Kirby wrote:Aside from the website, the sentiment that billywoods may be referring to might be from Cole's post earlier in the forum:
Yeah, more or less. I quote from the original kickstarter page - all emphasis is mine:
if we can raise $25,000, we can bring you the fullest perspective, one that does justice to the stories of rising teen stars, world champions, and those who play simply because they love the game. No matter what, we're committed to making an exceptional film, but if we can reach this additional funding challenge we can truly knock this out of the park.
And Cole's recent post:
we needed to decide which road to take: produce the low-tier film with what we had, or front-load our expenses and raise more money in the future to make the film truly professionally done and able to really reflect Go as we saw it.
That is, we first get told to expect everything, and then we get told it's only "low-tier"; we get told we'll get "the fullest perspective" that "does justice to" go, but then suddenly we can only "really reflect go" in a film that costs twice as much. A very stark contrast.
But what I was actually referring to was something that had already happened before Cole posted, namely the even starker contrast between this and what appears when you hover over the button marked 'why?' next to "DONATE" and "Goal: $30,000" on the current website:
Making a professional-quality documentary is expensive! Our Kickstarter campaign raised enough for the filming and early production, but to see this project through completion, we need to raise enough to hire a full-time editor and to pay for post-production expenses. Thank you so much for your support.
- paying particular attention to the word "need". We don't even get a low-tier film: if we don't raise this money, the project doesn't get completed. Has "the project" changed? According to Cole's recent posts, yes, but that's not obvious at all from the website - we were already promised an "exceptional film" which they would "knock ... out of the park" that "does justice to" go, so it doesn't seem as though they've set their sights higher at all. It looks like it now just costs double.
Anyway, we've now resolved this issue (at least here on L19!) thanks to Cole's clarification of what really happened, so I don't see any need to keep clarifying my complaint about a false alarm.
Having access to interview pros already makes it an exceptional film content-wise even if the editing may be somewhat amateurish without further donations. But having further donations which will get the quality to a level ready for theatre distribution is spectacular because it will not only get attention from current go players but hopefully be able to attract a new wave of Western interest into the game.
http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.
I'm a bit of a cynic, and I have some doubts that a documentary, no matter how good, is going to have a major impact on Go in the West. Even a major motion picture such as "Searching for Bobby Fischer" did not have a huge impact on chess in this country.
That having been said, I don't hear anyone actually questioning that these guys are legitimate or that their intentions are good. It sounds to me from what I have read that they have put a lot of effort into this project, and I would guess that most if not all financial contributions to their project pale in comparison to the time and effort the Team members themselves have contributed. From the limited information I have seen, it also sounds like they have got some good video footage to work with.
Given the apparent absence of anything currently in existence that is comparable to what they are trying to do, at a minimum they will hopefully end up producing something interesting that can be used to promote Go. And who knows, sometimes relatively inexperienced people can produce outstanding work, especially when they are young and ambitious.
I am not surprised that they are significantly over-budget, this happens even to seasoned professionals in the film industry with some regularity. A certain level of optimism is actually helpful in this kind of creative endeavor, because it keeps you going forward even when it ends up being more difficult than you anticipated.
I for one think it would be a shame if they don't have sufficient resources to properly finish this project. So notwithstanding my doubts about its ultimate impact, I have just made a Paypal contribution and wish them good luck.
owari wrote:This is where project costs are most likely to get out of control, so if it were my project, I'd get an estimate of the minimum cost, triple it and manage this contractor more carefully.
Okay, so if you only want to your guess to be right within an order of magnitude or so, maybe I misunderstood your point. They have already asked someone in the industry what they should budget, and that is going to put them well within the order-of-magnitude ballpark. (Now, maybe they're lying about having asked for advice. Or maybe their contact is lying. But at a certain point if you aren't willing to assume good faith and diligence on the part of the team, if you are still interested in the Surrounding Game project at all.)
My point isn't that all estimates need to be exact, but that controlling the elements that you can control and coming up with contingency plans about what and how you can cut (if you have to) shows good discipline. It also lends credibility to your other estimates, that are by necessity more rubbery.
... and this is where I think we differ. There's a garbage-in, garbage-out quality to estimates like this. If you discover that your initial estimates were based on flawed premises, persisting a plan you drew up at the beginning is compounding ignorance with obstinacy. You can't triage until you've seen the casualties, in other words.
