FToM + Kickstarter = Love from mike ambs on Vimeo. 33 days ago, Amanda and I launched a brand new Kickstarter campaign to help fund the last stages of post-production. Since then we’ve been backed by over 40 people, with pledges ranging from $1 to over $500! We have raised $1,638 towards our goal of $8,300! This is an all or nothing campaign. Meaning if we don’t hit $8.3k, then no one’s pledges go through. Help support For Thousands of Miles, plus get awesome stuff like Pedal buttons, posters, autographed scripts, a 64 Days DVD with audio commentary and even my personal typewriter. If you’re new to this project, take a quick moment to check out our “hi, hello” intro page, it’s a very informal, brief recap of the last 6 years. Please consider backing our film with a $1 donation, or help spread the word by liking this video, sharing our KSR project with your followers on Twitter or your friends on Facebook. We are really excited about the next stages in post – and we are very, very grateful for all of your support!
FToM + KSR = ♥ from mike ambs on Vimeo. Amanda and I just launched a brand new Kickstarter campaign to help fund the last stages of post-production! Help support ‘For Thousands of Miles’, plus get awesome stuff like Pedal buttons, posters, autographed scripts, a 64 Days DVD with audio commentary and even my personal typewriter. Here’s the (long) description from our campaign page: Our 1st round of initial post-production funding was a great success on Kickstarter! And because of the amazing 18 backers, which helped raise $1,105, I’ve been able to work full-time on FToM for the last three months. Recently, I finished editing a huge chunk of this ambitious documentary, cutting down over 120+ hours of footage into a near 5 hour rough edit. Which brings us to our 2nd round of funding: So what’s the next step? I have a long road of writing still ahead of me. The script, which mainly deals with several narratives blocks in the film are still rough at best, and in most cases detailed treatments and outlines. The few connecting pieces of FToM that have yet to be filmed – that mainly deal with the experience of coming home from a long ride – need to be story-boarded and added into the editing sequences as place-holders for pacing and mood. During the length of this KSR campaign, I’ll be hard at work writing / story-boarding. The goal is to be done writing when this campaign ends and use (if successful) the raised funds to carry out the following steps as quickly as possible: Pick-up shots: it’s time for Amanda and I to travel to Northern California, where our main character in the documentary, Larry McKurtis, is currently living and working. FToM deals a lot with the hardest part of a long-distance experience… waking up one morning in your bedroom, and realizing it’s over. That is to say, your entire experience on the road shifts when it begins to sink in that it’s over. Moments that, at the time, felt slow and uneventful, blur together and begin to represent something more. You try to move on with your life, your routine, but so much of your mind is still stuck on the road. There is a very, very short list of needed equipment (mostly simple hardware-store lights, an SLR adapter, and a basic DIY dolly cart) that we’ll have to secure for the 1-2 weeks of controlled shooting. From there, we’ll need to purchase additional hard-drive space (because I’m working on two completely maxed out Lacie drives as it is) to import the new footage (as well as inexpensive USB LaCie drives for redundant backups… can’t be too careful). Several more weeks of heavy editing will follow – which will mostly involve replacing all story-boarded sequences with the actual footage. Recording any temporary narration track (we have someone professional in mind for narration, but that’s a different adventure all together at this moment). At this point – we should have a watchable edit in Final Cut. Amanda and I will begin to work closely on making adjustments, and doing small personal screenings to receive outside feedback on the project. Make more adjustments. Repeat. From there we’ll need to ship off a locked edit to Belgium where Olivier will color correct the film. As well as hire a visual effects creator (for “I’m doing this because I love your film” wages) for a small number of simple and subtle layers to scenes dealing with imagination on the road. I know this sounds like a lot – and it is, but all these overwhelming steps can be speed-up and more easily managed with a working budget and, more importantly, a supportive community. DIY film-making can be a crushing, lonely, experience… but all things worth doing are difficult – and together we can be a part of something that I believe will beautiful, inspiring and unique.
I’ve had several days to think about the two possible directions I mentioned in my last video update. First off, thanks so much to everyone who gave their advice and helped me weigh the pro’s and con’s. After a lot of consideration – I’ve decided the next step in post-production is continue moving forward with FToM, and to hold off longer on another addition in the 64 Days series. There’s a lot of little reasons for this, but for the most part, I left LA behind with the idea of focusing 100% on the film. I feel that 64 Days, being a supplemental aspect of the project, needs to take a back-seat while I’m being so heavily supported by Erica. She has been bearing a great deal of financial stress the last three months – and I am trying to not waste any of support she has been willing to give. On a related note – for whatever reason, we’ve been getting a sudden increase in donations and I wanted to stress how amazingly helpful they have been. The recent PayPal donations and the $1,000 Kickstarter campaign we ran in June have helped me work full-time on FToM and narrow down 115+ hours of footage into a 4 hour rough-edit segment. And that has been an huge step towards finishing the film, so thank you so much! That’s all for tonight – I’d like to write a separate post about the specific steps ahead, as always I’d love to hear questions and comments regarding any aspects of the project.
