Perkalicious Progress!

Firstly, appologies for the long gap in writing updates. There's that thing that happens after the shooting ends where there are just a director and a producer working through post-production, marketing materials and general juggling of tasks so things can slow down somewhat.

Damien has been working hard to finish the film ready for our BAFTA premiere in what we hope will be September. Olympic fever has taken over London and BAFTA was booked out for the duration by some kind of Olympic company so our plans to have it in July were thwarted. It's given us more time to organise things though and perks are in the making!

Digital perks have gone out via dropbox, those of you owed them should have been sent an invitation but I'll also be emailing the files shortly. In the mix we have the wonderful Clowning Around comic books, behind the scenes stills and film stills, digital poster download, script versions and notes, storyboards, and other summit from nothin films of note for you to download and keep. It's all good stuff and we hope you're enjoying it. There's a PDF book in the making about the whole process and Damien is working away on that, but it will I think be a lovely keepsake and a useful one, and we'll hopefully be adding some more goodies like behind the scenes videos and the poster competition entries in due course plus a couple of extra bits and bobs for you.

The only perk that hasn't really worked is the community forum that we set up, there wasn't really much interest in it and not many people were logging on so with our time to maintain site updates a little stretched right now we're going to admit defeat on that one and keep everyone up to date via Indiegogo, the website, blog and facebook page. It was a nice idea, but like many utopian dreams didn't work so well in practice. Ahh well, Onwards and Upwards as our baker Chris Jones would say!

A film trailer is in the making and after a few tweaks by Damien and our promo maker Lourenco we'll have that to share! The film is looking really great so we're excited to show you the trailer so you can see for yourself that the production money we raised all went onto the screen. We owe so much to our amazing cast and crew and of course the backers who made this all possible. This is your project and we hope you will love it.

The film itself has gone off to some festivals and will be headed to more very shortly! Those of you with the festival choice perk should expect an email from Damien shortly.

Physical perks are arriving gradually as we get them sorted out. Damien has arranged all the mastering (in between travelling to Poland and Brazil with his day job! I don't know how he does it!) and the poster prints (pictured above) have arrived and are currently awaiting signing by cast and crew for our backers. Postcards are currently being designed and we're a bit like Santa and his chief elf right now with lists of stuff that needs sorting out! We'll be posting things all together hopefully so bear with us while we get it all sorted out.

In the meantime, we'll be using August for catching up and some much needed holiday time off to clown around in the summer sunshine! We hope you'll enjoy your summer too and look forward to telling you more very soon.

Keep smiling! *:O)

A "Clowning Around" Family

Preparing some of the perks for backers I'm reminded of how many people worked for so long to bring this film to fruition. It's been a truly collaborative effort over a long period of time to get this far and so many people have helped along the way, excited to be part of the ongoing team we've accrued around "Clowning Around."

One of the themes of the film is that it's easy to do something for a day, but it's much harder to keep up good work when you're alone. Having our backers, supporters, and all the people who have worked on the project, given up their time and talent to it and just been there throughout has made the process to date a very warm experience. People have put huge pieces of their own hearts into the work we all wanted to do and we all adopted Damien's initial project as our own and joined his vision for what the film could be. I couldn't be more proud of our "Clowning Around" family or more grateful to be part of it. Looking at a rough cut of the first few minutes of film I'm acutely aware of how effortless it seems despite the effort that went into bringing it all about. Happy days and busy days with wonderful people.

Post production always seems like a quiet time where there's much less to speak about on a project and a lot of the team have moved on to do other work and aren't so much around, especially for me without the production team meeting every week I have missed the bustle of regular face to face meetings, but the wheels have kept turning and so much is ticking along that it's exciting to think of the things we still have planned. Right now it's about looking after our family of supporters and sending some of the digital goodies like the online comic book out! That has been a real labour of love by Damien and Phoenix Ryte and I truly hope everyone will love them as much as the guys have enjoyed creating them. There are two comic books in one double edition, sharing extra stories about our clowns for our backers to enjoy!

More funs soon!

Week Two Begins and the Butterflies Never End, but Crowd Funding Rocks!

We’ve seen an incredible amount of support for the project in the past week since we launched our Indigogo campaign for Clowning Around and have been busy on the social networks interacting with people, getting word out and just answering lots of questions and interest there has been in the project as well as sharing a lot of the behind the scenes goodies we’ve gathered in our process so far. I’m now wishing I had recorded a lot more to show people but my video skills are not the strongpoint (or even any kind of point) of my skillset.

We’d prepared well to begin with a strong start, we had been spreading news of the project for a while and keeping people up to date and had already gained some interest and I wasn't entirely surprised people wanted to be part of this project. After all, I certainly do, I didn’t even wait to fully hear what Damien said to me before I agreed. The overwhelming flood of support has been something else. A really special thing and we can’t thank people enough.

What I wasn’t prepared for were the butterflies of excitement and anticipation in my stomach from the outset and the way the fluttering grew when we had a quiet spell on Indiegogo somewhere in the middle when we didn’t receive any incoming funds for about two days. My word did that time stretch into infinity. I became aware that although we’d begun ahead of targets, we could very soon slip behind if we became complacent. After all, one of the aims of all this sharing and crowd funding is to create a budget for our amazing cast and crew so that we can give them the tools they need to do their best work, so that we can keep them safe and insure them against incident, and so that we can feed them and make their working days comfortable and pleasant so that they can get on with the business of being brilliant under pressure. They're very good at that when the rest is in place. As a Producer, I take this as a serious responsibility and not raising the full funding for this project is not an option for me.

This team, this project and our leader, Damien, deserve every penny we can throw at them. We have a responsibility to our backers too to ensure the project they back is the project they get. And that along the way they get to really be a part of something, not just by giving us money but by being able to fully interact with us every stage of the way. And I want it all to be fun and marvellous for all of us. As marvellous as it's been when I backed other people's projects and gained so much out of the great experiences they gave (and keep giving) to me. I've truly learned a lot from those folks and am eternally grateful that I got to give them a few quid. It's repaid me tenfold.

I therefore have given my word to our backers that every dollar that is put into indiegogo.com/clowningaroundfilm will be one of the very best dollars our backers ever spend and that is why our perks start from just $1 so that no matter how tight money is, everyone can afford to interact and get involved with this film and why the perks go up and up so that people can take on more of a role and/or get different things out of being part of the work. I pledge to make it as brilliant as I can for you, That is a talent that's in my skillset. That’s the other reason why we’re crowd funding. Because the whole Clowning Around team just like to collaborate and we want you to get involved and be happy. Consider yourself invited!

Week two began today and has finished off incredibly with donations from more awesome people all of whom are listed on our website and invited into our online community. I think that kind of makes up for the butterflies in my tummy that are, I am now sure, likely to stick around until the funding drive reaches it’s goal. It’s totally worth every bit of giddyness in the pit of the stomach though because, if you haven’t heard me say it on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or LinkedIn yet. You all ROCK for being here with us and sharing in this adventure! I can't wait to stand next to Damien in BAFTA as we did in the above photo from the Transference screening (where I directed & he produced) and share Clowning Around with an audience of supporters & backers! You can bet I'll be smiling like a clown! *:o)