You don’t need to go to film school and pay thousands of dollars for screenwriting classes. All you need to do is some reading. Let me tell you which books I found to be the most helpful...

By John Moore

Crowdfunding has taken off as a financing vehicle for a variety of projects, from music albums to software. Websites such as Kickstarter and IndieGoGo bring the funding appeal to the Internet public, and they sometimes even offer rewards to people who pledge support.

Crowdfunding may sound like an apps-to-riches story. But executing a crowdfunding campaign isn’t as simple as it may sound. Here, Scott Steinberg, CEO of strategic consulting and product testing firm TechSavvy Global and co-author of The Crowdfunding Bible, explains why.

What do you see as the most dangerous misconceptions regarding crowdfunding?

Scott Steinberg: The most common mistake is that people expect crowdfunding to be very straightforward, very easy and right for any type of project. It takes a tremendous amount of effort to run a campaign --  30 to 45 days is standard. We call it a marathon, not a sprint.

Crowdfunding tends to work best for projects that are easily communicable visually and can be summed up in a sentence. For a crowdfunding campaign to be effective, you need to capture the viewer’s attention very quickly and provide a strong call to action. You need to create a sense of urgency around the campaign and get people to dip into their pockets then and there.

Where to begin? Information overload. Day 2. Fmx09.

The fmx may not be as big as SIGGRAPH, but like an American professional stated, it is superbly organized, which makes it a truly wonderful event throughout the world of Visual Effects, Animation, Games and Digital Media. Steffen Wild presented the work and the developments inside the beloved World of Jim Henson Muppets today. The famous creature shop made it bold steps into the digital realm, carefully keeping the original muppet touch alive. Like Jim Henson told his staff “Have an Idea? We try it out. Never be afraid of failure”. The successful use of digital puppeteering was successful used on the TV-show “Sid the Science Kid”. 40 episodes, together 20 hours had to be put together within only one year. Key to the success: strong characters, the excellent collaboration between the puppeteers, the use of live action disciplines, the clever utilization of new technology and a perfect real-world-compatibility. Just doing digital puppets the muppet way. On the live stage up to six characters can now be handled at the same time datawise. All to create webisodes, commercials, Television shows and direct-to-dvd material at the moment. And of course at some point in the future creating a feature film with a hybrid approach.

The VIEW Conference 2009 [http://www.viewconference.it/] is the 10th International Computer Graphics Conference, which started on November 4^th and will last until the 7^th of November 2009. It's held in the beautiful city of Turin, in the north of Italy, where I had the pleasure of attending this event, now for the fourth time.

Previously I have had the opportunity to tell the wonderful series of events happening at the Torino Incontra Conference Center to a magazine, a blog, and a CG portal. This year I have the great honour to talk to Animation World Network's readers.

The sparkling energy behind VIEW is Maria Elena Gutierrez who is driving a group of partner institutions, private and public sector, in investing in innovation and knowledge-sharing in the field of Technology and Creativity.

 

The Jilin Animation Institute is an incredible undertaking. It’s now celebrating over ten years of operation.  The student base is over 10,500.  That’s NOT a typo.  10,500 students….the largest animation student enrollment in the world!  To support these students is a staff of 1,400 instructors, teachers, technicians and artists including a smattering of foreign nationals.  The institute is in the process of expanding its campus to accommodate up to 20,000 students within the next few years.

In a surprise addition to an already powerful roster of speakers lined up for the VIEW Conference, October 25 to 28, overall visual effects supervisor Erik Nash from Digital Domain has chosen to give the world’s first presentation of that studio’s work at VIEW Conference. A virtual production workflow designed by Digital Domain and Nash allowed director Shawn Levy to see CG characters as if they were actually present on set - in the boxing rings where background plates were shot - just as he would shoot any other scene with human actors.“We are thrilled that Erik Nash will share these important techniques with our attendees at the VIEW conference,” says conference director Maria Elena Gutierrez. “It is exciting to watch computer graphics characters move from post production up the pipeline and into production.”

At DreamWorks, the group poses with famed children's author Bill Joyce (center in black jacket). © 2008 AWN Inc.

With the Oscar Showcase beginning to slow down, Thursday marked our chance to see DreamWorks L.A. While the screening was taking place, John Tarnoff, the head of the DreamWorks’ “incubator” department, showed us around the facility. After seeing production art from Bee Movie, Kung-Fu Panda and Madagascar 2, we got to see some production art and CG characters from DreamWorks’ 2009 releases Monsters vs. Aliens and How to Train Your Dragon. Being that Monsters vs. Aliens is the studio’s first stereoscopic production and the release date was moved up to March, the production is in furious mode. In regards to the challenges of working in 3-D, John said that DreamWorks looks at stereoscopic as they do stereo sound – a subtle enrichment of the movie going experience. Though the release will not be in 3-D, a test was done using the opening action sequence from Kung-Fu Panda to discover the limits to which they could push the technology. David Verrall, the exec producer of Madame Tutli-Putli, who has a hand in every English language film produced at the NFB, said they have artists working on eight foot screens for stereoscopic productions so they can get a better idea of how the mind processes the images as they are working on them.

By Dan Sarto

With a full afternoon planned at Disney Feature Animation, the group wasted no time getting started.  Our host, Stephanie Morse, toured us through the maze of halls, with stops every now and again to check out walls adorned with artwork from Frozen, their upcoming feature set for release this coming November 27^th.  Soon, however, it was back to the screening room for audience Q&A. 

Once again, our filmmakers displayed great patience as they answered mostly the same set of questions they’ve been answering at numerous screenings, interviews and meetings ever since they were nominated.  I enjoy these Q&A sessions because though the questions may be the same, each time a filmmaker speaks, they add something new, share greater details or a new story you haven’t heard before.  You never know what tasty tidbits they may share in a moment of fatigue.

Tamas Liszkas (l to r) Marcy Page, Mike Thurmeier, Roger Allers & Geza Toth eating breakfast at Skywalker Ranch. © AWN Inc.

Friday morning I went to sleep at 6:20 am and woke up around 7:40 am. That may have been the most restful hour and 20 minutes of sleep I’ve ever had. The comfortable beds and soft pillows at Skywalker Ranch were hard to leave. The last time I ran on so little sleep was in college during my senior year while we were filming long hours over a weekend on the bedroom set I built. This trip has certainly recharged the creative juices in me.

WHAT A NIGHT THAT WAS!!! An event we will remember for years. For me it was gratifying to see the students again. When you do a project like this you tend to form bonds with your co-workers.