Kickstarter is a harsh mistress. Since its inception in April of 2009, Kickstarter has held to one simple rule that has confounded, frustrated, and in some cases terrified crowd-fund organizers:
If your campaign doesn’t reach its goal, you get nothing.
So why risk using Kickstarter when other crowd-funding platforms like Indiegogo and GoFundMe allow campaigns to keep all donations made—even if a goal is not reached?
The simple answer is that Kickstarter campaigns, on average, take in about 2.35 times as much as Indiegogo campaigns (and way more than GoFundMe’s). Perhaps this disparity is because Kickstarter backers feel more confident that a project they support will happen rather than fearing their donation night disappear into a crowd-funding black hole if a campaign comes up far short of its goal. Or maybe it’s because Kickstarter does more marketing, has more site visitors, or simply has a better reputation in general for more high-quality projects than other services. Likewise, the same article linked to above says that conversion rates are 3x-4x higher for Kickstarter campaigns than for Indiegogo.
Whatever the reason, Kickstarter has the greater potential payoff, just with an increased risk of getting nothing. Because of this, determining the right amount to set as a goal on Kickstarter is critical. Ask for too much and fail to get there, and you’ve just wasted months of work. Ask for too little, and you might make your goal but wind up with less than you really need.
This was the dilemma facing the folks making episode 2 of COZMO’S (the same folks who made s Star Trek: Renegades and the two-part Renegades: “The Requiem”). They need $100K to make this film, and so that’s what they asked for. And with a week left, their campaign is doing pretty well. So far, 341 backers have pledged more than $67K (including two $10K donors!) to bring them 2/3 of the way there.
But with only seven days left, it’s gonna be a nail-biter!
The producers recently sent out an update reminding folks that episode 2 and beyond will be more serious than the pilot:
Though we understand that the pilot may have been a bit too much on the slapstick side, we wanted to point out that it was directed by Animal House alum, Stephen Furst. He had put his own twist on things, as Hollywood directors often do. Then again, The Orville started out as a comedy and has now pulled back those strings to become more of a Star Trek drama, which most people are loving.
The new episode will lean more toward the dramatic side of storytelling, utilizing a piece of sci-fi literary history penned by Damon Knight that was also used to create an extremely famous Twilight Zone episode. The episode was called “To Serve Man.” Of course, we’ll be throwing in some new twists in the Cozmo’s fashion.
With a cast including Star Trek and sci-fi genre veterans, and amazing make-up and effects by Hollywood professionals, this is a project definitely worth supporting…
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/atomicstudios/cozmos-goes-out-of-this-world-with-ep-2
No matter how they word it, the problem with Episode 1 was simply that it just wasn’t funny. It had a great cast, and between the great make-up work, the great green-screened studio setting, and everything else to which you might choose to apply the word “great”, humour was the one thing where that word could not be applied.
Bring promoted as a comedy above all else, this caused great disappointment for me, and going by the figures, I suspect for many others. So also it appears like a significant number of others, I decided not to contribute to any future episodes.
Then came the announcement of the change in direction. When this was announced it was stated that a broad range of story “styles” had always been intended (I read that somewhere) although I have no recollection of this being stated in the early plans ─ to my recollection, Cosmo’s was always to be a comedy.
Whatever, the announcement of the rather different story-line and overall approach for Episode 2 sounded good to me. After all, they still had that great cast and all of those other “greats” ─ this sounded to me to have a much better chance of success (let’s face it, comedy is the most difficult genre of all to pull off), so I’ve revised my stance and made my necessarily small donation.
Perhaps there are others who have gone through a similar succession of thoughts to mine but have not yet managed that final change in thinking, leading to giving support to the project. There’s a bevvy of our favourite genre actors and behind-the-scenes talent waiting and hoping to entertain us as they have all done in the past, I for one, am now happy to do my modest bit toward making that happen.
Sci-fi is easy. Comedy…now THAT’s hard. 🙂
I’d like Cozmo’s to get a second chance to show us what it’s got. I’m glad you donated, Bryan.
I finally backed this project, and since I haven’t yet seen the first episode, went for the “stream both episodes on demand” level. Sounds like it should be interesting!
The first episode was a little too comedic for some fans, without a unifying storyline until the final 10 minutes. But once you hit the last third, it’s a very strong piece of work. I’ll be curious to hear what you think of it, Catherine.