Hi all!

As announced in this thread
http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=7453

we plan to make a Go commercial, that is targeted at potential players that don't know anything about the game. The crowdfunding started today on http://indiegogo.com/playmorego.

Spread the word, and feel free to comment!
Sven

This is exciting, I´d love to have a video to attract attention. Could be used in mainstream articles or the sort to generate interest.

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Founder of Kaya.gs

I admit that I was a bit put off by the teaser you put up before, but I like that you're looking for suggestions. I might not be able to contribute financially, but I'll at least help in translation.

_________________
a1h1 [1d]: You just need to curse the gods and defend.
Good Go = Shape.
Associação Portuguesa de Go

I really like your idea too, and I think many Go players have been hoping someone would do something like this for awhile. If you'd like to write a guest article about it on our site to promote it, please contact us: http://gogameguru.com/contact/

I'm going to try to provide you with some honest feedback because I want this to be as successful as possible, and you've asked for people to tell you what they think. Please don't take it badly.

Like Phelan, I was also put off a bit by your original trailer. Having someone being boring at the start might be funny to Go players, but it's simply boring to anyone else. If I didn't know what the video was about, I would've stopped watching before it got to the interesting part. People are busy, so please don't use this approach for the actual video. The fundamental idea you guys have is good though and hopefully has a lot of potential.

Are there going to be voice overs in the video? If so, I think it would be best if you got someone with a fairly neutral British or American accent to do it, because that's going to sound the most natural and understandable to the widest number of people worldwide. Please don't take this personally. I have an Australian accent and I've experienced first hand that my accent (while not strong) is difficult to understand for people in other countries (even for some other native English speakers). It's something we've talked about when considering making this sort of video ourselves.

Maybe you could create another funding option for businesses who want to support you? The existing options seem to be only for Go clubs. There are enough of us around the world who I'm sure would be happy to help you. Is there some reason why you can't accept this sort of support?

I hope that this is successful and I just want to let you know that you're not really leaving any room for the kinds of businesses who might donate a lot of money in one go. I'm sure you can reach your funding goal with smaller donations from individual players and clubs though, and if you want us to publish a guest article about it we'd be happy to, so it doesn't really matter if that's what you prefer, or have to do.

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David

Go Game Guru: Learn Go | How to Get Better at Go | Go Game Shop | Go Boards | Baduk TV

Hi David, hi all!

Thanks for your feedback! It seems that we're thinking in the same ways...



Your are absolutely right. But the teaser targeted at go players, to raise some interest in our project. The result of the project will be targeted at non-go-players, so of course this approach would not work there. We are absolutely aware of that.



Again, you are right. We discussed that and decided to present the project ourselves. In the end, our accent belongs to us, right? But, as told in the explanation, we are going to be professional. This includes native speakers for voice overs (which will be part of the spot indeed). So no need to worry here.



You are right, these options are currently missing (and yes, for some reason). There will be at least one additional perk for businesses within the next week. Sorry for the delay.



We would definitely like that! I will contact you within the next days, if that's okay for you?

Cheers,
Sven

No worries, just get in touch whenever you have time. (and thanks for allaying my concerns )

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David

Go Game Guru: Learn Go | How to Get Better at Go | Go Game Shop | Go Boards | Baduk TV

Hi David,

concerning the last open issue: we just added a funding option that may be interesting for business.

Regards,
Sven

Hi, guys.

I see you managed to gather funds. Great news.

I would like to translate subs to Serbian language.
There are not so many Serbian players, couple of hundreds maybe, but the goal of the video is to increase that number, isn't it?

Cheers.

Hi vpopovic,

thanks for supporting us! That's the spirit! Please send me your contact information (name/email) and I will add you to the list of translators. I will contact all translators concerning the details during our post production phase. It would be great, if you can find another Serbian native speaker for proofreading your translation as well.

Cheers,
Sven

A month since last post on http://www.playmorego.com/en/
It seems strange to me since new posts were fairly regular previously.
Did something happen?

/Mats

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mohsart - games & books
http://spel.mohsart.se/

No headphones available right now. Can you summarize it?

My understanding: they're taking a break for the summer, but there are currently 4 adverts made, and they'll be released once a week starting from next week.

Clearly I have no idea what amount of money goes into a project like this, but seriously? 8000 dollars for a video project promoting a game much less popular/well known than chess?

