Hello! So yesterday the Indiegogo campaign closed out at $925, meaning we got 2% of our funding goal. At that funding level, we will soon be reimbursing people for their pledges. Once again I’d like to thank every backer for contributing to the project this time and hopefully next time the next campaign will go better.

At the moment, Indiegogo isn’t letting me refund the money so we’re going to do that once it’s been handed to us (the week of March 20th). When that happens, we’ll contact you and figure out a way to refund the donation whether it be through paypal or some other way.

We’re also suspending the blog for the moment. I’ve been working on this project for 404 days so I’ll also take a few days to take a break. We’ll keep working on bringing the project to life, including potentially trying a new campaign in the future, but the purpose of the daily updates was to generate interest for the campaign.

If we decide to do a new campaign, we’ll bring the blog back. But for now, we’ll work on the project as we can and deliver a great movie. In the meantime, we’ll also be working on a few short films.

Today we kept working on the last day of the Indiegogo campaign in an attempt to have a strong finish. We’re at $850 at the moment which means that we’ll likely have to refund money but we’re not giving up just yet: if we have a real momentum surge in these last hours, we can maybe get to a funding level where we can do the film this year!

If not, we’ll refund the money, thank you for your support, and keep you updated periodically on the project’s future. We likely won’t do daily updates anymore since the whole purpose of the blog was to get interest and thus get funding but if it didn’t work, there’s no reason to keep it up for the moment.

We’ll see an update tomorrow but we’ll keep working at getting people to check us out and hopefully become backers!

Today we kept working at spreading the word for the Indiegogo campaign as we enter the weekend. This will be the last chance to donate and gain momentum so we’re busy at spreading the word one final time. This involves also scheduling messages for the weekend. We’re going to make sure that for the last couple of days and up to the last minute, people are at least aware that our campaign is going on and ending to give people a chance to donate.

Depending on how it goes will determine whether or not there are updates this weekend. If we start to see some real momentum, we’ll make sure an update on Saturday and Sunday comes out. If not, the next update will come Monday once the campaign is over as we look over what went wrong (or right). But just because there aren’t updates doesn’t mean the word won’t be spread or we won’t be around to answer questions or address any feedback.

We’ll be around, hard at work, trying to create some last minute momentum.

Today was mostly the same as the last few days: work at spreading the work. We are hoping to still get some contributions this weekend, the last real opportunity to donate money to Eternal Camping. If we see some real momentum we’ll consider extending the deadline but otherwise, it’ll be the end of the campaign and we’ll refund the money. We believe strongly in this project which is why we’re not willing to throw our towel and quit just because we aren’t seeing the numbers we need to get funding: if you are considering donating, know that getting us closer to $5,000 will help in creating momentum and will lead to the film being done this year.

Today is the 400th day that we’ve worked straight on Eternal Camping. We had been hoping that we’ve been at least partially funded by now but so far that has yet to happen. We are still working hard to try and get to at least $5,000 by the end of the campaign on Monday even though at this rate, that’s quite a hill to climb. But it’s a hill we will keep climbing not only because we have been working on this for over a year now but because we really do believe in Eternal Camping.

It’s true that today is more or less the same as yesterday: keep spreading the word and keep Eternal Camping at the back of the minds of potential backers. But even though we seem to be stuck at $830, we also thought it’d be worthwhile to at least commemorate the 400th day.

If you’ve been following the project from the beginning, you know that when I first started working on Eternal Camping, I was alone. I had an idea but it wasn’t fully fleshed out or developed. I eventually did develop it, I crafted the characters, and came up with a plot outline. From that plot outline I crafted a script that’s been a popular read with everyone I showed it to. There’s been some changes to the script since then but the core of it remains the same.

From then on, I did some preproduction work. This is about the time that I brought Jeffrey on board. Together we worked out a budget of $250,000, lowered it to about $50,000, and made areas where we could cut it down dramatically if we failed to raise $50k. We did a shooting list and did other work. It was quite a journey and then January of last year, I felt confident in the progress we had made to start working on the Indiegogo campaign.

It took a year to launch this project. This wasn’t something we just did: the video took about a year to produce and had some multiple iterations before the final product you saw. Some of them were very rough videos. We also worked on the page and tried to build up a social media following before we launched. We succeeded in a lot of these things: we do have over 1,500 likes on Facebook, the video we finished is pretty good, and we remain proud of the work we did on the page.

This is why we’re committed to finding a way to make Eternal Camping work if this campaign doesn’t work. We do have some money set aside to help finance the movie but if we don’t raise a minimum, it is going to take longer for us to shoot the film. That’s okay. Hacksaw Ridge was a movie that took over a decade to get to the screen and it was one of the most amazing films last year.

