Kickstarter

Just a quick update. Over the winter, I completed the paring down of 15 or so hours of interviews into a 1.5 hour “rough cut.” Prairie Public’s Bob Dambach and Barb Gravel reviewed that rough cut with me in late January and noted what needs to be worked on for the next draft. A friend of mine, Brian Jackson, has been helping me whittle and craft the interviews and narration into a more succinct story without leaving out too many of the good parts. The process of editing is fun, challenging, frustrating, and everything in between. Though things are moving right along, we will not be able to have it finished in May 2013 like we had projected last year. The best bet we have right now is a late fall/early winter 2013 release. I wish that we were able to have it done now, but I hope the extra time we spend on it will be worth it. I’ll keep you in the loop in the meantime!

In this photo, Brian Jackson and I are putting our heads together for the second draft.

I wanted to give you an update of what has been happening with the documentary project. Shortly after the completion of the Kickstarter campaign that you helped to bring about, I was able to begin the on-camera interview process with Prairie Public Television lending their technical expertise. In June we traveled to Williston, Arnegard and Watford City; in July we traveled to Minot, Dickinson and Shadehill, SD; in August we did an interview in Fargo; and September we traveled back to get more interviews in Williston, Watford City and some background footage at the McKenzie County Heritage Park's annual threshing demonstration. In all we have about 15 hours of interviews and background footage that now are being stitched together with narration into a rough draft. The goal is that the final piece will be approximately 57 minutes.

This fall, we hosted a competition to solicit original music that would be used in the background and I am excited to report that we received some high quality submissions from North Dakota musicians! We are currently reviewing those submissions.

Again, thanks very much for your support. Let me know if you have any questions or comments. If you haven't done so already and want to get more updates and see more pictures about the project, click "like" on the project's Facebook page: www.facebook.com/6brothersdocumentary

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

Daniel

In this photo, Prairie Public Television videographer David Geck is getting a shot of the Farland Bell. Looking on is Bob Dambach, director of television and Cassie Larson production assistant.

Thank you everyone for your help in making this a successful Kickstarter campaign! All of the support you have shown has been greatly appreciated.

Since my last update, KX News did a story on the project, which can be viewed here: http://www.kxnet.com/story/17858141/6-brothers-documentary-project. Additionally, Cara Transtrom a blogger originally from North Dakota who now lives in Washington DC wrote a blog post on the project. It can be viewed here: http://www.caramia.us/film/on-the-telling-of-good-stories/

If you would like to follow the progress of this project, if you haven't already, you can follow it on Facebook at www.facebook.com/6brothersdocumentary

Thanks to all of you backers, we met the $5,000 goal last night! Amazing! I really appreciate everything folks have done to help get this project this far already. I've been working on this project for about a year, and sometimes it is easy to feel a little overwhelmed about all the particulars of the project, but your support has given me renewed vigor to push on to complete this project in a way that is as elegantly and historically-accurate as possible. The project got a boost this week with newspaper articles in the McKenzie County Farmer and The Roundup, and was mentioned on many different organizations' Facebook fan pages as well. Some more publicity is still in the works.

All that said, there are still 9 days left of the campaign and new backers to the project are still welcomed. The overall project budget is $74,350 and with this Kickstarter campaign the total funds secured thus far is $54,650--so just under $20,000 remains to be raised. As the Kickstarter campaign draws to a close I will start asking businesses and organizations to help meet the budget, but any additional help from this Kickstarter campaign will make that process less daunting. As you may or may not know, I do not love the fundraising business, but it is a necessary part of the whole process, and so the sooner it is finished, the sooner the project can get completed.

Do you think we could make it to $6,500 in the nine days remaining of this campaign? I hope so. So if you know of others who might be interested in backing this project, or creating more publicity by blogging about it, tweeting about it, writing a newspaper article about it, please share this project page with them.

Again, thank you so much for your support!

I want to share some good news with you all-- The North Dakota Humanities Council recently annouced that they will suppport the documentary project with a $15,000 grant! Now this grant is separate from the Kickstarter project and $5,000 goal, but it is making this project that much more likely that it can happen! Counting the pledges that have been made on here so far, the total project has about 70% of the needed funds committed for the project.

This week and next I will be meeting with businesses and organizations to see about them becoming one of the three remaining "Major Contributors." If you know of a business/organization that is interested in learning more of what that entails, let me know, I've got an information sheet that I can share.

Thanks so much for your support in getting this project as far as it is already. Onwards and upwards!!