Well, we've had a couple of days to review our crowdfunding campaign and consider a good many factors as to why we raised what we did and why we did not manage to secure the full 10k. But first here are the final numbers from our Indiegogo page, Website, and Facebook Fan page:

Taking a look at the overall peaks and valleys of the campaign it appears that our highest traffic volume through all sites was at about the halfway mark of the campaign, a steady build across the first two weeks that then fell off almost completely in the next two weeks. Donations however remained steady and evenly spread out across the campaign and were the result of direct referrals to the site and not a one from a web surfing good soul just happening upon the campaign which brings me to one conclusion: our facebook ads campaign, and the ipad promotional giveaway or "perks for sharing" were total washouts.

Well 2011 is coming to a close and so is the Moderngrumble crowdfunding campaign. These last few hours I have much to reflect upon. 2011 started with me and a profoundly weird script and the following goals:

• 1)      Incorporate Lotushead Productions.
• 2)      Secure my core visual team; passionate and knowlegable magicians in the roles of Director of Photography, Production Designer, and Special Effects Supervisor who were all willing to take this journey with me  despite how long it might actually take to find funding.
• 3)      Write a thorough Business Plan that reflected the uniqueness of the project including a Shooting Schedule, Budget, and Offering Memorandum.
• 4)      Secure as many locations as possible for the shooting of a teaser trailer, at the very least securing our central Farmhouse location.
• 5)       Find an actor or model that embodied the duality of Boy’s nature.
• 6)      Launch a successful Crowdfunding Campaign.
• 7)      Shoot the teaser trailer.
• 8)      Create a Power Point presentation encapsulating our pitch, including the Business Plan, Financial Projections, Excerpts from the Script, Storyboard, and scenes from the work of the participating crew.
• 9)      Create a 3 minute narrarated video overview of everything in #8 to send out to potential investors.
• 10)  Raise the feautre budget and begin shooting Moderngrumble by the beginning of 2012.

Looking back now I have to say I may have been a bit ambitious in my goals and expectations. However # 1-5 have been accomplished to a greater degree of success than I could have hoped for. #6 is wrapping itself up now and while we have come very close to reaching our $10,000.00 goal we are still floundering around the 6k mark. Regardless of the outcome of our crowdfunding campaign Lotushead Productions will carry on with the remainder of our goals in the New Year. I am setting a 6 month goal on reaching #10 and armed with the hindsight of this last year and the wonderful crew and supporters I have found during this journey I believe we can do it. Of course my success or failure will be published right here for all to see. I hope those of you reading this find something of value here, whether it be insight, inspiration or even entertainment. As always I welcome suggestions, criticism and support in any form it comes. Thank you for taking the time to follow this journey and if you haven’t already SUPPORT MODERNGRUMBLE anyway that you can and let’s close out this year together!

I’m a film school drop-out. There are many reasons for this but mostly I blame my first screening of Godard’s Weekend and Tarkovsky’s book Sculpting in Time. With Godard’s film it was the realization that everything had already been done and with Tarkovsky’s book it was the re-affirmation of my own ideas that true power of cinema lay not in clever games, but in its attempts to master cinematic time. I was introduced to both texts not in film school but outside in the repretaroy theaters and bookstores of the real world. To be certain film school was full of fellow film fanatics but the school I attended was geared more towards practical knowledge that would secure you a job after graduation and not film theory or studies. More often than not my fellow students were excited about the latest technical breakthrough or Scorsese’s tracking shots, or DePalma’s use of the split di-opter and not the more heady ideas of the likes of Godard or Tarkovsky. To be fair I am certain there were many fellow students interested in just that, I however never met one. And so realizing that I was not interested in shooting commercials or music videos but in finding the most effective means for expressing myself, I decided to go it alone, live and experience life so as to evenutally realize my own, personal cinema on my own terms.

The blue bird hatching from a man’s head; a surrealistic flourish in retrospect obviously indebted to the cinema of Alejandro Jodorowsky but one none the less that presents a real challenge. Like many of the effects in Moderngrumble, anything less than perfection could send us into a downward spiral of cheesy over-indulgence or worse, camp. Much of Moderngrumble walks this fine line. Tone is key and it’s all in the presentation. What to do then when you are dead serious in creating such a scene as realistically as possible with the intent of imbuing the scene with not horror but wonder and even a warped sense of beauty?

The role of Production Designer is an important one, especially on a low budget feature where there may not be a budget for Set Designer and or an Art Department. In such a situation the Production Designer and her Assistant(s) may make up the entirety of this aspect of your film. Tasked with realizing the look of your film through the medium of paint, furniture, props, set design, and set dressing while at the same time working closely with the Director of Photography to ensure proper placement and lighting of the set and it’s dressing, the role is a Herculean task for a department let alone a few people. The significance of working with a talented and experienced Production Designer can make a huge difference in how your film is perceived because like the actors and the DP, their work is the foundation of everything the viewer sees on screen.

When I first started writing Moderngrumble, the main character, ‘Boy’ was envisioned as an ethereal creature, a hairless, albino with a mouth stained gray/black with ash, chapped, raw, pursed lips, and glowing green eyes. He was also meant to have a mouth and jaw that could unhinge like that of a Python. However, as the writing progressed two things began to dominate my vision: 1) Boy was androgynous and 2) The more human he appeared the more disturbing his actions would be. We are after all speaking about someone who eats the dead and for my money that’s a far more interesting idea when it’s not simply another monster doing the eating but a living, breathing human being. 

