About this project

                            - The Bare Bones -

The theme and title for Em magazine's Spring/Summer 2012 video is Bare Bones. The Bare Bones is about the experience of building something from the ground up. The complex elements that form our relationships with the world are often fleeting- What processes allow us to build upon discovery?  This is the question and journey the video will explore. Pitting two characters across an expansive setting, we will literally awaken with the spring into this environment. It will serve as a point of origin, the spark for a brand new process of discovery and creative power within a foreign world.  Where as our last two videos have been experiences of mostly action and movement, this video will feature location and space. In a way, you will uncover the sublime nature of this seemingly limitless place for the first time with the cast and crew. As the camera and viewers evolve within its boundaries, feelings of anxiety, curiosity, understanding, and mastery will follow.

The location is meant to be a complete surprise! We want you to feel as though you have never experienced the landscape before.

- Why We Need Your Help -

As anyone who has been a part of the process knows, film making is one of the most expensive arts today. We've done our absolute best to take every step in keeping the needs of our production as small as possible before appealing to this wonderful community for help. These steps include the entire crew and cast agreeing to work in a completely unpaid capacity, the use of a stark bare minimalist crew, minimal equipment use and transportation (this stuff is really heavy! We can't carry much too far), even calling upon old favors to achieve a discounted camera rental and, of course, the greatest miracle of all:  a total airfare cost less than half the original commercial price. And we'll pack lunches I swear! Unfortunately, even in absorbing many challenges as opportunities, we simply cannot achieve our goals without the support and generosity of our friends, peers, and especially our fans! This is the first time we've felt it necessary to turn to the blessings of friends through an outlet like Kickstarter, and we want so badly to make this video for you!

- The Simple Math of it -

It seems our audiences enjoyed our last promo, Generation Why, enough for it to tally some five thousand views on Vimeo. Just think! If even half of those people (or you, as we hope you did!) enjoyed the video enough to donate just one dollar, we would already be on the plane! The goal we've set was made after careful planning in order to arrange for only most base requirements needed to live up to our own expectations of ourselves and more importantly, those you hold for us. We want to deliver the best possible product that we can to you, and we feel we know exactly what we need to succeed. To anyone donating, we are in your hands. In the end it truly is you that makes all the difference. Every inch eventually adds up to go the distance, and we appreciate any and all resources you can lend to our project!

What your donations are going towards:

• Camera and equipment rental costs
• Airfare for 4 of 5 total cast and crew members--------->  *'*( minus 1 ticket
• Room & Board (motel/hospel, food etc..)                                already! )*'*
• Ground transportation costs----> *'*(cheap sedan seats 5!)*'*
• Production design!
• Production of this semesters issue

                                    - Background -

- The Crew -

The Evvy winning team behind both previous Em Magazine promos will be taking the lead again with Bare Bones. Director/Creator Benjamin Askinas, Now Co-Director/Editor John Curtis, and Director of Cinematography Doug Porter, have been fast friends and frequent collaborators for the past three years, slowly building a diverse collection of short films and work including music videos, documentary packages, opening sequences, advertisements and even still photography. You can see samples of the the teams photography here. Take a look! You could even donate enough to receive a one of a kind medium format photograph taken on set and blown up poster size! And please, watch the past two promo videos by following links near the bottom of this page. You can also watch them in full resolution HD by following the links back to their original Vimeo addresses. We'll have further links up shortly.

- The Magazine -

Every year over 80 unpaid Boston students work to to publish the seasonal issues of Emerson College's Em Magazine. As Emerson's premiere lifestyle publication, Em Magazine provides forward thinking material with savvy (often satirically playful) content. Organized and produced by a non-profit community of tight-knit peers, the magazine has united some of the top talents at Emerson College in an attempt to produce a text representative of its generation's own distinctive voice. The publication is made to meet the expectations of its readers diverse tastes and distributed freely throughout Emerson's campus. You can get a feel for their publication and even download full digital versions ( ! ) by following our link to Em Mag Online.

- The Videos -

Over the last year, we have taken the publication to heart with the production of accompanying video-pieces for each issue. To date, we've made two films, Power and Generation Why, affectionately titled after the themes our friends at the magazine have worked so hard to embody. Last year, we were thrilled to see Power nominated for two of Emerson's prestigious Evvy Awards and ecstatic to watch it walk away with a win for "Best Advertisement". More recently, the gracious volume of viewing response to Generation why has made us feel welcome and eager to take our work to new levels. Bare Bones will be our 3rd promotional video. Our works try to uniquely explore and sum up the ideas each issue represents with its collection of stories, words, and aesthetics. In essence, we try to do for the magazine what the magazine does for Emerson. However, these projects do not seek to act as simply advertisements for the magazine. Instead, we hope they stand as memorable works on their own. One of the reasons we love working with Em Magazine so much is their willingness to accept art in itself as an expression of their own identity; we've yet to be forced into any form of product placement or commercial branding. This, coupled with the fact that Em Mag is in itself a non-profit publication, has left our creative liberties entirely intact. These videos carry as much conceptual meaning for us personally as they do for the magazine. We are proud to represent them as a compliment to the print rather than a mechanical promotional tool.

Benjamin Askinas Photography

                              THANK YOU!!

We cant thank you enough for visiting our Kickstarter page and sincerely hope that you can help us reach our goal in bringing you a new and powerful video!! You can find all of the rewards we're offering for your generosity to the right side of this page, some of which include a few fun, one-of-a-kind offers. Please remember that Em Magazine and its accompanying videos are made for entirely non-profit publication and distribution; created in a purely academic environment. None of us are paid for our work efforts, and we pay the ultimate homage to those who allow us to chase our interest in the arts. We promise to deliver on whatever oaths you'll have us swear because we hold ourselves to you! We never forget what makes our work possible and worth making...YOU! Thank you!