It's only 11:40 at night - although it feels closer to 4:30 in the morning, perhaps that has something to do with my going through a phase where I regularly wake up at 2 in the morning and wander around until after 5. In any case - it's been over 3 weeks since I wrote the following: 

It’s 10:30 pm and I’m sitting in the dining room of Erica’s Grandmother’s farm-house, in 6 days I board a one-way train that will take me to Union Station, Los Angeles; that thought holds a lot of weight on a personal level. It means that Erica and I will be, yet again, 2,000 miles apart - it means that for 3 days straight I’ll be taking my showers in a cramped Amtrak bathroom sink - but it also means that I am behind in publishing our Kickstarter campaign; a campaign that’s sole-intention is to allow Amanda and I to finish FToM by March-April of next year. 

I am again back at Erica's Grandmother's farm-house - sitting at the same dinning room table... but things are very different here. I did leave for Los Angeles... I arrived on Labor Day and accepted a job that same night editing two different sizzle-reels for Blip.tv... I saw friends and did my best to reconnect with the town I hadn't seen in 16 months. I attended an office-warming event and tried to not have a anti-social panic-attack while quietly sneaking past the groups and clicks and elbo-rubbing that made-up the 400+ attendance. 

Then - the morning after the event - something happened, something that Erica and I thought / hoped was still another month maybe two away - her Grandmother passed-away in her sleep the afternoon of the 17th. Erica had been here in KY living with and taking care of her - I took it a lot harder than I thought I would - maybe if only because I knew what her relationship was with Erica. The service was the morning of 21st, and since then Erica and I have been here at the farm-house taking care of the things that are usually in need of taking-care when someone passes-away. I guess I have a lot of thoughts about that... but I don't quite know what to write down. So... I'll just leave it at that. 

But why did I sit down and begin to write these personal things on a film related production-blog? Because I have made a mistake - I have launched an ambitious campaign during a 45 day period where so far I have: 

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• Spent two weeks packing up our entire apartment and putting 90% of our belongings into storage. 
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• Moved from Ypsilanti, MI to KY. Spending a few weeks helping Erica with her Grandmother and getting us settled into the farm-house.
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• Launched our Kickstarter campaign - nearly 20 days later then when I had hoped to launch it.
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• Left by train for Los Angeles. Spent three days sitting in the lobby-car writing the next part to 64 Days. 
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• Arrived at Union Station with about $80 to my name - took on an editing job that lasted 10 straight days. 
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• Took a flight back to KY for the funeral and to be here for Erica... 
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The point I am getting at is - I've neglected the KSR campaign terribly. Not to mention that in a week from now I'll be traveling to MI for my Dad's wedding and to film an interview I was hired to do. My neglect and bad-timing has resulted in not getting FToM infront of new people - at least not at the level necessary to pull-off an all-or-nothing funding campaign to finish the entire film. 

So, what do we do now? Amanda and I are 99% convinced that it would be best to pull the campaign and re-think the next steps before launching again, once I'm back in Los Angeles (in Oct) and settled in one place. All this moving and traveling by truck and train and airplane has left me a mess - and I won't be able to make good on my part in releasing part 5 by the end of this month. And I don't feel comfortable starting off on such a bad foot - to fall behind on the announced schedule 3 months in is one thing, to fall flat on my face right out of the gate is another. 

This will not be our first set-back and it will most-likely not be our last. The film does still need a tremendous amount of support before completion - wether that support comes from public-backing or from somewhere else is something Amanda and I are going to need to think more about. 

I need to express our deep appreciation to all of you who have helped Amanda and I get this far with FToM - I hope this decision doesn't result in breaking people's trust in us or in our project. I am only asking that you give me a little bit of time to pick myself back up - take my belongings out from storage in Ypsi - and drive back to Los Angeles to start a new life with Erica. 

Is FToM on hold until further notice / or until we launch another KSR campaign? No, not at all. I will continue to make time for the film as I have always done during the last 6 years. It's a slow process - but it's a better alternative than waiting until "everything is perfect". This campaign was only an opportunity for us to commit full-time for 6 months and, most importantly, to pay the people that we will need to pay for services such as voice-over, scoring, sound design, color grading. 

If any of you have questions or comments - if any of you are upset or relieved - if any of you have ideas or state-secrets you want to leak, then please let us know in the comments or email us directly info [at] FToMfilm dot com. 

Only 34 days left in our Kickstarter and we have 16 amazing supporters to thank so far!

Being that the film's campaign is still under 10% we are not disillusioned that this climb could be too steep in the next 34 days - but anything is possible, and with enough people taking the time to reblog our campaign video, or twittering about the film, or writing their friends to personally let them know about a project that they've been following... with enough word-of-mouth this campaign could be successful.

It makes me a little dizzy to think about reaching our goal and what that means for the next several months - but it is exciting and I would love nothing more than to be able to work full-time on FToM. We can do this - it won't be easy, but nothing worth doing ever is.

Amanda and I ran to the Van Nuys Kinko’s yesterday to print off some of our 11x17 FToM flyers :)

If you want to print off your own flyers you can grab the PDFs here: http://cl.ly/​2M0u

When we first posted the KSR intro video for Everything Feels Connected, Alyss Black wrote this on Vimeo:

Oh my gosh, Mike, you have no idea how excited I am for your film!! If you want, I can put up flyers to spread the buzz around Philly!! Just let me know what I can do to help! :D

Since the above comment I’ve also received an email and a facebook post asking for the same FToM flyers. I’m a little rusty when it comes to Photoshop, but I hope these three 11x17 flyers are a good start.

I’m going to Kinko’s later today to print a few off - if you aren’t able to make it to a copy-shop and want a few to post locally, let us know in the comments here and we’ll try our best to get you a few. For those of you who are able and willing to print some of these off - be sure to take some photos or even video of you doing so! We’d love to share here on the blog.

To download these three flyers - just click the image above or click here to start your download (9.2 MBs). Thank you for all the support and encouragement!

Hello. Want a free FToM t-shirt, a handful of stickers and buttons, plus the love and gratitude of two first-time filmmakers? Just click the giant reblog button above :)

Each Wednesday during our Kickstarter campaign, which runs until the middle of October, we are going to randomly select one of the amazing people who helped share the above video and send them an FToM ♥ care-package.

We’ll reblog this video each week with an announcement on who snagged a package and a short update on how the campaign is going. If you happened to not be picked at the end of the week, you can reblog to re-enter. xo.

2 days in to our Kickstarter and we have 8 amazing supporters to thank so far!

We have a long, long ways to go if we want to pull of this 6-month push to finish the film - and we need a lot of help in reaching new people. If you have any ideas of ways we could better encourage sharing, we would love to hear them.

This campaign has been running for 37 minutes - and we've already broken $250!

I have to say... I have been a wreck this last month trying to prepare and budget and plan this campaign, all while moving around the country from Ypsi to Stanford and soon to Los Angeles. I can't remember a time when I've felt *more* nervous about the future of FToM than I have felt these last few weeks. Hitting publish tonight on this campaign wasn't easy for what-ever reason.

Checking in on this campaign, after just a little more than a half-hour of being live - expecting to find only chirping crickets - and seeing that four people already committed their support was such a great relief. It's made me feel much more confident about these next 50 days. Thank you ♥