I’m sitting by the open window right now, enjoying the smell that comes after a mid-west thunder storm, and an iTunes playlist from Jon. It’s almost been 10 days since my last post, so I thought I’d better check in and give everyone an update on what I’ve been busy with. FToM: First on the list, the film. I’ve still been very busy going through clip by clip and dropping what I like in the timeline. I’m probably 1/3rd of the way through the 2nd TB of footage. Two days ago I sent a FCP project file to Amanda, she has the back-up drives in LA, and I’ve been waiting for feedback on what she thinks so far. The way it’s cut now, it’s not much to look at, but when looked at side-by-side with our notes on the arc of film, I can see a pattern emerging, and places where certain moods and points can be made. I’m anxious to be sitting back in-front of the typewriter again. Stockpile: I’ve been pushing hard promoting Stockpile on Vimeo, ACA, and popular bicycling forums (like Crazy Guy on a Bike). We’re already getting some great feedback and interest so far. And today a few more clips were shared in our group. One reader replied, “I have a good feeling about the project. It looks like the personal essence of the moments will come through. Teaser number two shows, to me anyways, how profound it is to be insignificant. Good luck on the project.“ Our main goal with Stockpile is to be able to visually show just how connected we are by the places we’ve been – how our experiences are intertwined in ways that are easily overlooked. We have a long way to go before we reach the number of videos needed to do that, but with steady pressure and outreach, by the time the film needs it, I believe we’ll be prepared. Kickstarter: Our Kickstarter campaign finished a few days ago and we were able to overshoot our goal by $105! I’ve adjusted the funding progress by by $1,105, which felt great to do. I can’t thank everyone enough who donated, twittered, and help spread the word in anyway. It’s by far the biggest jump in donations we’ve received since coming home from production two years ago. It turned out to be a really impressive and supportive community of people. of all the sites we’ve joined that had fundraising support, it’s been by far the most successful. Also, of course, a huge thank you to those of you who have recently donated via our new funding site. I know we had a few people do so during the Kickstarter campaign and I didn’t want to sound like I was leaving them out. I’m excited about the next round of funding – and have been thinking of ways to incorporate a breakdown of upcoming expenses that we can split into individual campaigns. t.minus: I’ve also been putting together the next t.minus project. If any of you have dropped by the site recently, you’d have seen our ‘currently closed’ splash page – hopefully after this weekend I’ll have it swapped out with all the new info. I can’t say too much about it at the moment, but I can tell you it’s a collaboration project that anyone can be a part of! And, if I can make up my mind on a design, there could be t-shirts involved too.
Last night I twittered that I finished off the first of two 1 TB drives full of FToM’s footage – I went through and condensed many of the edits and took out clips I knew weren’t working now that I had seen it next to other clips. So the timeline is still just barely pushing 2 hrs and 15 min. But with another 1 TB of footage to comb through, and 400-some Mp4 clips (from Larry, and the crew), I’ll be busy for a few more weeks before I have a solid 5 hours of footage that count as the most usable of the film’s media. Then, the plan is, to play that edit on a loop while I make notes, write more of the script and narration, draw out the last of the storyboards for scenes we still need to film with Larry in Northern California… picking out music, et cetera. I have a long, long road ahead of me. Finishing one of the drives was a great feeling, but it was a small step. We only have 9 days to go on our Kickstarter campaign – another $300 and we’ll have reached our goal! Just as a note; none of the money pledged to this point goes through if our goal isn’t reached. This $1,000 will be set aside for the post-production and pick-up shots I mentioned above. In my last post, I mentioned that I had been working hard on updated our Stockpile project. If you haven’t seen the new site yet, please take a moment to check it out and help spread the word. When I was on the phone with Winona, from Adventure Cycling, she suggested I create a promo video for our outreach campaign. I thought it was a great idea, so here it is, our new 60 second Stockpile promo: Help us burn through the more than 16,600 HD embed’able plays we have left on Vimeo! It’s easy – just copy the code above and paste it anywhere you see fit. Thanks for helping to spread the word! That’s all the updates I have in me tonight. I’m leaving town for the weekend but I’m hoping to record a vlog update while I’m working in FCP in the afternoon.
