About
From Bedrooms to Billions: The Amiga Years!
£95,299
2,395
Late arrival? PayPal pre-order is still open click here: http://www.frombedroomstobillions.com/amiga
**LAST HOURS! ALL OUT FOR THE STRETCH GOALS !**
Thank you to all of you who have so generously supported us so far, but as we are in the final hours of this campaign please help us reach our stretch goals!
As you will see from the stretch goal plan below the key for us is the production of more content, not just within the film itself but also in the creation of bonus content such as game makings of, extended interviews, and other individual features that add extra insight into the creation of the Amiga itself, specific games, sound tracks and further expansion into subjects such as Demo scene, journalism and many more.
We budgeted out the costs to produce this extra content and then placed certain unique Amiga themed collectible items in-between to make those stretch steps more gradual. The extra content we produced for our previous film ‘From Bedrooms to Billions’ has proved very popular so the more funding we receive will ultimately go into more content including licensing more archive and really expand on the material to make it as best as we can!
Our core desire is to make you as much content as you want to see, there is only going to be one version of this project, so if you want us to ultimately make 5 hours’ worth of high quality, professionally produced content then please help us use these last remaining hours to make that happen as our aim is to make a memorable and lasting feature film on the Amiga.
We've thought long and hard about the other items in the stretch goals and decided to think like collectors, what would we want? Therefore we decided to again keep it simple, unique but also high quality. The bouncing ball badge won’t be cheap plastic, but high quality, high shine metal, with a proper metal pin. The 4 x postcards will be high quality gloss A6 containing the original Amiga Years! concept art by Oliver Frey as well as the finished piece of art.
And finally what can we say about the Floppy Disc Beer Mat? Rare and double sided (of course). Well we call it a beer mat but it’s perfect for any types of liquid based drinking products as well of course water. We could employ an 1980’s style model to produce a photo of how to put a drink down on it but we have a feeling you get the point! The truth is it is something we want on our desk, same as the thinking behind the metal bouncing ball badge and post cards.
However ultimately, if funded we want to get on and make as much content as we can to the same quality as our previous backers would expect. Please help us tell as many people about the Amiga Years! campaign and help us to make the most memorable, in-depth and lasting production we possibly can!
**SIGNED 'AMIGA LEGENDS' POSTCARDS - SPECIAL OFFER!**
In our push to hit stretch goals we are delighted to announce a Postcard special offer if you want all the signed Postcards (all developers see below image) then you can take every set for just £150! Or if you want all the unsigned Postcards (all developers) then just raise your pledge by £75!
What are the postcards?
New packs of 4 x A6 high quality glossy signed POSTCARD sets available for ALL BACKERS. Whatever pledge you are currently on if you want these (see below) simply increase your pledge by £40 for SIGNED (pack of 4) or £10 for UNSIGNED (pack of 4) then send us a message stating which game/developer pack you want (all of them if you wish)!
This is a rare opportunity to grab some iconic gaming history from your Amiga heroes while helping us in our push towards our stretch goals to create more content!
Please note for physical customers once purchased these postcards will be included with your copy of the film when posted to you, however for digital customers please add an additional £2.00 for postage and packing!
Introduction
Welcome to our Kickstarter campaign to produce From Bedrooms to Billions: The Amiga Years! A 90 minute feature documentary that will explore the influence of the Commodore Amiga and how it took video game development, music and publishing to a whole new level and changed the video games industry forever!
We used Kickstarter to fund our previous film called From Bedrooms to Billions that told the story of the UK video games industry from 1979 to the present day and we are turning to it again now in the 30th anniversary year of the release of the Commodore Amiga in the hope that you will support us once again to produce a film that not only celebrates this fantastic machine, but importantly what it did for the video games industry and development in general due to the many ground breaking games that appeared on it.
We found Kickstarter such a wonderful way to really engage our audience and enjoyed making our backers feel part of our project. We now want to explore The Amiga Years! as this was a part of our previous film that for running time reasons we could not explore as deeply as we wanted to and always felt that it would work as a standalone feature documentary.
