Last year, I asked for $1000 on Kickstarter for my 2nd short film, I got $1025 from 10 people. Most of it was from close friends and acquaintances, but 4 of them were strangers. To make a long (and extremely painful) story short, things were looking up at first. Just when I thought I had all my bases covered, it fell apart in the most unexpected way. Two people nearly destroyed the production, the location owner and the lead actor's manager (we used a credible SAG actor for the lead). Thankfully, through gritted teeth, we were able to finish it. However, the project I had set out to do was butchered from perfection and what we ended up with in post was the "Alien 3" version (thanks to the two people who sabotaged it with their BS).
I was heartbroken by the whole experience and became discouraged with filmmaking at the poverty level (i.e. outside the reaches of connections and proper resources). I regretted not doing the film as a short story instead. Since then I decided to go back to my roots and stick to writing fiction and getting into the publishing world. I've been much happier and stress-free ever since because I can be my own boss of literally everything. Even though I decided to stick to the writing side of things, I didn't forget about my kickstarter campaign, I had a duty to follow through and deliver the final cut of the film along with the backer rewards.
We finished shooting in September 2014 and post production has been going on ever since. Why you ask? Because I have had the greatest luck of working with an editor who's flat broke, transitioning from place to place, and just has way too much on his plate. It's been one thing after another with this guy. MInd you, the editor is also the cinematographer of the film. Anyway, in June 2015, we were 98% done. All that remained were a couple of pick ups, some color correcting, title card/credits. But then a month later, he asked if I could purchase an external hard drive to put the rest of the film on. I said ok no problem, I bought it and sent it to him. But before he could transfer it, the computer crashed and then he asked me I could send the drive to tekserve or geek squad so they could extract the data.
This was going to cost me $1500. I was so upset. I didn't even bother. I'm not going to ask my backers for more money when they already had to wait a year for a 7 min short film to complete post production (completely ridiculous by the way). I'm already fed up with this film and so want to put it behind me and move on. I've been updating the backers as much as I can, whenever I have important news to give them. On top of that, I've been posting still photos from the film and I even sent out ONE of the rewards (a copy of the script with a personalized thank you note and autograph). Out of the 10 backers, only one of them pesters me every two months or so about what's going on, he even accused me of playing games at one point, he's very rude and demanding. He invested $200.
I said to him, "You've seen still photos and received a copy of the script, you still want to tell me the film is not real and that I just took your money?" then he shut up about it and apologized.
Sorry for the long post.. but I'm seeking advice on what to do. I just want to get this over with. I'm really considering coming forward and telling them the film is likely gone forever due to the editor/hard drive situation.
I was heartbroken by the whole experience and became discouraged with filmmaking at the poverty level (i.e. outside the reaches of connections and proper resources). I regretted not doing the film as a short story instead. Since then I decided to go back to my roots and stick to writing fiction and getting into the publishing world. I've been much happier and stress-free ever since because I can be my own boss of literally everything. Even though I decided to stick to the writing side of things, I didn't forget about my kickstarter campaign, I had a duty to follow through and deliver the final cut of the film along with the backer rewards.
We finished shooting in September 2014 and post production has been going on ever since. Why you ask? Because I have had the greatest luck of working with an editor who's flat broke, transitioning from place to place, and just has way too much on his plate. It's been one thing after another with this guy. MInd you, the editor is also the cinematographer of the film. Anyway, in June 2015, we were 98% done. All that remained were a couple of pick ups, some color correcting, title card/credits. But then a month later, he asked if I could purchase an external hard drive to put the rest of the film on. I said ok no problem, I bought it and sent it to him. But before he could transfer it, the computer crashed and then he asked me I could send the drive to tekserve or geek squad so they could extract the data.
This was going to cost me $1500. I was so upset. I didn't even bother. I'm not going to ask my backers for more money when they already had to wait a year for a 7 min short film to complete post production (completely ridiculous by the way). I'm already fed up with this film and so want to put it behind me and move on. I've been updating the backers as much as I can, whenever I have important news to give them. On top of that, I've been posting still photos from the film and I even sent out ONE of the rewards (a copy of the script with a personalized thank you note and autograph). Out of the 10 backers, only one of them pesters me every two months or so about what's going on, he even accused me of playing games at one point, he's very rude and demanding. He invested $200.
I said to him, "You've seen still photos and received a copy of the script, you still want to tell me the film is not real and that I just took your money?" then he shut up about it and apologized.
Sorry for the long post.. but I'm seeking advice on what to do. I just want to get this over with. I'm really considering coming forward and telling them the film is likely gone forever due to the editor/hard drive situation.
Last edited:
