Dr. Bonesaw - a fun horror feature financed by YOU

dougspice

dougspice

Veteran
"Dr. Bonesaw" is the first horror feature that will be produced by the movie villain's victims (that's you guys!). It's Grey's Anatomy with a serial murderer on the loose. As a sexy and promiscuous young medical staff begin falling victim to Bonesaw's blade, the body count will include plenty of great deaths throughout the hospital, and those victims will be played by Kickstarters. The movie will be 90 minutes of gross-you-out gore, golden one-liners and a hot murderous maniac with a bonesaw hand, and we want you to be more than just someone who gives us money - we want you to be part of the movie.

We're trying something a little new to get some of our next projects off the ground here at Lead Balloon. Dr. Bonesaw will be primarily funded by third party supporters who want to support the film, the genre, or even jumpstart their own careers or hobbies with a moment in the limelight. So far our supporters include musicians, actors, horror fans, and other filmmakers who just want to see this concept succeed.

Look for more updates here as we get closer to our fundraising goals, release behind-the-scenes materials, and come up with more options for interacting with fans and supporters. Obviously there's no guarantee that we'll succeed, but it's definitely going to be a learning experience either way.


http://www.drbonesaw.com/

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1226015747/dr-bonesaw-a-crazy-and-fun-horror-feature


If you've got questions, I'm happy to try to answer them. If you've got suggestions of what else we could be doing or what we could be doing better, I'd love to hear them! We're playing it by ear based on our experiences so far, but obviously there's a hundred ways to skin a cat...
 
"No, we’re talking about a full-out, balls-to-the-wall murder frenzy, with you as the victim! All we need is, ahem, your money."

LOL, I love the concept. Where is this shooting?

-Nate
 
Understandable, but -- if you could shoot it with Terry Lasater in Oklahoma, the state would give you 35% of the budget back; in Michigan it'd be 40%. Not saying that it's practical for your shoot, but something to consider for indies who are stretching to raise funds -- the state incentives are getting pretty sweet.

Oklahoma and Michigan are most interesting because they have a $50,000 minimum. Other states (like Louisiana, New Mexico, etc) require more like $300k budgets, but OK and MI are as low as fifty grand. On a $63k budget, that means you'd need to raise about $41,000 cash; the state would cover the rest. (well, sort of; you'd have to pay it first and then the state will refund it, but that's got to be one of the easiest loans in the world to get...)
 
Oh, believe me, I've looked into all kinds of incentives and intend to use them on other future productions. But in this case I don't think it would be practical to do a whole company move to another state. Our base of support is here and on a shoot like this (where we're probably not going to be able to shoot it all consecutively) that's worth a lot in terms of raw dollars.

On the other hand, if Ye Olde Gross Pointe Inn wants to sponsor our movie and give us 10 rooms for 30 days for free, we'd certainly be having that conversation. However, I'm not the one making final decisions on this project.
 
Hey Doug, how's it going with this? I looked at your kickstarter page and saw where you were with donations. Curious how many of them are from absolute strangers, vs how many from people you know?
 
Hey Mark, well, things have been slow this past week since we've been prepping for another shoot and haven't had much time to get the word out, but overall I'd say things are going pretty well. We're over 25% funded, and while most of the pledgers were not strangers, a lot of the money is! We had a complete stranger pledge at the $7000 level, the highest one listed, and two others at the $500 and $1000 level. That's off the top of my head, but I think that's correct.

I will say, though, that people should definitely not view Kickstarter or Fundable or anything like it as any kind of magical money tree. You don't just put up a project and wait for the checks to come rolling in. It takes a lot of effort to continuously make people aware of your project and why they might want to help out, to answer people's questions, to try to get the project out to the press, and so on. It's certainly not easy, but I do think it could be a viable alternative for those who (like us) don't know many people who are wealthy.

I guess we'll see if we get that other 75%. We have more plans for the coming weeks to drive more traffic, and we're continuously trying to get more exposure. We made the rounds of a lot of local NBC affiliates (first here in L.A., then Philadelphia, Boston, and a whole slew of other cities) and we need to keep that kind of momentum up.
 
TRULY UNIQUE APPROACH AND A HELL OF A LOT OF WORK -LIKE YOU SAID! best of luck and I find the approach to financing refreshing...
Great teaser as well....nice and clean!
 
dougspice said:
We made the rounds of a lot of local NBC affiliates (first here in L.A., then Philadelphia, Boston, and a whole slew of other cities) and we need to keep that kind of momentum up.
Click to expand...

What do you mean by this? You got yourselves on the local news? Bought airtime? What?
 
I love the teaser/promo video. This is a very interesting concept for financing a film. I hope everything goes well. Innovation is often rewarded.
 
I may be doing a new book based around Action Filmmaking but more general. If this works out, let me know about it. I may use it as a case study.

-Nate
 
Hey Doug,

Have been reading about the funding progress and I can't agree more, I think it really is a lot of work and energy to keep the project up to date and keep people informed of why they should fund. Best of luck, you have a horror fan here--when is this shooting?
 
Assuming we get funded, hoping to shoot early next year. At the moment funding has sort of stalled, but we just put out a whole bunch of press release material and are sitting on some interviews, so hopefully we'll see some more action soon. But tell your friends! Dr. Bonesaw depends on YOU!
 
Any updates on this? Been following this thread for a while. I went through all your press materials and I think you're definitely onto something. However, I noticed that the Kickstarter funding page hasn't moved much recently, and from what I've read in the Kickstarter rules, if you don't reach your goal, you get none of the money. Is that correct? If so, what's your backup plan?
 
Yeah, unfortunately barring some miracle (YOU have $45,000 right?) the Kickstarter plan has not worked out. It seems like two things happened that slowed down our roll: first, we hit that inevitable slow patch in the middle where you need to maintain steady momentum to show people that progress is being made. Studies have been done on the psychology of fundraisers, showing the different factors that make people pay up at different points along the way. Second, we've started getting into the Christmas season, and although the economy seems to be improving little by little, most people are now squirreling away their money. We had hoped that some people might see a death as a fun, super unique gift idea, but so far it hasn't happened that way.

The backup plan is a more traditional financing route. There is now a complete script that has begun making the rounds with the usual suspects, and hopefully that will drum up some interest, especially when it comes along with our already-completed feature film. I think the new goal will probably be to raise about 50% to 75% of the budget that way and then run another Kickstarter pledge drive with a smaller goal, maybe $20-30k this time. While this will take more time to get the wheels in motion, we may end up being able to raise a larger budget in the end.

There's a lot of possibilities still.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top