Looking into the licensing costs as an alternative (even if only to dismiss it as too expensive) would strengthen the business case and sounds like a good idea.
Or, even if they can't get the licenses, instructing a musician to mimic the piece they would like to license might be quicker and cheaper than commissioning something original.
I am glad to see that at least one sceptic considered donating for this second wave. Speaking for myself I have to regulate the next donation with my dear wife who is not too fond of Go. For some of us donating means really sharing. I am happy to share, but it may take some weeks until I find an appropriate moment to do so
For now I would like to repeat what I said before: I wish this project all the best and I feel that my $80 were donated to the right project. These little postcards from China were really nice and my Go-T-Shirt gets a lot of attention.
I've given in both rounds. I think they're doing a terrific job and they were very brave to start it at all. We had no particular reason to expect someone to come out of the woodwork and do a feature length documentary on the game aimed at a Western audience, but they did. Given that, we still had no reason to expect that for the small amount of money available and the youth of the participants, that they would be doing it with quite such an eye for visual beauty.
With regard to the merits of them coming back to the well, I think all those of us who gave in round one have a right to expect is that the makers would release a movie consistent with a budget of $25,000 that delivered on their trailer. I'm pretty sure if they don't get more money now, they'd be able to ... and would ... finish such a movie. But we don't get editorial approval on what they do. They are the authors of this and when you donate via kickstarter to a creative work, you are donating money to make sure an author can create the work, including the risk you won't like their authorship. We have no obligation to donate more money and at the same time really no standing to complain if they can raise more; in fact, it benefits the round one donors if more donors are brought in. If I give $100 in round one and they make do, I've given $100 to help get a $25,000 movie made. If instead they raise more, I've given $100 to help get a $60,000 movie made.
At various times through my life, I've been involved with charities, the arts, non-profits and politics. These activities have the common characteristic that participants rarely get to wear their hats; they're too busy holding them out to everyone they meet. It is the raw fact of life. Documentary film making falls squarely in that world, and if you ask me what these guys are doing asking for more money, my answer would be "their job."
It is an inevitable fact of film production that everyone who pitches in somehow, whether it be with money or labor (but especially money) feels entitled to creative or operational input. Everyone thinks they are a producer, despite knowing absolutely nothing about production. This thread is a good example of that phenomenon.
Anyone who asks why the film business can't work in an open, logical, common sense way has never spent a single day embroiled in it. I'm not endorsing the way it works, merely pointing out the current reality.
Crowd sourcing is an interesting method for producing a modest film where there is little to no backend return on the line. The moment real interest picks up is the moment the real insanity takes over. This little Go documentary is unlikely to attract that sort of attention, and thankfully so I think. Just the same, actually making the darn thing in such a way that it doesn't look like a weekend project by a bunch of amateurs takes a lot more time and money than anyone would expect. And mostly because most folks don't know the million ways things can and do go wrong, and/or the million sources of unexpected costs (many of them being what are called "opportunity costs", which by the way, this documentary is trying pursue).
To everyone who contributed I suggest they sit back, relax, take pride in helping to make the documentary possible, but leave its production to the guys making it. It got funded which means, legally, you will get what was promised to you for your contribution. Beyond that, I don't believe there is any other role for you to play, including that of producer, auditor, or creative consultant.
As a donor (albeit a low-tier one) I've been completely satisfied by the process. At $15,000 in a Kickstarter I expected a brief, amateur production. As time went on and I followed the AGA and Kickstarter coverage of what people were doing it looked like it had the potential to grow into something larger. I'm glad the opportunity hasn't been wasted.
The second fund-raising drive exists to upgrade the bare-bones initial production into something better. Considering the expansion the content has experienced, it seems appropriate to attempt to raise the production values. If they get all the upgrades they want, that'll be awesome. If they only get part of that money (or none of it) I still get what I had originally expected.
This is a "shoot for the moon, and you'll at least land among the stars," scenario, not a "we blew our year's budget in Fiscal Q1 on junkets and now you have to raise tax revenues or else we'll fire the police, firefighters, and close the schools," scenario I see played out time and time again by various governments.
This is not a "give us more money or you'll never see the project you invested in," scenario. This is the right way to try to level-up a project.
zslane wrote:Anyone who asks why the film business can't work in an open, logical, common sense way has never spent a single day embroiled in it. I'm not endorsing the way it works, merely pointing out the current reality.
