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Sure, mmhmm...

Anyway, here's this on the latest Blogdanovich.

They just added some new perks, including a "Special Thanks" credit in the movie. ($750) Also Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach just posted a video of support.

Looks like the $50k Welles scrapbook is no longer listed, too (rather than being listed as purchased).

Beatrice Welles held that far too much adhesive was used in re-adhering some of the newsprint elements into the scrapbook and so it had to go for not matching Welles' intended vision, unless of course the Indiegogo redirected its recipient to be an exciting new handbag project involving gold-flecked fringe

Seriously though, why are there not more handbag rewards? Do they want this project to fail?

For anyone who was skeptical about donating before, Brett Ratner is here to change your mind

I know it's not right to tell other people what to do with their money, but hopefully these directors can give afford a meaningful contribution that will put this over the top.

Drucker wrote:I know it's not right to tell other people what to do with their money, but hopefully these directors can give afford a meaningful contribution that will put this over the top.

Yeah, Ratner and Abrams alone could probably finance this with money they forgot they even had.

The perks have evolved a bit more. Meanwhile they're a few thousand short of $200k after 12 days.

The new various producer credits seem to be directly marketed towards the Hollywood crowd that everyone seems to be complaining about.

It's getting pretty bad. 18 days left and they haven't even hit a quarter of a million.

They moved the deadline back another couple weeks (currently at 30 days), and are at 24% of funding. Still haven't sold any of the high dollar producer rewards.

It looks like they also halved the amount they're raising, from $2 million to $1 million.

Maybe one of the few (cough, cough) deep pockets from Hollywood changed their minds and decided it was worthwhile.

Apparently they've found matching funds in Europe, hence the drop to a million. Still seems like they won't make it, but we'll see.

At this point, a quarter of a million in a month will definitely be tough - probably most, if not all, of the likely supporters who aren't extremely wealthy are already on board.

But bear in mind, there's a long list of auteurs from Steven Spielberg to Steven Soderbergh who have gotten or personally coughed up much more money to help out filmmakers they've admired.

The only way this campaign will reach its goal is if a wealthy auteur like a Spielberg steps in and does the right thing.

Which leads me to ask -- what will happen if this campaign does not reach $1 million? So much already has been done that it seems like the film will still be completed at some point, no?

I don't think the campaign will end. They'll just kick the funding down the road another month, rinse/repeat.

criterion10 wrote:The only way this campaign will reach its goal is if a wealthy auteur like a Spielberg steps in and does the right thing.

Which leads me to ask -- what will happen if this campaign does not reach $1 million? So much already has been done that it seems like the film will still be completed at some point, no?

If they don't get to a million in 30 days, they don't get the matching million in funds from Europe, but would keep whatever they did raise. I don't know where that leaves the producers in terms of where to go next, though.

I can understand the reluctance to donate. This film's completion has been rumored for so many years. Back in 2006 when I met Bogdanovich at a book signing he said they hoped to get the film released soon on Showtime.

Now we're to believe it needs $2,000,000 worth of work to complete but back in 2006 it was sort of "close" to completion?

Unless they're extremely wealthy and in a position to be generous (i.e. Spielberg), it's ludicrous to think a filmmaker like Noah Baumbach or Wes Anderson is going to give money when they can barely finance their own films.

I believe all the talk of "close to completion" in years past was in relation to clearing the legal obstacles to finish the film. Now those obstacles have been cleared and money is needed to simply transfer the miles of negative and complete all of the post-production. When SHOWTIME was still a player in this over a decade ago, the figure being bandied about was $3 million. Given that the producers believe they can deliver a finished product for $2 million in today's dollars probably means that considerable money has already been spent. The producers hoped to get the remaining funds through a distribution deal (note that SHOWTIME is no longer involved although the man behind that deal made a respectable donation to the Indiegogo campaign). When distributors wanted to see something closer to a finished product before closing a deal, the producers started up the crowd-funding campaign.

/snipped/

You didn't understand what I said, and it doesn't sound like you quite understand what post-production would generally involve in terms of cost.

If Wes Anderson has a movie with, say, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Bruce Willis/George Clooney/pick-an-A-list-star attached, no, it's not hard to find someone who will put up some money for it. But to make it financially work - i.e. what he needs to physically produce what's on screen and what he can actually raise to finance the film - anyone who works on his films typically takes a big pay cut. In the case of the stars, that usually means working for scale, something they've all mentioned many times in interviews. (Bill Murray on The Grand Budapest Hotel: "It’s this crazy thing where you’re asked to work long hours. You end up spending more money on tips than you make on the movie.”) It can even mean unorthodox demands like having the actors deal with their own make-up, etc. He can get actors to agree to that because of who he is, but it's still asking a lot. It's not like everyone drops everything, pushes potential projects aside and gladly lets their income stream take a huge hit the second he approaches them about a movie he wants to do. Financially, it takes a lot of effort to make these happen.

Second, "hiring a few folks to assemble to footage according to Welles's notes" isn't inaccurate, but it's like saying "you need bypass surgery so let's pay a few folks to get you back on your feet," it glances over a boatload of important details. This is an avant-garde film, how detailed do you think Welles' notes can be? I highly doubt he's got pages telling them exactly which frame of which reel to use at exactly which spot at what duration, if it were that specific, you can probably get anyone who knows how to use the equipment to do it. Furthermore, they're hiring people who have done work on high profile projects, which means not only paying everyone union pay, but setting them up at a post-production house - equipment, time, space, etc. costs a lot of money. If there's anything they need to clear - and in this day and age, a lot of stuff has to be cleared unless you want to deal with more lawsuits - that can cost a lot of money too. (And I'm not talking about ownership rights of the film, I mean mundane stuff that eats up a lot of time and money - if you have something in the background of a shot that's copyrighted, that's something you'd need to clear.) The process of finishing a film - even to just make a DCP - will cost a lot with something that was originally shot on film. It's not like a college student who can just go back to some video footage he has on a hard drive, the on-line process alone will cost a hefty amount of change.

If this was a micro budget film limited to a few festivals, you can probably get away with a lot of stuff, but for something that's (hopefully) going to be made widely available, there's a lot to deal with.