About this project
$9,406
170
6/19 NOW ANNOUNCING - Get Your Parents to Donate Weekend!
(more information in FAQ below)
Summary
Wayfaring is a first-of-its-kind docuseries event that follows host Malcolm Freberg and a film crew on a road trip around the United States. Our team is set to leave LA on July 1st and will complete a twenty-day loop of the country, ending back in southern California on July 20th.
During the trip, we’ll be producing a short episode every day -- meaning 20 episodes in 20 days this July, each available on the official Wayfaring site the day after it’s shot.
Herein lies the rub:
Our team doesn’t choose where we drive or what we do each day of the road trip; YOU do. Every major decision – what city to visit, what crazy stunt to attempt – is decided by a public vote via social media. For nearly three weeks this July, all Malcolm’s life choices will be dictated by you, the audience.
Wayfaring isn’t a show, it’s an event. Like a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ book, for twenty days YOU get to choose how this story progresses. Malcolm will fill in the gaps with his own special brand of nonsense, but never before has an audience had complete control over a living, breathing protagonist before.
This adventure isn’t just Malcolm’s – it’s yours as well.
How Voting Works
We’ve partnered with Zoomph, a Social Media Engagement Platform, to host all our polls throughout the trip. Each morning, in conjunction with the episode, we’ll announce the choices for that day’s travel. These locations will be assigned hashtags, and you’ll post your vote to your social media account.
For example, say one day we’re deciding between riding bulls at a dude ranch in Texas, or playing alien-related games in Roswell, New Mexico (these will not necessarily be choices on the trip). The options will be announced at the end of the previous day’s episode, as well as on the Wayfaring website and Twitter account. They’ll be accompanied by unique hashtags, in this case #WFCowboys and #WFAliens (‘WF’ = Wayfaring), which you’ll use to make your choice. Simply post the designated hashtags to your social media account, and you’ve voted!
There will also be links to the Zoomph poll, so you can track the results in real time:
Each poll will have a limited run time. The #WFCowboys vs #WFAliens poll may be open when you wake up and end at 12:30 PM EST/9:30AM PST, but we’ll also be announcing quick, impromptu decisions throughout the day.
Say our crew has to stop for fuel at a gas station in Podunktown, USA -- Wayfaring may poll, "What should Malcolm start a conversation about with the clerk: #WFRoadkillRecipes, #WFCommunism, or #WFFlirt?" You will be dictating every step of this journey.
This is a 20-day live event. These decisions are happening in real time, so you’ve got to stay on your toes and keep your eyes open. Is one of our trip’s travel options your hometown? Get all of your friends to tweet nonstop. Desperate to see Malcolm do something abysmally disgusting? Vote a dozen times, then get your parents to do it another twenty from their accounts. The more you post, the more control you have over Wayfaring (see FAQ for more information on voting).
Why We're Making Wayfaring
Why Wayfaring is on Kickstarter
We’ve got our vehicles and most of our equipment lined up and ready to go. We’ve got a professional 13-person crew committed to making Wayfaring this July. But we need this last chunk to fund the backend. This $9,000 is the bare minimum we need to complete the trip.
While Malcolm continues to claim he can survive on nothing but whiskey and positive thinking for twenty days, the rest of us are going to need to be able to feed ourselves occasionally. We did some crude math, and it turns out fueling two recreational vehicles for a 5,000 mile road trip is no cheap feat. Lodging, permits, final equipment rentals, insurance, legal fees – all these things add up, and we simply cannot make Wayfaring a reality without your help.
Now, if we get our $9,000 (knock on wood), don't be afraid to donate over the mark. Every cent we gain above that goal will be used to make Wayfaring as big and fun as possible. Fireworks, Bourbon Street, Space Camp, Harry Potter wands; those cost money too. The more we have to spend, the more we get to show you. Remember: this money is not just for us, it's for upgrading the awesomesauceness of your options each day.
Reward Tiers
The rewards below $15 are self-explanatory – see the FAQ and video below for a more thorough explanation of how the Toast will work. Every dollar is appreciated, so thank you.
But at $15 and above, you officially become part the Rumpus -- welcome to the party. After the Kickstarter period closes, you will be sent access codes to be used on the Wayfaring website in order to create registered accounts, which will give you even more access and control over the event.
Clown Level donors ($15) get access to an exclusive section of our site, regularly updated with behind-the-scenes footage, deleted scenes, and extended cuts of events. Acrobats ($25) will be emailed links to private polls once a day, not available to the public, giving them even more control over the adventure. Fire Dancers ($75, with limited early buy-ins available for $10 off) will gain access to private, live video Q&A's with Malcolm every third day of the event, where he'll answer all your questions he can get to in an hour.
And there's even cooler rewards above that, exclusively available for our Kickstarter backers. Want a one-on-one phone call with Malcolm from the road? Want to make an executive decision all by yourself for Malcolm and the Wayfaring team? Want to meet us on the road for a day and take part in our shenanigans? All this and more is available to our high-level donors.
Watch your emails on June 26th, and don’t delay in responding. You’ll have less than a week before Wayfaring officially begins on July 1st, and only 48 hours to give us your information and message if you’ve bought into the Toast. See FAQ for more info.
Risks and challenges
"That I'll die doing something stupid."
-Malcolm
"That Malcolm will die doing something stupid."
-Rest of the Wayfaring Team
Aside from that moderately likely scenario, this is an extremely challenging project. It's not an exaggeration when we say no one has ever made a show in this format before -- it's that daunting.
We're going to produce 20 short-form, professionally shot and edited episodes over the course of 20 day event; one per day of the trip, completed at the end of each day of the trip. Most TV shows take months after shooting to edit and piece together their episodes in lavishly comfortable studios; we're going to do all our editing while we're shooting on the road, working each night in dingy motels and stinky campsites. Big studios take their time, go through weeks of debating and re-cutting and re-shooting to get every moment perfect; we're shooting from the hip, and have to work with whatever film we produce that very day. We don't have months to haggle over creative choices, we've got minutes. No one has ever tried anything like this before.
And thats why we're going for it -- because everyone's been saying we're crazy. Because the people who allegedly know what they're talking about have become conditioned to only attempt the simple and safe, the same old formulaic shows you see season after season. But the ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that do.
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Funding period
- (14 days)