I have to say, having been lightly embroiled in film a few times, that when I read folks expecting a high standard of transparency in film finance ... well ... it's very sweet of them, really.
It's really heartening to see all the points you bring up, and reading this is like watching the conversations we've had over the last several months speed up 1000x.
As several people have noted, I think our admitted inconsistency of message and lack of clarity are big issues, something that we need to improve upon to show where the project is and where it's heading so community members can be fully involved.
We are completely committed (and have been since day 1) to completing a great documentary about Go and to fulfilling every single person's Kickstarter/fundraising rewards in full. Believe us, the faith and trust we place in the Go community is absolute and has been the single most important factor in making the project happen, beyond funding, expertise, anything else. I can't promise that we'll win an Oscar or that you'll be thrilled with every creative choice we make, but you will be receiving everything that we've promised you as rewards and as a film, to the best of our ability to fulfill it, as soon as we possibly can.
That said, we haven't made that promise crystal clear - the problematic, seemingly two-headed wording on the website (which I'm editing to be better - thanks for the heads-up, billywood) has been, well, misleading. And while we have been closely aligned with our budget, and spent our money wisely (we think), we haven't demonstrated it to the people who deserve to see it most, our backers.
All in all, I hope you can forgive us for not actively engaging in this kind of public budget and goals discussion before - quite frankly, we have had so many things to manage every day that we didn't appreciate how important this is, and so we dropped the ball on it, which was a loss for everyone. By the end of this week, we're going to post a complete history of all of our expenses (down to the filters and faders we ordered for our lenses), several versions of our budget as they've been updated over the last 10 months, and a much more consistent and precise description of our goals and aims for the project including eventual revenue, and what new funds will be spent on and how.
My only request is that you be patient/gentle with us - it can be really scary to see how many unknowns are left in a project of this size, and I think that's totally natural. At the very least, it's extremely difficult to estimate well, which can risk wild inaccuracy of necessary time, hours worked, and dollars spent.
Let me give you an example just to show you what I mean. Say we raise $15,000 with the current fundraiser, which provides for a big boost in production value by allowing us to hire an editor for say 12 weeks (which is itself a big assumption). Excellent!
According to our estimates, the new funding raised wouldn't be enough to provide for a Dedicated Shoot In Japan, which is fine, but that budget item would then need to come off our projected budget. Suddenly, the rough projection for $2000 spent on licensing Japanese music becomes less important, too. Plus, now we need to license footage from the Nihon-Kiin to fill the Japanese gap - will they provide it for free, or charge us $5000 (very reasonable for licensing)? It also means we can sell some film equipment (hooray!) because we won't need it in Japan - but now that Japan's less important in the film, the AGA Pro system is MORE important to the story, so maybe we DO need that equipment, or even MORE equipment, plus another trip to the Congress this year for the next certification tournament (that's a $4000 trip). Wait - good news! The KBA just offered to put us up in Korea for two more weeks of shooting, but we have to buy the plane tickets. How important is Korea to the story? Is it worth it? How will it affect licensing and international interest? But wait - last week, after screening an extended trailer and scenes to a philanthropic foundation, we've now got a 40% likelihood of a $15,000 grant! How do we factor that in? Maybe we should save a little money by ordering non-primo t-shirts for Kickstarter backers, and add it to the mastering and color-correction budget.
You get the idea - it would be ideal to have perfect deadlines and return-on-investment percentages, but there are days when I think even the most seasoned professional producer might be stumped. We also have to ignore well-intended advice sometimes, too, even from film industry professionals. We've embarked on a difficult and long-term project but we wouldn't have it any other way - it's an utter dream to try to tell a story we really care about.
What I CAN do, and intend to do, by updating our website and providing tons more documentation, is show you where we're coming from, the choices in front of us, and what our plans are, as best we can articulate them. Creative directions, budget items, and projections will change, often rapidly and without warning, but that's exactly where and why we need you and everyone in the Go community, to help steer us in the right direction. It will be much healthier for the project and its image, too.
Thanks again for the kind words and constructive criticism in this thread; it is most valuable as the team continues to work on all aspects of the film. We want to take responsibility for any doubts we unintentionally provoked - I encourage you to give us feedback, positive and negative, whenever you can. Believe it or not, we're really obsessed with Go too.
