Tuesday, June 18, 2013

The Test Tube Baby!


A lot of people might like a good news, but only a few step forward and make them!




Yes! 

The fundraising campaign is successful.
We have finally raised every penny we needed.
Probably this was the biggest fundraising campaign ever for a film in terms of duration.
474 Days! 25th February, 2012 - 15th June, 2013
3 online platforms! Wishberry, Indiegogo, Funduzz!
INR 2,01,171.51 collected offline!
Total amount INR 2,86,535.35 raised from more than 200 people!

Now, you won't look at it the same way you used to. Would you?
You, who kept watching silently
You, who never thought it's really going to happen
You, who never thought a film can be produced this way for real
You, who never stepped forward to join hands
Yesterday you were somebody
We kept on appealing to your deaf ears
From now on, you are dead

You
whom this blogpost addresses
don't even exist for this writer or this blog from today

This is the last time we mentioned You!


Adieu!

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Why Do You Think People Should Give You Money To Complete Your Film?

Important question!

Critical in other words!

In this short blogpost, we'll try an old method to solve this riddle; negation of the negation. We'll state why people should not give us money and whatever is left shall be the reason for them to give us money. 

Let's start

1. We don't assure any return. So, people should not give us money expecting some sort of financial gain

2. We don't serve to any political party. So, people should not give us money expecting we would promote their propaganda

3. We haven't won any big award. Our films have never been screened at any renowned international film festival. So, people should not give us money thinking we'll make them proud by bringing glory to the nation

4. Our film is not produced/co-produced by some retired Bollywood actor/ working Bollywood director (without or with a revolutionary image). So, people should not give us money thinking they'd be participating in something "BIG"

5. We are not casting Tolly/ Bolly/ Holly - wood stars in our film. So, people should not give us money expecting a dinner date with Karina Kapoor in return

6. We are not making a film on how the Indian revolution can be successful. So, people should not give us money thinking we are a gang of messiahs of the proletariat

7. We are not descendants of Heeralal Sen/ Dadasaheb Phalke/ Devaki Basu/ Ritwik Ghatak / Satyajit Ray/ Mrinal Sen/ Mani Kaul/ Shyam Benegal/ John Abraham or any living or dead person having any relation to any regional or national or International film industry or business. Not Even Jean-Luc Godard or Jon Jost. So, people should not give us money thinking we have it in our blood

8. We don't have a long time PR policy. In fact we have no PR policy or marketing plan at all. So, people should not give us money thinking we are making history in the 21st century

9. We have never done this before i.e making a film gathering funds from the crowd. So, people should not give us money thinking we are experienced enough to come up with an Indian Kickstarter some day

10. We certify that everything stated above is true and correct to the best of our knowledge and belief. So, people should not give us money considering this blogpost a cool marketing stance that comes under the "just kidding" category


Is there anything left, any reason that should make people give us their hard earned money? 
Guess not! Then why the hell are people giving "Us" money to complete "Our" film? 
Confusing, no?

