Back-up: White Pig - Mmmm, Bacon

I've gotten more and more into Kickstarter and Indiegogo lately, probably mostly thanks to Iron Sky and its crowdfunding endeavors. There's something about seeing projects you like and give them your personal green light, and I know I'm far from the only one. Veronica Mars's campaign for a film tore Kickstarter's roof off, and Zach Braff's Wish I Was Here did tremendously well right after. It seems that right now we are at a state where everyone knows about crowdfunding, and a lot of us are actively contributing.

Right now projects for films are basically just pre-sales for DVDs and posters, you put in X amount of money and receive items that will later sell at X-1 amount of money. At the campaign they have to up the price, because the DVDs and posters are just perk. You're supposed to pay for the film to be made at all, and that's where the main problem lays. The project runners have to really think through their campaigns or everything can be ruined, it's more or less a full-time job just making sure the campaign runs smoothly and everyone gets what they need. The smaller guys who are doing it all on their own can end up burnt out before even starting to produce what the campaign promised. Even the bigger guys run into this, just look at the recent Double Fine Kickstarter, they got two and a half million dollars more than what they asked for, and they just didn't know what to do with the money. Now they're having to release half the game, sell that to the general public and use the profits off of that to deliver on the promises they made to their backers. It's no easy task.

This will be a new irregular series of blog posts to give you a break from my film reactions, where I show you various film projects in need of funding that to me look interesting and worthy of you contribution. I will put a disclaimer here right away, I may not personally back all of these projects financially (I'd end up broke quicker than the Flash can run to Sweden) but they will be projects that I do believe should be made. The first film on my list is a Danish project on Indiegogo called White Pig.

White Pig is coming from director David Noel Bourke who's previously directed No Right Turn which got critical acclaim both in its homeland Denmark and internationally. With White Pig he wants to tell the story of a racist murderer and the police woman who is trying to track him down. On the surface it seems like a really standard story, one that we've seen many times before, and that was my initial thought as well. But upon further inspection it seems like he's trying to do something different with this.

I've always believed that every story has been told, it's up to storytellers to tell them more interestingly and in a different way, and that really seems to be the case here. It seems like they are really trying to convey what racism really is. What it means and how it feels. It's not the generic "racism is bad, m'kay", they're taking a real racist, putting him through trials and want us to understand him. Remember now, understand and agree are two completely different things, I do not believe they're trying to promote racism as a good thing. They're trying to make us think about it again. I feel that in many places, at least here in Scandinavia, racism isn't much of a discussion topic anymore. Even though it happens all the time. Everyone wants to believe that everything is fine and that if you do not poke at your scab nothing bad will happen. Unlike a scab, however, racism isn't a thing that's just going to fall off when it's good and ready. We have to actively poke it, stir it and think about it. Action is a result of thinking, we cannot do anything about anything before we think about it.

The reason this film is on Indiegogo and didn't just go through "the normal channels" is more or less the reason everyone else is doing it, they want more creative control. They have already gone to studios with the films, and there has been interest, it's just that they want to cut out a lot of violence and language that will hurt the message it's trying to tell, it'd probably just end up like any other cop-murderer-chase film.


White Pig Movie MOOD TEASER from david noel bourke on Vimeo .
Even in the mood teaser seen above they start throwing around offensive words, words that I myself am uncomfortable saying, and really violent imagery. It just reinforces my thoughts that they're wanting to share what goes through such an extreme racist's mind.

Now here comes the part that's really great, and something I've seen rarely mentioned even in the aftermaths of big-time campaigns, White Pig has gotten an international distributor ready to sign on. Angel Scandinavia has agreed to distribute the film on what seems to be just one condition (at least what's made public) and that is that the Indiegogo campaign gets 60 backers. They are currently at 47 so that's just 13 more and there is a guaranteed international distribution. There will also be a local cinema release which's extent I'm uncertain of, probably contained to some cinemas in Copenhagen, Denmark. With this information the project managers are promising to complete the film no matter what, even if they do not hit their funding goal (on Indiegogo you don't have to hit the goal to receive funds).

So come one, come all, for just ten euros (roughly thirteen US dollars) you can get your own digital download of the film estimated to be distributed by April of 2014. Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to go throw some money at my screen and see what happens.

Indiegogo page
Facebook page
Director's twitter

Timo Vuorensola is Captured by North Koreans!

It's been known for some time now that the makers of my favourite film of 2012, Iron Sky, wants to make a sequel. Just under a week ago signs started appearing on Iron Sky's Facebook page and on various Twitter accounts.

There weren't much information following this image, part from a few odd phrases and quotes. It didn't get really interesting till Jarmo Puskala, the man who sparked Iron Sky, sent out a short and sweet tweet.

The link in his tweet went to an article posted at ScreenDaily.com. It declared the Nordic Genre Invasion at Cannes. A new lounge at Cannes would be hosted by a group of, well, Nordic genre films, among which "Iron Sky II: The Coming Race" sparked the most interest.

Little else was known at the time, this was all we had been given, but fans were eating it up. I know that personally I was just waiting for the big go from somewhere, something that definitely said "yes, this is happening, we have the money now". And that, came today.

