Book & Lyrics
Bobby Sample
Music
Josh Hontz
Bobby Sample
Connor Sample
Katie Sample
Based on the Story by
Hans Christian Andersen
May 6, 2013
So our Kickstarter project turned into our Kickstand project a little over halfway through the pledge period, plateauing at about half of our funding goal. Now that our allotted 30 days are up, that means our generous pledgers are off the hook, and that Kickstarter.com will not be a source of funding The Flying Trunk.
The good news is, outside of Kickstarter, The Flying Trunk is no Kickstand project. Of course the show goes on regardless of this small disappointment! We're sticking to our goal of releasing the CD in fall, and as for putting it on stage next year, we're confident of having good news to share very soon.
Why didn't Kickstarter pan out? That discussion could go on for pages -- and does so, elsewhere on the Web. In our case, we tried to branch out to online groups and social networks beyond our immediate friends, family and local theater folk to plug this pledge drive -- but probably nowhere near enough. We have jobs, school and other art projects taking up the time we would need to expand our marketing much more beyond our usual social networking, blogs and media. You also have to name a theater to get a theater project funded. I think that even among our own friends and local network, who face so many fund raising pleas out there, it makes a difference for a project to be tied to an organization that has it slated for immediate production. For us, that's a later stage of fund raising. In a sort of Catch-22 situation, Kickstarter helped us pitch the interest we needed to make that happen, albeit not on a matching schedule. I think the right phrase here is, "It's all good."
The shortcomings of our first crowdfunding attempt are pretty understandable, but we remain very grateful for all the shows of support we got from friends, family and strangers whether they pledged or not. Stay tuned for more of our progress!
Bobby