For those of you that have not heard of
Kickstarter its a website that helps fund creative projects that range from film, music, design, technology and publishing. First, you create a pitch/video of what your project is about, then you make rewards that will entice people to donate more to your project. You then have a certain number of days to reach your target. If it does not reach its target in time any money donated to the project will not be taken out of anyone’s account. If it does reach its target then everybody ends up getting cool things such as
Diaspora,
the Cosmonaut,
Kind of Bloop, and
the Glif.
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Update (18/04/2011): The Alan Watts project just reached its 50,000 target!
Update (31/05/2011): The Terence McKennna project just reached its target (more updates below)
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A Kickstarter project that has almost reached its deadline is
In the Way with Alan Watts, a film about the life of Alan Watts. His son Mark Watts is providing media compilations from his fathers archives and it is being put together and edited by Michael Garcia, Matt Wood, Bruce Walters and Chirs Britt. So far $47,012 out of $50,000 has been raised from 371 backers so there is only another $2,988 to be donated before this film can become a reality!
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That shouldn’t be a problem considering there is plenty of great extras to entice people to donate more including Manuscripts, Audio Collections of Alan’s talks on CD, your name in the film credits, a copy of the film when its done and lots more. Unfortunately somebody has already pledged $10,000 for the signed copy of Alan’s first book Outline of Zen Buddhism and a mandala painting by Leo Kenney so you will have to make do with the above!
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The other great kickstart project taking place at the moment is
The Brotherhood of the screaming Abyss, a book about the late psychedelic philosopher Terence McKenna to be written by his brother Dennis McKenna. The project has raised $27,485 out of $80,000 so far from 194 backers so hopefully the 54 days that is left will be enough to raise the rest. As Dennis puts it “
I am Terence’s only brother; I am the only one who can tell this tale“. This one really would be a shame if it didn’t reach its goal since he
is probably the only that knows the most intimate details of Terence’s life from the 50 years they spent together.
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The extras for making larger donations with this project include: a one day workshop for you and your friends, a 2 hour Skype call with Dennis, autographed copies of the book, a DVD of talks by Terence and Dennis or a PDF copy of the book.
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If your on twitter i just tweeted about it
here so feel free to retweet it and spread the word. Or
digg it if your on digg, its on
reddit also, all the buttons are down the end of this page anyway.
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Update for Alan Watts (30/05/2011): I just got a CD in the post this morning: http://twitpic.com/54lare, its a collection of audio clips that will be used in the film.
Update For Terence McKenna (18/04/2011): Too many updates to mentions! Check them out here for yourself. 11 days left now and it looks like it could just fall short of meeting its target, but its not all bad because if you read update #15 Dennis talks about how Evolver Intensives have offered to use some of its fund to make up the difference if it doesnt reach it in time so it looks like 717 of backers will be getting a book about Terence McKenna by the end of the Year or next! Happy days! He even hinted in the comments section towards the possibility of someday making a film based on “True Hallucinations”, a book written by both Dennis and Terence about their expedition to the Amazon Basin in the 60′s in search of a certain hallucinogenic plant that contained DMT.
“I noticed that several people have commented that there should be a movie or docu to go along with this book, or a movie for True Hallucinations. The latter idea has been batting around for a long time. As a result of putting this project out there, those conversations are happening, seriously this time”
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