Therefore it is our intention to film a whole new set of interviews to add to our already extensive list to create a standalone, immersive and highly nostalgic film that really explores why the release of the Commodore Amiga and the era that soon followed was a key period in the evolution of video games.
Though our previous film did focus on the UK perspective we really feel to make this film in the way it should be made it needs to capture that worldwide view, as the games industry at the stage the Amiga really started to influence was very much a global industry. So with this in mind as well as including many new UK contributors we feel it important to feature some of those key US and other European developers, musicians, demo sceners, publishers and journalists to cover this incredible era as thoroughly as possible.
In addition The Amiga Years! represents the era of the 16-bit and higher powered computers so we do intend to reference other important computers as the Atari ST, Acorn Archimedes and others, but it is the Commodore Amiga and the era it represents which will be the key focus and the reason we have titled the film The Amiga Years!
The Story
We will start with the origins, design and release of the Commodore Amiga and the impact it had when first released. From then we will look at where the worldwide games industry was just prior to the Amiga’s release in 1985 and then how, once released, the challenges developers faced creating for a 16-bit machine while still in many ways dealing with a thriving market for 8-bit machines. We will look at elements such as what happened as 8-bit was surpassed? How did the development teams grow and why? Who were the key developers and what were the key game releases? How did the business itself change for developers and publishers and did the issue of piracy truly harm this era?
The Commodore Amiga reset the previous boundaries, the very exploration of what was possible in itself led to an incredibly important and pioneering era where skilled developers were able to strive for new innovations, set free by this incredible technology. We intend to explore what these innovations were and the people behind them.
By the late 1980’s and early 1990’s many countries around the world saw a new wave of developers entering the video games industry, joining many of those original pioneers to work to push video game creation even further. Games from across the world were now readily available everywhere and the UK was suddenly becoming a real global player emerging truly out of its original cottage industry roots of the 8 bit era.
The demo scene was bigger and more influential than ever, having honed their skills in the limited 8-bit days, new machines such as the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST combined with a rapidly expanding and emerging ‘internet’ saw ‘sceners’ thanks to demos among other things playing a major, crucial part in helping to grow the overall interest of programming and video games.
Musicians really began to flourish, significantly boosted by the flexibility and power of machines such as the Commodore Amiga and we will hear how some of the most iconic soundtracks were produced still in the days before CD music was truly available in home video games.
The Magazine Industry for the video games industry saw a whole new breed of Journalist come through, though technically still in its infancy the video games industry did now have a few years under its belt with established genres of game now recognised and understood. These Journalists were fully fledged fans and consumers themselves who had grown up through those early years, seeing firsthand as those early game styles became established. This understanding made them hungrier than anyone to see and report about innovation as they saw it and The Amiga Years! era saw some truly incredible innovations.
Making the original ‘From Bedrooms to Billions’ allowed us to establish links right through the video games industry both past and present. We always treated our interviewees with respect to ensure we covered as much of their career as possible and The Amiga Years! will allow us to go out and add so many new names to our interview list in our quest to create films that are as thorough, entertaining, nostalgic, but importantly as balanced as they can possibly be!
Look and Feel
Our previous film From Bedrooms to Billions used an ensemble approach to tell the story, there was no voice-over, just the interviewees themselves guiding the viewer through combined with a large number of accompanying visuals such as archive footage, photos, magazines and music. We want to continue this style but in addition branch off a little with some new ‘hands on’ sequences where there are demonstrations of set-ups and techniques to really help add to the overall story but also enjoyment for the viewer.
From a filming perspective we shot in full 1080p and aimed for a very high standard of visual production on From Bedrooms to Billions, as we were conscious of the amount of archive and of course video game footage we would need to use so we aimed for an organic ‘in the lens’ feel for all the filmed interviews, adding no green screen or visual effects other than simple name plates and grading to the shots so that when we did cut to game footage or archive it gave it more impact. For The Amiga Years! we will insist on the same, everything to look as crisp and slick as possible.
In addition as a huge amount of our work goes on the researching and sourcing of archive video, film and TV footage, photos, magazines and of course games, so we will keep to the same standards we insisted on for From Bedrooms to Billions, we want to produce something memorable and this is 100% our intention with The Amiga Years!
