Just 3 days remaining in the Monitor Gray Kickstarter campaign. Friday night at 10 pm is the close of this fund raising endeavour.

While Joel wraps up the rough edit and soon engages VFX artists, I will be reviewing portfolios of the many talented musical composers who have contacted me during the Kickstarter campaign. Neither of these are inexpensive and so my fingers are crossed that in the final 48 hours we do continue to receive additional financial support.

Every bit helps, so please continue to tell your friends, co-workers, aunts and distant cousins about Monitor Gray.

Thank you!

I remember when this campaign started, three weeks ago, and how long 30 days felt at that time. Now, with just nine days remaining, I realize how quickly it all goes by. The response to our campaign, my first at Kickstarter, has been wonderful. Thank you.

With some of the funding set aside for editing, Joel has been able to focus entirely on Monitor Gray this past week, enabling us to make headway toward a rough draft of the entire short film. We have engaged a VFX specialist and through this Kickstarter campaign, have been approached by a number of talented composers with offer to score the final film.

Best of all, the majority of feedback we have received, both in public and private channels underscores the desire for a science fiction film built upon a quality story first, special effects, gadgets and gizmos a distant second place.

Thank you for letting us know we are on the right track. We are eager to deliver.

We did it! With 12 days remaining, we hit our goal of $7500 in contributions to the Monitor Gray Kickstarter.com campaign!

Do we stop here? No! Every dollar above and beyond our goal helps us to retain top talent for editing, visual effects, and musical score.

Please spread the good word about our success and let’s keep the momentum going!

Thank you everyone for your steadfast dedication to the success of Monitor Gray.

Director / Screen writer Joel Kaye has been working steadily into the nights on the edit of Monitor Gray. Scene by scene, he has been fine-tuning, tweaking, and conducting preliminary color correction. He has completed the rough draft of the dialogue between recruits Ethan (Bobby Rodenbach) and Gloria (Annie Boon) in the chopper, en route to Sorin BioTech’s massive city. One of the slower scenes in this short film, it is all-telling, giving the audience appreciation for how desperate people are in the real-world, outside of the Pyramid, to get in. At the same time, we are given insight to the personalities of two lead characters, and how they will likely clash later in the story.

I have updated the STORY page of our Kickstarter campaign to showcase screenshots from the new edit and others we have completed. Take a look!

Once these key scenes are fine-tuned, we will hand them off to our VFX experts to provide the finishing touches.

We have broken 100 backers and 72% of our goal in just one week!

Thank you everyone, for your $5, $10, $20, … and $1000 contributions!

The Monitor Gray Hall of Fame is updated:
http://www.monitorgray.com/hall-of-fame/

Off to a great start!

We have raised 33% of our goal in the first day! I am very, VERY pleased. Thank you everyone for your support, for your contributions and positive feedback. Wow! I could not ask for more.

But what is even more rewarding, for me, is to receive support from both family, friends, and former business colleagues and from people I don’t even know, people whom I may never have the chance to thank face-to-face. It is incredible to me that complete strangers are moved by what we are working to accomplish and willing to contribute a piece of themselves through funding.

This film has taught me so much about movie making, and now moves to teach me even more about modern social interaction. Amazing.

Thank you! –kai

We are proud to launch our official Kickstarter.com fund raising campaign!

www.kickstarter.com/projects/kaistaats/monitor-gray-a-sci-fi-short-film

Please contribute as you are able –thank you!

The Kickstarter.com fund raising campaign is rescheduled for launch tomorrow, Friday, August 3rd and will run through Saturday evening, the 1st of September.

A summary of our intent and how Kickstarter.com works follows:

Our goal is to produce a Hollywood quality introduction (the first ten minutes) to the story and characters of Monitor Gray, demonstrating our ability as film makers to do it right … and then seek funding to produce the feature or a made-for-TV series.

The total cash outlay this spring was just under $5,000, a trifle amount compared to the cost of a traditional production of this quality. We were fortunate to call upon our combined connections in the Southwest film community, the best of Phoenix’s cast ‘n crew volunteering their time and talent. But travel, food, rentals, and permits added up.

We are now engaged in the arduous task of editing in-house. Soon, the application of computer generated special effects will require paid expertise. As such, we need to raise a roughly $7,500 by the close of August to complete Monitor Gray at the quality we envisioned.

Kickstarter is the #1 “crowd-sourced” fund raising site in the world, a means by which individuals fund books, movies, even prototype inventions. Kickstarter moves millions of dollars per year, mostly through small, individual contributions of less then $100.

Here’s how it works: We pick a goal (ie: $7,500). We launch our campaign and have 30 days to raise the funds through kickstarter.com. If we meet our goal, we keep the funds. If we miss our goal, we receive nothing.

Historically, the first 24 hours are VERY important. The more raised at launch, the greater chance for notoriety on the Kickstarter.com home page and for total success.

The requested contributions will vary from $5, $10, $20, … through $5000 with funding rewards including digital downloads, t-shirts, posters, DVD, … Producer Credit. The next post will provide details.

“This means a great deal to me as Monitor Gray is not only a part of my own education in film and fruition of a twenty year journey for the story, but the potential to do something substantial IF we have the funds to finish the film at the highest quality possible.” –kai