New Goal!

With a flourish, we flew by the $1250 goal, so now it's time to announce new goals. 

$2000 - Your Own Cut + More Comics!

This is it folks, the one I really want to give to you. You're all my collaborators and producers on this project, and I'd dearly love to have you in the editing booth with me (okay, not really...those things are small and I'm actually kind of a control freak when I'm editing), but since I can't, I came up with this idea. 

If we hit $2000, I will create a reel of raw footage - no sound, no color correcting, just a selection of quality video (including much not used in the final film) - which I will release ONLY TO BACKERS OF THIS PROJECT to do with as you please. This will be shared under some kind of Creative Commons arrangement (to ensure that the work of my crew and I is properly attributed) and you can cut it, score it, add dialogue or subtitles, and show it off for your own amusement. It should work with iMovie, Final Cut, Avid, Premiere, and most other editing software. Honestly, I can't think of a better way to share my art with you. <3

Thanks to all of you, a comic book is definitely coming. We're expecting it to be about four pages long, which is a nice size for a fun one-shot adventure. At $2000, Christianne and I will produce twice as much comic book material. It'll either be a double-sized adventure, or two standalone adventures. Either way, you'll get that much more Ivanna And The Wolf in your life.  

Me

My name's Renee Knipe, and I'm a film student/game designer in Ann Arbor, Michigan. My journey began a little over year ago, after abruptly finding myself at the end of a 14-year corporate career and with time enough to finally pursue my dream of making movies. You can see some of my early student work above, and at the links below:

The Grooveyard

The Inheritance of Fiona James

The idea that's wedged itself in my brain right now, and that will serve as my first solo writing-producing-directing venture, is Ivanna And The Wolf. A companion piece to the role-playing game I've written for Octo: Games Of Spring, it's the fantastic tale of an adventurous princess, a talking wolf, and the terrible monsters that beset them. Best of all, it'll be done entirely with marionettes, allowing me to explore paths blazed by Jim Henson, Anders Rønnow Klarlund, the Brothers Quay, and many others. I have the story, I have the time (3 months instead of the 3-4 weeks I've had in the past!), I have enthusiastic people around me ready to go, I have better equipment and more resources than ever before at my disposal, and I've done the pre-preproduction work to make sure it's possible. But I can't do it without a little help.

What I Need

When making movies, money is freedom. My barebones estimate is $500. That would go towards the purchase of commercially available marionettes and marionette kits, costuming, manufacturing the set, catering for the crew, and incidental expenses. If we don't completely reach our goal, we'll move forward as best we can: There are some options for cutting corners, but at this stage, a certain level of professionalism is expected and must be achieved. If we exceed our goal, which would be amazing, the extra funds will go directly towards making a higher quality product: Better puppets, better sets, maybe even professional puppeteering talent. 

The Impact

The small goal here is to produce a high quality product that might eventually find its way into my professional portfolio. The bigger goal is to do something awesome, something hard, to stretch creatively, to learn new things, and to blow people away with what a "student production" can be. 

And that's always been my goal. When my partners and I announced we were doing a musical for our first student production, we were met with an equal amount of skepticism and enthusiasm from our classmates and professors. Most of us had never touched a camera before that class, and we didn't even have access to lights or sound equipment! But we brought in a choreographer for two weeks to work with our non-dancer leads, shot The Grooveyard in a single day, and edited it in a week...to the delight and amazement of even the senior members of our video production program.

The same was true of Golfing By Moonlight. An ambitious werewolf movie with multiple leads, shot entirely at night and mostly outdoors, with a generous helping of prosthetic effects, from pre-production to final cut in four weeks? In only our second production class? I'm surprised I didn't get laughed out of the classroom when I pitched it. But I raised the money, brought in the talent, shot ten hours a night for four nights (with most of us having school or work every morning after), battled against weather and background noise and the limits of our expertise to turn in a film that's both finished and fun. 

Ivanna And The Wolf is the next step for me. 

Your pledges will go towards the realization of this product, towards helping me learn and grow and hopefully re-invent myself in a career I love. Every single person who donates will receive a special "thank you" credit in the film, as well as getting "first look" when it's finished. You'll prolly also get to see earlier cuts, as I love sharing my process, and will be privy to my filmmaking and editing process. Higher-level pledges will receive additional perks (which you can peruse at the right), but the greatest perk of all is this: The more money I raise, the better the film I'll get to make for you. 

Other Ways You Can Help

If you can't donate, I understand. It's hard for me too (if money were laying around, I wouldn't be asking for it). But if Ivanna And The Wolf sounds cool to you, please spread the word. Every share is a gift to me, and when the movie gets made, it'll be available for everyone to see!

(Above: Christianne benedict's work-in-progress. For a look at a more finished version of the artwork, which is available as a reward at certain pledge levels, go here: http://christiannesart.blogspot.com/2013/02/ivanna-and-wolf.html.) 

What We've Done So Far

Early Bird Special! (unlocked)

On Wednesday night, I go in front of my class and pitch this project. No worries, I've already pre-pitched it to my professor so there's no chance of the idea being rejected. But ideally I'll go in there with a substantial chunk of my budget in place. It'll blow their socks off and drive home how serious I am about this. So here's the deal: If we can hit my $500 goal by the time I actually have to stand in front of people and talk about this, I'll film a bonus scene of some sort thanking all of you for being so awesome. It'll be included at the end of the credits sequence as a sort of bonus feature, and I'll endeavour to make it entertaining unto itself. 

Additionally, those of you at the $25 level or higher can see what I'm planning for the pitch over at the production blog, and even workshop it with me a bit.

$1250 Goal: More Ivanna And The Wolf + Comics! (unlocked)

At $1250, three things are for sure going to happen:

• Higher quality production values in every way!
• I'm going back to my screenplay to see what opportunities there are for increased storytelling. I have ideas that were scrapped because of over-ambitiousness. However, they may not seem quite so impossible with a bigger budget available to me.
• Christianne Benedict (who produced the gorgeous artwork you see below) and I are going to conspire on an Ivanna And The Wolf one-shot comic. It may be a prequel to the movie, or a standalone adventure...we're not sure yet. What we are sure of is that it'll be available to all of the backers as soon as we finish it. It'll exist electronically for sure, but for those of you already receiving physical gifts, we hope to get you quality print versions as well. 

I may think of other things to sweeten the deal, but for now you can count on those three things happening.