I was out and about at an exhibition this afternoon, thinking nothing at all special would happen today, but then, on the bus ride home I read something amazing. A tweet from Iron Sky's director, Timo Vuorensola, the very tweet every Iron Sky fan had been waiting for since 04.04.12, a confirmation.

An indiegogo campaign has been started for Iron Sky: The Coming Race and they're asking for surprisingly little. 150.000 USD. And this is were you have to start listening, this campaign isn't for the film itself. It is solely to finish the script, make a production plan and work out a budget, and film a four-five minute promo to help get funding for the actual film. It is important that you know this, because it doesn't come very clearly out form the campaign video, you'll have to actually read it (yes, read).

In a very exciting and entertaining campaign video director Timo Vuorensola appears to be held prisoner by NOT NORTH KOREA. NORTH KOREA HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING. TIMO IS MAKING THIS VIDEO OUT OF HIS OWN FREE WILL. DO NOT WORRY. Kah! Wow, sorry about that. He appears to be taken captive by North Korean forces, not pleased with his previous film Iron Sky. Timo swears on his life that there is no such thing as the Fourth Reich and that his portrayal of North Korea in the film was horribly wrong and totally untrue, totally. 

This all hints that North Korea will be given a larger role in Iron Sky's sequel, the including of Nazi Moon soldiers implies a Nazi-North Korean coalition of sorts will be in order. Personally I hope North Korea turns out to have a base on Mars, in a nice nod to the end of the end credits of Iron Sky.

Last time around, with Iron Sky, they tried many different crowdfunding sites and methods. The film was as much an experiment on crowdfunding as it was an actual film. Their choice of indiegogo for the sequel would imply a lot of faith in the website from the film makers, but I'm still not totally convinced by the entire thing. 

First of all, the perks aren't the greatest. Let's be honest, most projects has lame perks, especially films. The best that can be done is for the most part an expensive pre-ordered film ticket, but more often it's just an expensive DVD box set with "never before seen behind-the-scenes material". And seeing how this is just a pre-production campaign things are even scarcer among the good pickings.

The first tier is $10, this will get  you a final draft of the film's script. Meaning you'll get to read the film before it's even filmed. 

The second tier of $25 ensures that you (in addition to the script) get a 24-hour head start to watch and spread the finished promo before anyone else. This basically means that you get to promote the film, as there is no way to keep the promo itself hidden from the masses once one soul has access. If you don't pay attention to your mailbox you might even end up seeing a tweet about it before you've even received your 24-hour sneak peek.

You'll have to pay $50 for the third tier, it will gain you access to the first draft of the script. You'll get to comment on it and have your opinion heard if valid. This is probably my favourite perk, as it's cooler to get a first draft and comment on it, than just the final draft or a promo. With this, you'll also get the final draft and the promo anyways, so win all the way.

$100 for the fourth tier, director Timo Vuorensola will upload a special and personal thank-you video to YouTube for you. This tier is popular with many campaigns, and I can never say it's particularly interesting. Still, for those who likes that sort of thing, this is perfect. As always, you'll get everything below this tier as well.

$500, now we're talking big money. This will get you an invitation to Finland to watch, comment and discuss the first edit of the film (I'm assuming this is for the actual film and not just the promo) with the director and producer. You're promised a nice evening "with the most awesome filmmakers in the Northern hemisphere". You'll have to pay for travel and stay, so unless you live close to Tampere or Helsinki I'd gather you wouldn't be very interested. That's more of a consumer problem than creator problem, though. Imagine the havoc of a leaked first cut of the film before it's even made it to cinemas. (also the below tiers)

For a thousand bucks you'll be invited to a script meeting to hear everything going on in the genius room. Again, travel is your worry, so this is getting awfully expensive for you if you're not even from Europe. All below tiers included as per usual.

TEN THOUSAND UNITED STATES DOLLARS! Think about that for a minute. Wow. That's a lot of money. For this huge amount of money you'll get a speaking part in the Iron Sky 2 promo. Meaning you'll be showcased around Cannes and many other places while the team tries to sell the film to secure further funding. You'll play the security officer of the POTUS, fingers crossed it's still Sarah Fakin! You'll also get your name in the end credits of the film as "Supporter" and all the below tiers.

You thought ten thousand bucks was a lot? Take a deep breath. *breath* For nothing less than $25.000 your name (personal or company) will be in the promo under the credits "Presented by", which is a pretty damn big deal. They're claiming it's a really good place to be, as the original Iron Sky trailer has been seen over twelve million times, which means one hell of an advertisement. You'll as well get all the other tiers except for the speaking part (can only be one security officer of POTUS). Wow. There's three available slots on this one, I doubt they'll all sell out, but I wouldn't put it past some rich fan putting in that money for some ad place.

I don't know about you guys, but I'm really looking forward to this film. Maybe not as much as I was to its predecessor or other future films, but once this project starts rolling and Director's Diaries and tweets starts flowing I'm sure I'll hype myself up to the extreme.

The campaign is currently at $1.592 with 55 funders averaging at 29 dollars per funder.