The only cost-point I really see is that you need to rent cameras for some time. That's it. Then of course it would be nice if we could get Brad Pit or Johnny Depp for this video, which will mostly be viewed by western nerds (friends of nerds tend to be nerds. I think it's infectious), but what can you do?

Oh, I know! We up our production cost to 5.000.000 USD, that should do it! Chip in, everyone! If we don't reach our goal by Thursday we'll just blow all the money on margaritas, so be sure to donate. A lot.

And if you happen to have some money left at the end of the day, please transfer it to the Kaya.gs project. They really need it!

For one thing, renting professional quality cameras is insanely expensive. You can rent a "cheap" RED camera for about $500 a day in the US, I have no idea what it would cost in Europe, but it would almost certainly be more expensive. Let's assume that it isn't more expensive, however, but you'd probably want at least a couple of cameras for a project like this. So two cameras, $500 a day, that's $1000 a day. Assuming the project only takes a two days to film then, yes, you have money to spare. So far you've only spent $2000.

But what about the fact that a bunch of people are putting in time to do this? Don't they deserve to get paid? Yes, some people want to promote go for no other reason than to promote go, but other people like to be paid for their services. While Germany has no minimum wage laws, we can assume that those involved in the project would like a fair wage. Let's give them $8 an hour, a bit above US minimum wage - to work 20 hours each on the project. That's $160 a person. How many people are involved? 15? So that's another $2400.

Now what about props? Costumes? I suppose you don't need to go crazy on that, but you can easily spend a few hundred. Let's say these guys are frugal. $250. And their crowdsourcing page said they wanted to provide food for their workers. Catering isn't cheap, unless you want them to make a McDonald's run, so there's another $250.

Ah, but the project isn't just about the filming. What about pre-production? You need people to write, scout for locations to film, hire and interview actors and set people. They might like to be paid, so how about a couple of them get $300 for putting 20 hours into that. What about the post-production work? Video editing software to make professional quality projects. We'll assume that we want everything to be on the up-and-up (no Dread Pirates here) so let's see how much with the most basic AVID software runs... Impressive. Another $1000. And I'm guessing the editors want to be paid too, so let's give them another $300 for their work.

That's just $6500. This project should have $1500 to spare! Of course I'm giving low estimates for everything, especially the wages, and I'm not accounting for things like their website and retroactively paying the expenses of their crowdsourcing effort and so forth, but let's say it came down to $6500.

My best friend was a film student at my college and he has told me many stories of how even the best planned film projects end up with problems. He worked on a 35mm project in college where they were budgeted a small amount of film. As in they were given X amount of film and told that was all they could use. When some of the film was damaged accidentally they actually had to cut out a scene. But this isn't a college project and thankfully, if this budget is accurate (I guarantee you it isn't) then hurray! If something goes wrong the whole project isn't ruined.

Filming anything of professional quality is very expensive. When I saw their budget was $8000 my question was not "Why do they need that much?" it was "Why don't they need more?"

_________________
"You have to walk before you can run. Black 1 was a walking move.
I blushed inwardly to recall the ignorant thoughts that had gone through
my mind before, when I had not realized the true worth of Black 1."
-Kageyama Toshiro on proper moves

I think we're rather spoilt by how well-made and professional everything we see on TV is. Your cameras need to be good, and so does your editing software. $8000 probably covers their basic costs and nothing more. I'm quite glad that they're essentially doing the work for free.

(On the other hand, I was very annoyed when The Surrounding Game went from asking for $15,000 to asking for $55,000. I'm very happy that they're taking their free time to make something awesome - it does look like progress is still underway even though they only(!) received $35,000 - but still, I'd very happily have given up my free time to go jet-setting around Asia on other people's money too.)

Ok, good to hear that the project is alive.
Weird though that they don't update the webpage

/Mats

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mohsart - games & books
http://spel.mohsart.se/

Hi all,

sorry for not updating for some time. The most important things:

The project is alive.
We won't update our budget.

Thanks to moyoaji, who totally summarized information according budget. Actually, we will publish some kind of report on how we used the budget in the end, but moyoaji quite got it. Two other important items are equipment (light and everything) and locations (not everything is for free).

Another anouncement: European Go Congress is about to start this weekend. We will publish the first spot in time. The website will be updated until then, too.

Regards,
Sven of playmorego.com

Hi all,

we proudly announce the release of the first (main) spot.



Regards,
Sven

Still no replies? This turned out much better than I expected and I'm looking forward to seeing the others.