it’s been awhile since my last update, and the fundraiser is just days from ending!
in my time away, i’ve gone on the radio (that recorded audio is floating around an office somewhere!), visited detroit for something else entirely, come home to find everything different from what i’d left behind, all while wondering what it is that really separates The Nicest People from Indie Game: The Movie and really i have no way of knowing, beyond my own technique and the specific people interviewed, until the footage has been shot — as is the case with any documentary, honestly. barbara kopple did not go into American Dream knowing the worker strike would fail, and no National Geographic crew ever really knew what the lions were going to do next. it all looks neat and tidy in the end, thanks to the magic of narration and editing!
that’s the real draw of the documentary — with no scripts you never know what’s coming next, and it’s only in post that it all comes together. i’m a video editor by training. most of my work is montage assembled from bits and pieces of found footage. like the documentary, it’s all an act of making sense of chaos. i like that.
so, then, how else can i answer? the only real way is by making the damn thing. with that said, i’m gonna keep relatively hush about The Nicest People and its development until i’ve delivered a much stronger proof of concept than the trailer you’ve all seen. meanwhile, i’m looking at and applying for equipment grants just in case of the likely event that no miracle happens to bring the Kickstarter fundraiser to its goal by friday. here’s hoping it works out.
in related news, i’m preparing a workshop, to begin in september, on game making in Scratch for at-risk students here in San Jose. i can’t even tell you how long i’ve been waiting to get this started, but it’s good to finally get the rubber on the road. i applied for the Creative Commons Catalyst grant to fund it, which would allow for the purchase of new computers, but failing that, i am certain there are enough good donor computers lying around in the heart of Silicon Valley.
so! things are happening. watch this space for further developments, and whatever you’d like to do to help the cause, let me know.
-spinach