Release
Our plan is to turn the film around and release it for January 2016. From Bedrooms to Billions took more time due to the huge amount of research, contacting and sourcing of archive and interviewees. However for The Amiga Years! we have a huge head start on that due to how much work has already been done so we aim to film all our new interviews by September 2015 with an intensive post-production of 16 weeks to follow.
We will keep our backers regularly updated on progress right throughout production of The Amiga Years! providing screen shots, clips and early sequences along the way in our 'Backer Zone' just as we did before. This was actually a highlight for us during our previous campaign because we thoroughly enjoyed discussing and sharing sequences in the 'Backer Zone' from the film with our backers.
The Target
We want to turn the film around in less than 12 months and we have no intention of running further campaigns so therefore the £50k is to make all of the film, to the highest quality and then deliver it to all of you.
The money is needed to pay for all the new filming, the editing, sound mixing and design, plus all the post-production elements that give the film that extra edge of quality. In addition during the creation of From Bedrooms to Billions we extensively researched film and video footage archives across the world and discovered a great deal of rare footage, we would like to pay to license in more of this footage to help complement and tell this story as well as also licensing in some commercial music to help us give a flavor of the times the film is largely set in.
Our sole purpose is to shoot, edit and produce a new, standalone film with its own identity and character, any previously shot footage will strictly be unseen and new plus any archive footage and photos we research and use will be the best we can find, and the trailer we have cut is meant to just give a flavor of our intentions. The era of the Amiga is incredibly important so The Amiga Years! will be fresh and new, with an individual style befitting such a remarkable period!
As with our last film Blu-ray and DVD authoring is professionally designed and included, surround audio, DTS, in addition professionally mastered, replicated, high quality printing and packaging, all the elements you would expect from a high quality physical product.
The Rewards
One of the key things for us is making sure that all our backers not only get a great film to the highest possible standard, that they actually enjoy and feel part of not only this campaign but far beyond that, with all backers feeling part of the entire production of the film. Most important for us is that this version, the backer version of The Amiga Years! is unique and never to be repeated by us again. We do this by having the incredibly talented, British video game magazine artist Oliver Frey (CRASH, ZZAP! 64) design a unique and new cover that is only ever to be made available to pre-order backers, and that cover artwork for this film is displayed right at the top of this campaign and here;
…that way you can always point to it and know that you helped make it, you were one of those who backed and believed so as well as getting a great film, you get something that is truly unique because by owning a copy with this cover means you were one of those that funded it into existence! In addition for a slightly higher contribution we are also producing a slip case with the Oliver Frey artwork displayed free of all the film text and logo's for you to enjoy the artwork in all its glory making this a rare, unique and highly collectible item.
In addition we have fantastic A2 Posters of Oliver's new cover artwork, T-Shirts, movie cells, caps and mouse mats, and for higher tiers we even have interviewee photos taken on-set and signed by that specific interviewee.
GamesYouLoved
We want to thank GamesYouLoved who helped promote our previous movie and are part of the strong retro gaming community out there. GamesYouLoved is born out a love of retro games of every description from your childhood. By being reminded of the retro games through images and video, what people say about them and things you were doing at the time, you are unlocking these memories to see, share and enjoy.
Site: www.gamesyouloved.com
Sub: www.youtube.com/gamesyouloved
Follow: www.twitter.com/gamesyouloved
Facebook: www.facebook.com/gamesyouloved
Risks and challenges
We have been producing professionally produced documentaries for nearly 15 years. Our last two motion pictures 'Burlesque Undressed' and 'From Bedrooms to Billions' were released all over the world. Though complex projects involving a great deal of filming in different countries we got them completed and on budget. We are aware of many of the pitfalls, especially when dealing with budgets and schedules and we like to think we don't compromise on quality.
Our previous film raised a lot more on Kickstarter than we asked for so we put that extra budget right back into the film and delivered an extra hour of content for 'all' our backers. In addition we believe in running an open handed campaign, when people write to us there is no corporation or person in-between, the response comes back from us as our backers were (and still are) incredibly special to us both.
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Funding period
- (30 days)