvr.   Social networking is best left to social people, of which I am not one.  smile

But be my guest - run, fly, be free with your Tumblr activities!   I certainly won't tell you NOT to try it.  smile