The Mega Kickstarter Review Post, Part 1

Kickstarter is a source of almost endless fascination for me. I performed on a comedy show at SF Sketchfest this year that challenged each performer to write a new set on the topic of obsession, and so I got to say a bunch of things about Kickstarter to a paying audience. Click above to see how that went. Click below to read brief reviews of the Kickstarter projects I have backed as I attempt to establish my own Kickstarter Happiness Index!

The Kickstarter Happiness Index

The Kickstarter Happiness Index, or KHI, or KkrHppdx, is derived through a simple formula: it is the ratio of projects I still happy I backed by the time they were over (denoted by the thumbs-up symbol, or 👍) to the total number of projects I backed (denoted by a number, like 51).

Yes indeed, I've backed quite a lot of things on kickstarter. I daresay it's become my number one use of irresponsibly spent discretionary income. I don't buy a lot of movies or games these days, but sometimes I buy one that doesn't exist yet for too much money. In order to simplify this process a bit, we're going to look at these projects in categories. What's more, because we're both such busy people, we're going to spread these categories over a few posts this month.

Projects I Worked On

As a general rule, I don't feel comfortable contributing to projects I am scheduled to work on. There's some kind of conflict of interest there, and anyway, I think it's weird to buy myself a job. One of these was the award-winning short film Broken Things. Others, I have sometimes given a donation of $1, just to lend moral support or get the backer updates. These include:

• Underground Comedy - a documentary about improv comedy in Los Angeles. I am, at times, an editor and a consultant on this project, which just funded a couple months ago, and is not yet complete or delivered.
• Diani and Devine Meet The Apocalypse - I originally pledged a ton of money on the first day to help them appear to have momentum on their huge $100,000 ask, then shamefully backed down towards the end to simply the DVD level. I got the last film we made together in a clearance sale at a Blockbuster Video, but I can't count on that working again. The film has been shot, is currently in post-production, and has yet to deliver. 👍 (Although this project is far from complete, I stand by my 👍. I openly suspect this movie of becoming the best feature film I've ever worked on.)
• Help The Selling get a Theatrical Release - This was that previous film. We had a lovely screening at the Egyptian in Hollywood. 👍
• Jim Bruce: I'm Dying as Fast as I Can - a stand-up comedy special. I don't have an official DVD of this yet, even though I created it and they were delivered. I did attend the taping, do a whole bunch of post production work, and get an official poem by the artist. 👍
• A Show with Ze Frank - I didn't actually work on this, but I wanted to, and I thought I ought to be a backer in order to seem like more than a mere opportunist.
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Robotic Edition - Another project from the DDMTA / Selling team of Diani & Devine. I backed this out of friendship, but ended up making their book trailer. 👍

Other Projects I Backed out of Friendship

This hasn't happened nearly as much as I might have thought it would. As a big kickstarter user, and a guy who lives in LA and mainly knows people who seem to be struggling to make things, I don't know how I've gotten off so lightly.

• Relatively Prime - An audio documentary series about math(s) by my friend Sam. Not only did this project deliver, but a campaign for a second series is underway right now!

That's it.

The Price is Right Projects

These aren't so much excellent deals as they are situations in which I bid $1, usually for moral support or just to keep tabs on how they turned out.

• Penny Arcade Sells Out - this was somewhat controversial at the time, and I wanted to follow the updates. Except, there really weren't any, and I stopped reading their site a long time ago. 👎
• Renovate the Brattle Theater - I've never been to this reperatory theater in Boston, but a friend used to be a regular, and I'd like for such things to exist. 👍
• Code Hero - A game about programming. They update sometimes, and might even mean well, but this project is widely regarded as being somewhere between a black hole of ineptitude or an outright scam. (To be fair, if I'd seen it in time, I probably would have been duped by the lockpicks too.) 👎

Today's score: 10 projects backed. With 5 happy returns, I'm going to guess that my ratio so far is better than the final score will be, but maybe that's because a lot of these projects gave some of their money to me.

Next time I'm going to cover some projects I backed without personally knowing anyone involved, and maybe how I totally use Kickstarter as a store, even though they explicitly say not to do that.

Relatively Prime, Series 2!

My friend Sam is the world's foremost mathematical podcaster. He's done math news shows, math chat shows, mathematician interview shows, a show about cult movies that might not have all that much math in it really, and perhaps most notably a lovely and lively series of math radio documentaries called RELATIVELY PRIME.

Well, it turns out that Samuel wants to do more math podcasting. Sam is a math guy in a much bigger way than he's a video guy, but I'm a video guy, so he asked me to shoot his kickstarter video. I did want to help him, but what I didn't want to do was go to Wisconsin, so we made a cartoon instead.

Sam says he likes this video and I hope everyone else on the internet does too, so that he can raise all that money he needs. You can help him out by visiting his kickstarter today. And everyday.

Underground Comedy is Go!

For years, I've been tangentially involved in a documentary about the improv comedy scene in Los Angeles. In January we made a trailer for it, and now we're about to make the whole darn thing. We've got hundreds of hours of footage, and we want to bring you an interesting 90 minute feature film about what goes on in the black box theaters that are forging (a) tomorrow's big name comics and (b) tomorrow's accountants and waiters who did a fun thing in their 20s. Most people don't know about it, most people will never know about it, and even the folks that do might never get to see it because improv evaporates as soon as it's done, never to be seen again. Unless of course, someone is standing around with a camera crew documenting the whole thing.

Check out the trailer for Underground Comedy here and if you want to get a DVD in a couple years after we're done producing the movie and walking it around to festivals, or maybe a nice co-producer credit for your IMDB page, go have a look at the film's Kickstarter*, which is running for a mere 3 more weeks.

* Once upon a time, folks in film production probably compared notes on how they don't actually work so much with film anymore these days and isn't it a shame, why, I only ever worked on two projects in my life that shot on honest-to-goodness celluloid. Well that conversation is done, and everything's digital from here on out. The craft services table chit chat of the future is reminiscing about the days when films had investors. This is maybe my 5th crowdfunded movie.

The Curse of Oedipus!

This week I'm back on set with Diani and Devine Meet the Apocalypse, which means lots of media production, and not much media consumption. Instead, check out this promo I edited for the Antaeus Theater Company for their upcoming production of The Curse of Oedipus.

The theater company shares a ton of great actors with the movie, and the promo was written & directed by Diani & Devine! All I did was edit, color, mix, and make some fun graphics for the totally real previous versions of the show, like the Klingon version in the thumbnail, starring noted Klingon actor Michael Dorn.