What is Loosely Bolted?

Well! Loosely Bolted is a YouTube channel collaboration by Mary Kate Wiles and Rachel Kiley. We mostly make scripted character-driven short videos and sketches, but also sometimes covers and vlogs. We previously worked together on the Emmy award-winning web series The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, and we were like hey, we don't hate working together, let's keep doing that. So we've spent the last few months developing this new channel and are gearing up to make it the best it can be.

So what are you raising money for?

To make better videos! Or more specifically, equipment upgrades and a small budget to draw from to make short films (which will all be released for free on YouTube).

Throwing money at projects definitely doesn't automatically make them better. Hollywood proves that to us time and time again. But not having decent equipment doesn't help, either. 

But YouTube is for homemade videos! Why do you need better equipment?

We aren't looking to get Hollywood crazy high budget production values with crane shots and massive explosions and all that jazz (well, we may make some videos with jazz, no promises about that). Not because that's super expensive, but because we've been around YouTube long enough to see that productions that look TOO good actually don't work well on the web. There's a sweet spot for online stuff -- where you aren't distracted by really bad pixelation and grainy video and scratchy audio, but where it's still got that quality that makes you feel like you're a part of the world that's happening on your screen. That's what we want to hit. And we just can't do it with what we have, unfortunately.

So here's what you'll get if we can upgrade our equipment:

• Higher quality videos. No matter what you do, the iPhone camera has a lot of limitations. We can't shoot in low lighting, we can't change lenses, we can't use the DIY gear we've built for smoother shots when we rent a DSLR camera. 
• MORE videos. What, really? Yep! iPhone video requires more steps from camera to editing software to make it usable, which is time consuming. It also takes a lot longer to edit it into something decent (color correcting, image stabilization, etc.) as opposed to DSLR footage (which still takes time, but less). The more time we have, the more we can make! There are also a lot of ideas we're saving until we have decent equipment because we think they're cool and we want to do them right.
• Audio. As of now, every scripted video we've released or have shot and is in post-production is either silent or has voice-over that we recorded in a silent room later. If we can get even just simple audio recording equipment, we can actually have actors talk in films. Crazy, right??
• Covers! We want to do covers of songs we love and songs you love and have fun with all that. We've got a lot of instruments, but again, we just don't have anything to record with. 

What if you make more money than you need for equipment?

That would be insane. But cool!

Everything we make that goes beyond what we currently are hoping to spend on equipment will either be saved for future equipment costs or go towards per-video costs (buying props, paying actors/crew who help us out, etc). If we surpass $5000, we'll post more specific stretch goals so you can see exactly what we're aiming for.

Can't you just pocket the money and borrow a friend's camera?

Hehehehe...

Just kidding! Yeah, we probably could, but we won't. How will you know? Well, we are more than happy to post a record of what every cent of our Indiegogo money is spent on. You guys are being super generous by helping us out, and we want you to feel comfortable in doing so. That list will be available on our upcoming website after the campaign ends, and will keep being updated until all the money has been spent.

But I already gave money when you had PayPal donations open!

And that was awesome of you! We don't want to leave you out. If you donated through PayPal in the past, shoot us an email letting us know the name/email you donated with, and what perk level(s) you would like to redeem. You can mix and match ($5 reward + $15 reward if you donated $20), or donate more to Indiegogo and compound that with what you gave us previously ($50 PayPal donation + $50 Indiegogo donation = $100 perk redemption). If you do the latter, just make sure to choose "no perk" when you donate, and shoot us an email with specifics. This may be a little confusing, so definitely feel free to email us with any questions about it! (And note -- this doesn't apply to Patreon donations, which are entirely separate.)

What's a Patreon?

Patreon is a place where people are pledging money to us per video we put out. It's different because it's an ongoing system of patronage and because that money goes mostly to our pockets (and then directly to bills) so that we have time to make videos instead of do jobs that aren't making videos. Some of it does go back into the Loosely Bolted budget for videos, but as of now, it won't really help out with expensive equipment needs.

I feel like you probably have a couple of other things you want to tell us. Go on.

Aww, how thoughtful of you! 

We've got a lot of cool (and some super weird) rewards for backers over there on the side of the page, so go check those out when you get a chance! 

Besides that, we're going to be updating constantly throughout the campaign, and adding videos and contests and maybe a third thing we think of later, so if you do donate, keep an eye out on your update emails!