Of course, we want you to like us on facebook and tweet and donate and tell your friends and all that stuff. More importantly we want YOU to want to do it because we ALL agree that it would accomplish a really big and important goal: sharing the story and beauty of Go. I hope that can be the case.
jts wrote:By the way, for the team; how much would it cost to license music, instead?
I wanted to respond to your music licensing question. It is a good one, and a dizzying one. The basic answer is: we don't know, which is basically inevitable at this stage in the process. In almost all films, the music is the last thing added to a completed picture (a picture lock is really the holy grail for having a finished project), so it depends very much on other creative choices made in the process of editing and creating the story.
There's the question of licensing type: in general, you want to get worldwide rights in perpetuity for everything you do. That means you can use it whenever, for whatever, wherever. It's a problem if you license a song for two years, then after two years you can't screen or sell your movie anymore without re-licensing... and paying many times more for the re-license because the rights owner has you in a vise. This is one of the many reasons that 95% of documentary films don't 'make it big'.
A license for a marginally well-known song might run you $1500 for a small-scale short film, for one year's worth of rights, and only for certain types of screening. Interestingly, some songs have joint owners so that in the Western hemisphere, one company has rights, whereas in Eastern Europe and Asia, another does, and one is much cheaper/pricier or more stingy/approachable than the other.
To avoid this utter nightmare that usually has an entire team of producers and budget of its own dedicated to it in a big production, we're thinking about using original music and avoiding licensing. To do this, we record it ourselves and pay a composer/musicians, and/or with the volunteer help of the Go community. According to our cursory research so far, it's reasonable to expect to pay $7000 for ten or twenty minutes of original composed, mixed, and performed music penned by an inexpensive (read: just out of college) composer. Several musicians and composers have stepped forward offering help for free (these people are the best and our lifeblood!), and some of them continue to respond to us while others have dropped off the face of the Earth. For example, my dad is a professional blues musician, and I expect he and his band can record something original or at least in public domain for us. Super awesome - that's potentially thousands of dollars saved that can be put to work elsewhere. That is, if blues music will fit into any scene in the final film.
Hope that answers your question a bit - I'm going to make a lot more posts like this about project specifics on the news section of our site (http://www.surroundinggamemovie.com). The bottom line is that almost NOTHING is even remotely cheap, so elbow grease is required to find another way. In general, 'real' documentaries have budgets from $50,000 - $1.5 million, so we're getting resourceful to compete with other 'real' documentaries.
Am I the only one disappointed with the whining in this thread?
I see a few kids doing their best to make a quality documentary about go. I think they are either still in, or just finished with college. They have no experience. They are taking no salary. There is no sign of scam or even irresponsibility here. Just maybe a little naivety about forecasting expenses.
The primary thing I see is aspiration. They can make a movie for what they've raised, and no prior donors will be out anything. But if they raise more, they think they can do better.
Kudos to them. I wish them nothing but the best.
- Brady
Want to see videos of low-dan mistakes and what to learn from them? Brady's Blunders
wineandgolover wrote:Am I the only one disappointed with the whining in this thread?
I'm disappointed that you summarize people's valid concerns as "whining". It looks like much-needed clarification has come as a result, along with a promise for even more. This is a good thing.
I see a few kids doing their best to make a quality documentary about go. I think they are either still in, or just finished with college. They have no experience.
Then this has been a very educational process, and along with that comes with dealing with the real world. When you ask people for money, get more than you asked for, and then come back for money, people are going to ask pointed questions.
aokun wrote:...But we don't get editorial approval on what they do...
I don't think many people (if anyone) was asking for this. This thread was about getting information on why additional money was really needed. And to some extent, this has been achieved because of this thread.
aokun wrote:... I have to say, having been lightly embroiled in film a few times, that when I read folks expecting a high standard of transparency in film finance ... well ... it's very sweet of them, really.
And as a result, greater transparency has been achieved through this thread. As zslane pointed out, this project is a unique intersection between a "grassroots" fundraising effort and movie production, and there is the opportunity to show transparency like a lot of other community supported items do. Maybe you are familiar with the idea of using money that other people give without thinking about it, but many community supported organizations are only able to survive in the long term with very precise accounting provided to their sponsors.
It speaks well to Cole and his crew that they have shown greater openness as a result of this thread.
