Surrounding Game asking for more money?

[cdpruitt]

Hi again everyone,

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.

Cole

[cdpruitt]

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.

Cole

[wineandgolover]

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.

[PaperTiger]

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.

[Kirby]

...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.

...
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.

[sayuu]

Hope I can offer some insight here.

As a video editor, I get paid $250 to $350 per day for freelance projects.
And feature films like these can go up to 8-10k just for editing. Not to mention color grading.

In fact, 30k is hardly enough. These film makers probably don't even make money from it and might even have to pay from their pockets to produce Surrounding Game.

[zslane]

And as a result, greater transparency has been achieved through this thread...

It speaks well to Cole and his crew that they have shown greater openness as a result of this thread.

I wouldn't get too excited about this small victory in the name of transparency. Yes, Cole was shamed, in a sense, into explaining in considerable detail the process he and his team have been going through. I'm sure his conscience feels lighter for it, but the general readership of this forum should understand that it was an extraordinary courtesy that is atypical for film production. I wouldn't go around expecting all such future projects to yield similarly.

And the biggest reason is because it is impractical to do so. Unless the producers are going to take time out of hideously busy schedules to update some sort of production blog on a regular basis, just for the benefit of investors and other online lookeeloos, you aren't likely to hear squat about the production in any detail. For one thing, circumstances change too rapidly and frequently, and keeping everyone not directly involved in production updated is simply not feasible. Nor is the culture of film production likely to change much in this regard just because online funding efforts are more publicly exposed than usual.

Take a look at almost any past small-time, independent film project that started out with a semi-regularly updated blog. It usually didn't take long before updates slowed to a crawl and then the blog fell to more or less complete silence. It's not that filmmakers are irresponsible and have no regard for the concerns of investors. It's that the chaos of production leaves no time for giving everyone tickertape updates of every little thing that has a financial impact.

There's a reason why indie filmmakers are discouraged from seeking funds from individuals (especially friends and relatives) and the general public. I am willing to bet that most who take the Kickstarter route once never return to it again.

[Kirby]

...
I wouldn't get too excited about this small victory in the name of transparency. ....

While I'm hesitant to say that I agree with your entire post, what you've said doesn't strike me as being in significant conflict to what I've said. I do think that a good thing happened in this thread, and I'm happy with leaving it at that.

[PaperTiger]

[..]the general readership of this forum should understand that it was an extraordinary courtesy that is atypical for film production. I wouldn't go around expecting all such future projects to yield similarly.

And the biggest reason is because it is impractical to do so. [..]

I think this is a ridiculous and pretentious attitude. It isn't that hard to keep track of receipts or keep a general log of the major issues. Lots of busy projects manage to do so. You should be doing so anyways to keep track of your budget and project management. Filmaking isn't the only kind of project where things get hectic.

[Kirby]

...

I think this is a ridiculous and pretentious attitude. It isn't that hard to keep track of receipts or keep a general log of the major issues. Lots of busy projects manage to do so. You should be doing so anyways to keep track of your budget and project management. Filmaking isn't the only kind of project where things get hectic.

I can see where you're coming from, and I can't say that I disagree. However, to me, when it comes down to it, without laws on the matter, people are going to do what they want. Some people might be interested in scamming others, and they might be able to legally do so. They might get away with it on Kickstarter projects, for example.

But being open about what you're doing is not only a courtesy, but it helps yourself (as the project owner). In doing so, you establish credibility with the people that are funding you. Of course, people that do these projects have the option of not trying to establish credibility in that way. But it's truly to their benefit, because the contributors can feel like they're a part of the project, and can trust and believe in what they're doing.

Case in point: when this project was first advertised, I didn't donate any money. But after seeing how the team reacted to the constructive criticism in this thread, they established credibility in my eyes and I, too, became one of their financial supporters. Without their being open, I would almost certainly not have participated.

The people doing this project are not "obligated" to be open about their finances and what they are doing. But when they are, they not only benefit those that support them, but they benefit themselves.

[cdpruitt]

Hey everyone,

Wanted to follow up on the thread postings from last week. As promised by the end of the week, last night we made a massive Kickstarter update with more info about budget, expenses, and scope of the project. I hope it's helpful and I encourage you to take a look.

You're right that it's very difficult to be completely open and 100% engaged with the community because a lot of the things we do require an immense amount of time and some level of technical and professional know-how, so it can be very time-consuming to explain everything in terms that the general public can understand. At the risk of losing specifics, it's much easier and more powerful to speak in terms of the potential impact and the general stage of the project, and most Go community members intuitively understand these sort of ideas and challenges faced in trying to promote a Go-based film to the public.

We of course welcome professional and non-professional opinions (and reserve the right to make decisions that we think are best). If our motivations and progress ever feel vague or unavailable for everyone to see, please, ASK US about it! It can be hard to lift the blinders when much of one's time is dedicated to working on something big.

Lastly, I want to make a huge and shameless plug for the collaborative go game on our site http://www.surroundinggamemovie.com. Each day, we add a move based on the votes of everyone who goes to the page and clicks on the board to vote. To our knowledge, it's the first time a game like this has been 'crowdsourced', and it's going to be really cool, with commentary by strong players provided every ten or twenty moves.

Cole

[jts]

There was also hivego.info, but I don't think anyone has played there since last spring.

[Boidhre]

Wanted to follow up on the thread postings from last week. As promised by the end of the week, last night we made a massive Kickstarter update with more info about budget, expenses, and scope of the project. I hope it's helpful and I encourage you to take a look.

Thank you, I noticed it and was glad that you had taken our concerns on board and addressed the issue in a positive way.

[Kirby]

...To our knowledge, it's the first time a game like this has been 'crowdsourced', and it's going to be really cool, with commentary by strong players provided every ten or twenty moves.

Cole

I think there have sometimes been games in similar format. For example, I believe it was on the old godiscussions.com that someone had the idea for a forum-wide game. I think also on IGS, they had some sort of games where people would vote on moves, but that was against a single pro player, I think.

I don't recall a situation where a game was played in exactly the same format as this one, though.

In any case, it's pretty cool!

[GoRo]

... collaborative go game on our site http://www.surroundinggamemovie.com.
... and clicks on the board to vote.

This is a truly wonderful and super-duper-clever idea!
There is one thing I would like you to repair, though:
I accidently clicked on N8 and was welcomed for my vote

I would like to have the opportunity to confirm my
vote. Something like that:

Oh Rainer, that was quite a funny move: N8.
Are you sure you want to do this bloody move?
YES / NO

or maybe a bit less sarcastic:

Thank you for voting. Please confirm N8:
OK / CANCEL

Cool and funny as N8 looks, I vote for 11 = C14, though.

Cheers,
Rainer
(GoChild GoRo with 1662481 points)