Once I started working with Michael Duggan on the storyboards/graphic novel however we settled on a more hulking, monstrous but gentle vision for ‘Boy’. Fortunately the hairless albino look, with the green eyes and chapped, stained, pursed lips remained. This change in physical style was due to the artist’s strengths and in the drawn frame the hulking version worked better than a more slight one. Still my intentions remained basically as they had originally, save for the unhinged jaw, and I thought that when the time came to cast, I would still entertain the idea of casting an androgynous actor. I even thought for a while that I might cast a female in the lead to further play with the ambiguity of who and or what Boy is.

In keeping with yesterdays post regarding inspiration I thought I would make a somewhat exhaustive list of the books, music and films that have influenced Moderngrumble. The books and movies are influences in that after writing Moderngrumble and reading over it, I see the obvious links between scenes and set pieces in the film and those in the books and films listed. The music however served as inspiration at the time of the writing as these were the records spinning on my turntable most often during that time.

There is nothing new under the sun. Moderngrumble grew slowly, over many years in response to this fact. As a screenwriter it drove me nuts on a regular basis that I could not escape the structure, archetypes and rhythms of conventional storytelling without veering into experimental, un-readable at least by industry standards, territory. At the time, I was already expressing myself through numerous experiments with film and did not wish to explore or otherwise transfer these ideas to the screenplay format. Such an exercise would have been pointless as much of what I was exploring with film was of the moment and not plotted or designed. There appeared to be no middle ground, at least for me and my capabilities at the time. I could only produce, at best, a new context or perspective on a story already told. Add to this, the fact that this particular period in cultural history, that of the dreaded post modernism, makes it virtually impossible to create a non-self conscious take on such a story especially a genre story. That very realization being the root of the entire problem. Genre Revisionism was not the answer.

Then I read it again and began to see a bigger picture: 1) Yes, it was intensely derivative but it was and is a story realized almost entirely un-self consciously. 2) As a Rorschach of my own soul it was bound to resonate with others of a similar dis-position. Both artistically and emotionally, it was honest. 3) The structure and archetypes of Story are all very present, and not just a few but damn near all of them. It is a ready-made. Because of it's ambiguous design and honesty anyone could apply their own ideas about what the story is about and they would be right. It can be read as a road movie, a coming of age tale, a horror story, a philosophical treatise on modern art, a cultural and political metaphor and even a very dark romantic comedy. It is all these things and more. 4) It was pretty damn entertaining and could be enjoyed on a purely visceral level.

As such, Moderngrumble, when complete was at once everything I had tried to escape as a writer/filmmaker; self indulgence, navel gazing, derivative and everything I had wanted to achieve; a universal truth about the human condition laid bare, an honest rendering of my own soul's journey no matter how dark the recesses, and an original love song to the genre and art films that formed my early years, and not an homage.

In the year since I finished the script, my mind has been occupied with the nuts and bolts of the business of filmmaking and the visual design of the film. I have accepted that there is nothing new under the sun but my own interpretation. I have embraced that realization and it has freed me as a writer and artist from my own self-imposed restrictions and expectations. And as the script makes it's way into the world, I continue to be amazed and thankful how many of my fellow movie lovers and madmen see it for what it is.

I was speaking with a friend recently. He had just finished reading the script for Moderngrumble and was compelled to call and speak with me about what it meant to him. He then proceeded to tell me that he couldn't put into words what he felt but that he had connected with it deeply. This is not just another zombie movie. In fact this appears to be a common experience with Moderngrumble. Most people don't give it a second look, it's too weird, too esoteric, too something . . . but those who do take a few moments to peek into our world, let alone read the script, have almost all become passionate supporters of the project. As I have discussed in previous posts regarding my own problem with defining something meant to be indefinable, receiving that kind of compliment; sincere, informed and from someone you respect makes a huge impact on any creative endeavor and I have been blessed as of late with a very many artists I respect giving me similar encouragments. It has meant the world and two weeks into this campaign, I have to say, I am happier than I have been in quite some time and we haven't even raised a $1,000.00 yet!

You see, Moderngrumble is about as personal a film as you can make. Wait a second, we're talking about a monster movie, right? A horror film, albeit of stange breeding? Yes, but I have to say that in many ways it is autobiographical. Not plot-wise of course, but emotionally and philosphically speaking, it is my story. I even look quite a bit like the character 'Boy' you see in the Moderngrumble logos and in a very real way it is an expelling of old, personal demons and the rendering of new ones. As such the entire process of writing the script, working on the storyboards and graphic novel with Michael Duggan, writing a business plan, making a budget, location scouting, talking to actors and now going public with the project has been a ripping off of the band-aid so to speak, a baring of my soul to those who would judge. The fact that something I thought to be so off the beaten track, so strange by mainstream standards has been embraced by not only my friends but other artists and filmmakers whom I respect is ultimately the best thing that could have happened with this campaign. Don't get me wrong, we want and we will raise our budget, whether through Indiegogo or other channels but the connections I am making, the insights I am receiving and the support I have been given is truly the best part of this entire process. Thank you to all of Moderngrumble's friends and fans!

Toby Venable is a writer and filmmaker with Lotushead Productions, Inc., an independent production company based in Arkansas with a core focus on connecting regional filmmakers with national and international talent. Modengrumble will be his first feature film.

16 days left of the year 2011, 17 days left in Moderngrumble’s campaign to fund the Trailer Shoot and world domination. However, we’re at a standstill with only 6.2% of our total goal raised. Why is that?