If we do get some level of funding through Indiegogo, we can shoot the movie this summer. We will have the resources to get the talent and crew we need to ensure we have great production value.

Since this is the 400th day of working on the project, I feel like I should also once again thank the people who have been critical in getting the project to this stage: my parents, my sister, Jeffrey Santos, Maria Terentieva, Chris Harvey, the voice actors who helped with the teaser, and most importantly God. Whatever happens over the next remaining days, these people have supported me with my crazy dream of making a movie.

400 days in but no matter how many days it’ll take, we’ll finish Eternal Camping!

We kept working on spreading the word of the campaign to the public including new tweets, posts, and generally trying to make sure everyone we know is aware of the project. We know that right now we’re not raising as much money as we were last week but we are in the middle stretch of the campaign. Usually campaigns will see a boost on the final days so right now the goal is to keep trying to get backers now but also to keep the project in the back of the minds for those who want to donate but are waiting until the last minute. We still have six days left and as long as the campaign lasts, we’re going to keep working to see if we can get some level of funding!

That’s all for today but if you have any questions or feedback, make sure to let us know!

Today we kept working on spreading the word. To be honest, there probably isn’t much left we can do except that to make the campaign a success. We’re hitting our friends and family on social media and trying to get as much attention as possible on Facebook and Twitter. Since Instagram demands a picture for every post, we haven’t really concentrated that hard there.

We’ve had some success from Facebook last week: almost half of our backers followed our Facebook link before donating to the site. The rest were split between the contacts we e-mailed and a message board I ran. Interestingly enough, only one backer has come from our twitter link. Our backers do seem to be primarily family and friends. We’re thankful for your support so far!

We’ll keep trying this week to create some real momentum. If we can significantly increase our backers and the amount of money we’ve raised then we’ll extend the deadline. It isn’t over until the actual campaign has ended!  If you haven’t already, make sure to share the campaign with the people you know!

Today we kept working on spreading the word! We’ve also started communicating with some people who had promised to donate over the weekend. At least one of them has delivered so far and we do expect the rest to follow suit: we’re now up to $830. We’ve also been taking a look at what has worked into bringing backers in: one of the most popular sources is a forum I actually run, some family, and a few friends. So far we’ve had no real conversion from the people who liked us on Facebook .

We’re not entirely sure why we haven’t been able to get any of the 1,500 people who liked us to donate to the page. We’ve gotten no feedback from them either. They could be waiting to see if the campaign was going to have some real momentum before dedicating their resources. If at least some of them had been donating, we’d be a lot closer to the goal and probably have enough money by now to at least fund a bare-bones version of the movie.

Now we still have a week left. If you are skeptical about donating, we really would like your feedback. Not just to see if we could convince you to donate but also to see where we could improve the project to gain some momentum this last week.

We’ll keep trying to hit our goal and trying to see if we can at least raise $5,000 over this week! If not, we’ll of course refund our backers.

We won’t be posting an update tomorrow, but we’ll be doing the same as the last few days: keep posting updates, keep trying to get people to donate, keep trying to get funded.

Today we kept working on the Indiegogo campaign. We’ve been sending out some more tweets and Facebook posts. We also worked on some potential press releases-we’ll see if those have any result. In general, we’re hoping to use the press to increase our exposure but we’ll see if that works.

If we’re being brutally honest, at $800 after one week, we likely won’t meet the $50,000 goal. We’d need to raise $49,200 in a single week. We are discussing the possibility of extending the deadline but right now that likely will only happen if we start to see some real momentum in the campaign.

The good news is that once again, this is a flexible goal situation. If we raise enough money that we can make some painful budgeting decisions AND still make the movie, we can do that and make Eternal Camping a reality. If you are thinking about donating, helping us get to that stage is still a way to help us. We can still make this movie true, we just need the help of people who think this would make a great film!

We continued to work on spreading the word about the Indiegogo campaign. As of the writing of this entry, we didn’t seem to get any new backers but we did get more promises of donations tomorrow or over the weekend. Generally campaigns to see a slow-down between the first couple days and this mid-period before picking up at the end but we’re hoping that with the weekend, we can create some real momentum. We still have about a week left and on Monday, we’ll decide if it’s worth extending the deadline beyond that but we’re still committed to getting funded.

In case you are wondering, we’ve been focusing our attention on a movie forum that I run and Facebook as well as twitter. We’ve also been reaching out to our friends and family that aren’t on social media and some of them have backed the project! We also started to analyze some data we’ve been getting to try to find areas we can improve our messaging. We’ll keep working at spreading the word throughout the day, trying to find backers, and over the weekend as well.