3 Reasons We Changed Our Kickstarter Video

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By now, you’ve all heard about our Kickstarter for an Oscar® campaign, and if you haven’t, you can learn more here.

Our Campaign to Give Back to You

Let’s face it…we all know that sometimes Kickstarter campaigns can tire everyone out.

Since we don’t believe in asking without giving, we’re working to provide something of real value every day we bug you to join our effort to fund our Academy Award® campaign.

So far we’ve given back some free motion graphics a tip on getting more FB likes for your own Kickstarter projects, and this post with the best blog posts we found, helping us earn $20,000 in just 48 hours.

A Risky Move

Today, we’re going to let you in why we made what may be our riskiest move to date: we changed our Kickstarter video.

Success?

We still have 39 days left in our Kickstarter campaign, and so far we’re at $46,415.

Thanks to many of you, we reached the bare-minimum goal we needed to get through DocuWeeks™ ($37,000) in just 5 days and 5 hours. We were stunned, and grateful beyond words.

The Dream…

has always been to far surpass our Kickstarter goal, and to use this campaign as a new way to distribute an independent film.

How?

You probably know we’re big fans of Jon Reiss and his book Think Outside the Box Office (check out video number 2 here.)

In his book, Jon breaks down how to distribute a movie yourself, in theaters across the USA, for around $100,000.

That amount from Jon’s book is what we’re shooting for.

So Why Change Our Video?

Clearly, the original video has done well.

We’re already about $10,000 over our initial goal, and people everywhere are connecting with Steve and his message that “It’s never too late to chase your dreams.”

But to truly chase the six figure dream, we had some big issues we felt needed addressing.

  1. People Thought Our Campaign Was Over

    Many, many people sent emails asking if they should still give, or asking why they should give if we’d reached our goal.

    And those were just the people we heard from.

    Even though our initial video illustrated our hope to far surpass our Kickstarter goal and bring Steve and the movie to theaters everywhere, that message was not landing with people.

    We had to re-emphasize that point.

  2. The Stakes Have Changed

    Our initial video focused on the immediate stakes: if we don’t make $37,000, we get nothing, and no rewards go out (Kickstarter is an all or nothing platform.)

    Since we’re a good distance past our goal, the video no longer works.

    3. We felt we needed to focus on the next step in Steve’s dream: bringing the movie to theaters everywhere.

  3. You Have to Ask for What You Want

    Our old video focused on $37,000.

    It was time to offer people a better explanation of why we hoped to raise $100,000 in our main video…and more important than that, ask for it, loud and clear.

    You can’t expect to get what you need if you never ask.

    4. A Big Update, Not a Brand New Video

    The original video is full of material that comes directly from our hearts, and we had no intention of losing those moments.

    So we shot an “update” that we added to the front of the video with Steve answering the big question (“Is it over?”), kept the important information about Dying to do Letterman for people who are new to the project, and focused less on DocuWeeks™ and more on Steve’s dream to play in theaters everywhere.

    Will it Work?

    Head on over, have a look, and let us know what you think. 39 days to go… please help us get there.

    If you haven’t already, please pledge to our project. As little as one dollar will get you a comedy mp3, and $50 and above includes a personalized I’M DYING TO button hand-written by Steve, and a copy of the special edition DVD with tons of extras.

    You can pledge here.

    Best,
    Joke and Biagio