Kickstarter

To all those that have made their mailing payments for the UK, Can, Den, France, Aus, and NZ it's coming in swiftly and I head to the USPS every day. 

I will finish sending out the rewards this week and then close the mail room down.  So, if you have not provided an address to send to Kickstarter levels that have rewards, please do so right away. I really have to get cracking on taping, content provision, research, and production. Ken Kambara has found he could not afford to be the research/media/producer once the Kickstarter funded was activated, and I need to replace him. I can't tell you how much he is missed!      

Thanks to you all, address or not. I am grateful to you all and it will be a challenge to make this film, but the subject is worth supporting. (especially now while we're in the FLU season) but also because  once the AHCA Insurance requirement kicks in this fall. We'll see what that brings. Maybe I'll get insurance again.                                                                                                                   Paul

A Longform Message with Backer Rewards Update Plus

I've heard this. (more than once) "I've never gotten ANY rewards from any Kickstarter I backed". This was from friend/backer Patricia Fabricant. Did she get her Tunick print, DVD and CD? Yes. I met her at a party at Lisa Levy's with their backer packs. 

Most of you understand that film making is a method of creating something that has methods and a rule book, but they may only come into play in stages. In my way of making a film, an idea clobbers me (Guest of …), someone hires me, or in this case its doctor's orders. This particular project is less planning and more like being in a battle or a trading pit at times, decisions have to be made quickly, there's action, and there are long slogs where one just simply does chores.  Kickstarter is part of the production, it's like a gas tank filled with a hundred glasses of fuel. You've done your part, and now my part is how to make sure you get a ticket to the show. Anyone can create a Kickstarter, fewer can succeed, and even fewer deliver on their rewards. I promise you that I will deliver, even though it's slow because I'm doing it. I suck at it, but there is something about it, I've become a shipping dept..(In 1984 I was a bike messenger.) Only now every package makes me think about you, and how you made my year. It was the biggest good thing of 2012. I wish I could hug you and swing you around!

What is production? In film, it's shooting a film. The actual camera taping something through a lens and all that makes that moment happen. Kickstarter is production. It was two months of planning, writing, studying other projects successful and not, mailing lists and social networking. Facebook, for me, is the great date site without dating. Its the entertainment social network. When Kickstarter bloomed for me, Spencer had just pulled off a giant project in Israel. I thought, what better test is there than a Kick? You find out if you have something someone wants, it is amazing. Your project either kills, gets by, or dies right in front of an audience. Its new, with a huge learning curve. 

Ken, Sono, and I set up the outreach structure, Ken on stats and social networks, financial projections, banker, Sono on helping me with graphics, mailing lists and service, pay buttons, and I wrote, shot, and created the copy and videos along with organizing artist contributions for rewards with Don Chambers. Lisa Levy, Brian Alfred, Fred Tomaselli, and a big one with Spencer Tunick. The delivery of the rewards was estimated, but I handled the production of rewards promised. Kickstarter takes 7% of the gross right off the top. Production of rewards took until November. It's taxable income, funds have been held back. It will take time to get to you all, especially foreign backers. Please be patient. We didn't make the net killing the numbers show. I went out on a limb to get it to the Kick stage and we just barely made it over the goal. 2012 was one tough ass kicker year, so long 2012, don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Below are snaps of the packaging and mailing process, so you understand that it's been a one dude job. Not exactly according to plan, but one does what one has to. You will get your reward. My word.

I'm set to begin shooting Mercer St. phase 4 in early January. Then in the fall the AHCA Insurance phase sets in so that must be addressed. President Obama was certainly a factor there! Kickstarter and EGBOK are interconnected - stories from backers are part of the story, its personal, and I cannot minimize the importance of relationships to make this thing work. But Kick is about 1/5 of what it will take to finish a final cut. That is a cheap hopeful estimate. Its audacious and dependent on good will. (it always has been for 20 years)

In 2011, I started shooting before I knew what I was even doing it for except that Daryl Isaacs is my doctor, and more than just a friend. He was one of the test crew for the final cut process of my last feature doc. I knew his family, I've had Thanksgiving at his house. He laid out the litany that was to be a movie I did not expect. I did want to do a short film on his involvement on art therapy for a certain doctor, him. He was unique, someone who peaked my curiosity because he himself dispensed truckloads of advice, diagnosis, referrals, medicines, healing, dietary regimens, and yet was himself as he stated publicly "the fattest man in Soho". Even so, he's is a force of nature. I worry about him sometimes. Who worries about their doctor? If you have a good one be thankful, independent primary physicians are more rare than auto mechanics.

In the YouTube video I produced in September http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCpFFU4SlQ8 Minnette Lehmann (was married 43 yrs to a Dr.) in San Francisco. Through the interview we uncover that if it were not for her long time family doctor, her teen daughter would not have lived for long. But her daughter lived because her doctor saw a problem, and immediately took steps to save her life. That video interview took three days to get set up. Not that many people have seen the video, but it supports the film's primary goal - and now the New York Times JUST CAME OUT with this article (12.20/12) http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/20/where-have-all-the-primary-care-doctors-gone/?partner=rss&emc=rss hmmm? The point is Mercer St. Medical Case has been a lone nut on a soapbox with a sign, while the NYT gets a big audience - but I've worked with NYT before and if we make it to a bigger stage, they may back us up once again. There are other interviews in the pipe unprocessed. Dr. Isaacs put me in touch with Malcolm Gladwell so I have some hope he will be weighing in. If you have anyone that could shed light, please get in touch with me.

If you have any questions, I always answer. Just use the message board through Kickstarter, that way I know how to keep files straight for now.

Have a good one, my sisters and brothers.
Paul