1. S N Nanda

2. Rajiv Sinha

3. Carole

4. Kanungo

5. Swagat Sen

6. D.K Sornam

7. Dev Daruka

8. Surya Shankar Dash

9. Maharatna Banerjee

10. Dhrubaa Ghosh

11. Bagula Bhagat

12. Hemant Kumar Gaba

13. Samarendra Das

14. Gurpal Singh

15. Whose handwritings are not readable (3)

16. People who forgot to drop a mail (12-15)

17. Riddhiman Basu [Associate Producer]

18. Ritam Bhaumik

19. Two Unknown Foreigners

20. Avishek Thakur

21. Ginnetta Correlli

22. Jason Marsh

23. Kanchan Sengupta

24. Sayan Chakraborty

25. Shamayita Banerjee

26. Apratim Ganguly

27. Ajasra Das

28. Manju Chakraborty

29. Kamal Kumar Roy

30. Monomita Roy

31. Shubhankar Mazumdar (24fps.in)

32. Debdut Sadhu

33. Supratim Sanyal (Washington Bangla Radio INC.)

34. Tushar Sarkar

35. Anirban Roychowdhury

36. Gairik Roy

37. Sunando Patra

38. Nishan Chatterjee

39. Kumar Chitrang

40. Tuhin Mallik

41. Soumyaditya Nanda

42. Moumita Chakraborty Goswami

43. Sushanta Kar

44. Sonali Sengupta

45. Suddha Prasad Bagchi

46. Gangotryi Sorcar

47. Achintyarup Ray

48. Caesar Mandal

49. Soumya Maity

50. Atish Baul [Associate Producer]

51. Justin Andrews

52. Joydeep Thakur

53. Avijit Ghosal

54. Debajyoti Guha

55. Mrinal Mazumdar 

56. Anirban Dashgupta

57. Debajyoti Mukherjee

58. Sanjoy Sinharoy

59. Saptarshi Dey

60. Sreemanti Sengupta

61. A. Dasgupta

62. Siddhartha Nath

63. Anindya Bose

64. Mukherjee Twish

65. Amiya Kumar

66. Bipad Bhanjan Behera

67. Antara Kundu

68. Avishek Nag

69. Indranil Ghosh

70. Somak Dutta

71. Saswata Chakraborty

72. Rupa Debnath

73. Soumya Bhattacharya [Associate Producer]

74. Snigdha Sheel

75. Mr. Dasgupta

76. Maifuz Ali

77. Sabyasachi Das 

78. Koustav Bhattacharya

79. Mrinmoy Chatterjee

80. Ugen Bhutia

81. Adheesh Verma

82. Neeti Tandon

83. Aroonav Das

84. Ankush Hore

85. Neha Bhat

86. Koushik Bagchi

87. Tarang Desai

88. Shre Kumar Chatterjee

89. Gautam Kar 

90. Rijabrata Chakraborty

91. Samyamoy Sen Gupta

92. Somnath Roy

93. Sounak Kar

94. Rammohan

95. Manas Tarai

96. Aniket Mukherjee

97. Nabanita Bhattacharya [Associate Producer]

98. Shounak Ghoshal

99. Supriyo Das

100. Soham Pal

101. Nilabhra Banerjee

102. Ankan Paul

103. Bikramjit Chakraborty

104. Atma Prakash Mishra

105. Amik Das

106. Amir Motlagh

107. Snigdhendu Bhattacharya

108. Varsha Chakraborty

109. Argha Sen

110. Tuhin Subhra Sinha

111. Ugenther Kumar

112. K V Krishna Rao

113. Arnab Ganguly

114. Rohosen Bandyopadhyay

115. Riccardo Bella

116. K V Srinivasan

117. Kannaiah C H

118. Sanhita Modak

119. Ushnish

120. Ipsita Palbhowmick [Associate Producer]

121. Maj Gaurav Garg

122. Two old LFEBF members 

123. Salil Biswas

124. Soumen Atta

125. Arpan Chowdhury

126. Tushnik Chaudhuri

127. Nabendu Bhattacharya

128. Ranjan Roy

129. Subrata Mukherjee

130. Ramakrishna Bhattacharya

131. Anirban Bandopadhyay 

132. Debanjan Das

133. Anirban Chattopadhyay

134. Parambrata Chatterjee

135. Abhinandan Ghose

136. Anisha Das

137. Anonymous

138. Indrani Datta

139. Subir Kumar Sengupta

140. Mrs. Sengupta

141. Mr. Sengupta (Junior)

142. Samran Huda

143. Deva Agarwal

144. Dinu Bandopadhyay

145. Abhinesh Warrier

146. Deep Shome

147. Sriparna Chatterjee

148. Pratim Ray

149. Pinaki Sen

150. R P Das

151. Biswajit Das

152. Samik Mukherjee

153. Yashowardhan Kauns

154. Sayonto Kundu

155. Dwaipayan Basu

156. Lohit Grover

157. Sharmila Roy

158. Atin Dutta

159. Suranjan Ghosh

160. Dewan Rameez

161. Debjit Bagchi

162. Suman Manna

163. Anonymous 2 [Associate Producer]

164. Krishanu Majumdar

165. Indranil Ghosh Dastidaar

All these people have actually spent money to make this film a reality. 
Not on this list, there are those 16 patrons too who contributed via Funduzz.com! 

What do you think, why did they do that? 
Now don't call them all insane since there are more than 180 of them!



And there'll be more, even if you don't find an answer...

Friday, June 7, 2013

Last Week of Fundraising



At the same time, it's good and it's bad. The positive thing is that once this campaign ends we will be free to go and shoot and complete our film and we won't have to do the tremendous job of convincing people to chip in their hard earned money to support our project. Sometimes it becomes even tougher than stealing the ring from Gollum. The terrible pressure...oh... finally it'll be over in a week.

And the negative thing is... no, it's not something to express in two or three lines. Allow this copy + paste from our website ---

"It was completely unplanned. The campaign initially started at the 9th Bring Your Own Film Festival, Puri. On the last day of of the festival, 25th February, 2012, we started approaching people to crowd-fund our film and raised INR 2,444. After returning, we kept on letting people know about our venture. The response was good. We collected INR 60,000 altogether till we launched the campaign on Wishberry in the last week of May, 2012. Wishberry has been a good partner till our partnership ended on Sptember 1. We raised INR 54,017 through this online platform. After September 1 we launched our campaign on Indiegogo just to keep the ways of receiving online contributions open, but it did not run well as we could raise only 48 USD there. Now in the last leg of production, we have launched another online fundraising campaign with Funduzz.com.
Check out http://bit.ly/fundonerupee

Till today (6th June, 2013) we have raised

INR 1,68,921.51 (Offline)
INR 54,017 (via Wishberry)
INR 2, 595.84 (via Indiegogo)

Total INR 2,25,534.35 of which INR 12, 482.05 has been spent on commissions of our partners.


So, the actual sum collected is
INR 2,13,052.30 only
and we still need to raise another
57,000 rupees till
June 15, 2013

We have raised around 24,000 rupees already on Funduzz.com
So that leaves us 33,000 INR away from our target



We expect you to do your bit! Thanks
"


So, that's the situation. It's not impossible, as a matter of fact, we have never been this close, but, it's tough, undoubtedly, especially considering the fact that though most of you don't like traditional film producers of our country but you do behave like them sometimes when someone comes to you asking for your support in the form of even as minimum as one rupee.

Now, you have a clear view of the negative side, we hope.
We still expect you to do your bit if you haven't yet.


Together, if not history, we can at least make a film!