Location, Location, Location...

Since finishing the BitterSuite Kickstarter, The DOG BUTTON HQ has been a hive of activity - from new rehearsals, to new versions of the script, it's all been very exciting here!

This weekend Jan and I set out at 2am with our awesome DoP, Tom Doran, and looked at some of the night locations in the current draft of the script - we wanted to see how much light was present, how that would be captured using an approximation of the camera settings we expect to be using, how many people were around at that time of night...

...so we generally had a bit of a nosey around.

(no post processing on these snaps by the way... all this light is stuff that's already there in the location!)

We're pretty happy with the results too - the locations we put on our list to checkout had a very wide range of moods and lighting conditions, so we're pretty confident that we're going to be able to get what we need out of them!

Looking at these locations also sparked some great suggestions from Tom about what light rigs he's going to want to use, how that would affect production, etc.

It's all go from here!

Sam

The BitterSuite Kickstarter has ended

So. We did it. 

We’re making BitterSuite.

One-hundred and ninety-one people have made this possible – and raised an astonishing £11,448. We’re humbled by your generosity, your belief in us, and the love BitterSuite has received. We’re going to do everything we can to make the film live up to the love that has gone into funding it.

There’s nothing more to say other than ‘Thank-You’ – from now on we’ve gotta speak through our actions…

…which means actually making BitterSuite.  Something we’re scheduled to start doing on the 12th August - eek.

As of next week we’re going to give blog posting privileges to every single member of the cast & crew, so hopefully you’ll get an fully rounded view of the production as it unfolds – it should be an interesting, and pretty candid, look into the DOG BUTTON process.

(Oh, and if you haven’t already please ‘like’ us on Facebook, and‘follow’ us on Twitter! There’s always stuff going on…)

In other reward based news we’re going to be filming the ‘Toast Your Generosity’ video at 2am on Thursday morning, so look out for that on Thursday evening – we have 101 people to toast, so we’re going to do a shot of beer for every one of them. It ain’t gonna be pretty, but hopefully you’ll see the love in it! 

Also, we still have 63 Vines to make, so we’ll be making those over the next week – keep your eyes out for them on the DOG BUTTON Vine profile page. 

With that, we’ll sign off – running a Kickstarter has been one of the most rewarding things we have ever done, every single pledge has made our tiny hearts skip a beat, and every day has been full of tiny struggles and victories. 

Thank you all for making it worthwhile, and making BitterSuite happen. 

Sam & Jan 

Ps. Breaking from the lovey-dovey nature of the post though, we’ve gotta be honest – it was also absolutely exhausting running this campaign. We got this photo snapped just as we hit the end of the Kickstarter – as you can see we're full of beans.

Jan's KickStarter Diary.  'Like a blog, only more about me-me-me'

Day Two.

We’ve just gone past the 24 hour mark and already a lot has happened. Immediately after we launched, several of you dove right in and pledged your little hearts out and it means a lot to us.

That’s our first lesson – that we have healthy appreciation glands. Or maybe they’re relief glands. We’ve put a lot of work into just getting to the point where we can start nagging people for money to help get us to the point where we can start making the film. So we’re a long way off the actual point, but, even so, we’re already tired and therefore humbled when someone actually backs our little film and gives us that tiny piece of validation our broken, overly dramatic diary-writing characters require.

            Last night was the official launch party. Sam super-insisted that we have cake. He wasn’t going to make it… But he wanted it there. So I made two cakes and people loved it, but I take no credit because I did it entirely begrudgingly and tried my best to poison everyone. But in the end I’m just too good at baking and we learnt our second lesson of the day – let them eat cake.

            Sam just came in with a brilliant idea: WE SHOULD HAVE A BITTER-SWEET TASTING PARTY. This is now our lives: coming up with stupid ideas to convince people to donate money to our completely selfish and not-at-all-helping-the-poor-or-the-sick-or-any-of-the-other-people-jesus-helped-when-he-wasn’t-making-kitchen-sink-comedy-dramas-about-turning-thirty-and-not-having-a-clue-what-you’re-up-to cause. KickStarter is a confusing place.

            But, at midnight last night we got selected as a Staff Pick on the KickStarter. Perhaps we have made a good impression on the internet so far. Maybe it’s okay to ask money. Still not sure. But to everyone that’s pledged so far I can say whole-heartedly that we’re very grateful. There, a human moment. I’ll stop before I deliberately undermine my own sincerity it with a paedophile joke.

Teasing a Kickstarter campaign... Day, well, X

So then. Day X.

Why "Day X", you ask? The answer is due to a few reasons... Most notably that I've been so busy teasing a Kickstarter capaign that I haven't had time to write about it!

Between that, trying to pre-produce a film, work a "normal" job and trying to get all the behind-the-scenes organisation done for the Kickstarter campaign... I'm exhausted!

(Picture was taken by Jan when we were trying to open a bank account for BitterSuite - it's all been a bit too much!)

Since my last post we've deceived we're having a party to on Kickstarter launch day to promote it, so we've arranged, booked and planned that - it's happening at The Jolly Butchers (the pub where I hold my "normal" job) and there's a Facebook event page ( https://www.facebook.com/events/424426501033773/ ) you should come!

We've also had two more rehersals, and designed future rehersals so they will serve a double purpose and also yield a web series, called BitterSuite moments - head over to the DOG BUTTON YouTube page and you'll see two of them there already. All of them should be, if the plan works, be chronological and lead up to the events of the film proper - it's a pretty ambitious plan, so let's hope it pays off!

There's actually been so much work for Jan and I to do recently, that we've had to devise a new scheduling system on our office wall to denote deadlines, and move jobs around to make sure we hit them - I'm including a photo of it here, so you can see the purposefully low-rent, uber stylish, working method we now have (hahahaha!)

In addition to this chart, we've also redesigned, and rewritten, our script outline wall chart as we approach our new draft - it's pretty in depth and big already!

So yeah, a load has been happening, and something had to give - namely, this blog... but hopefully this will change. 

As we get closer to production more people are being added to the team, and I'm hoping that more people will wrote more and more on this blog as we go on - being the sole writer sucks!

We're almost at the launch of the Kickstarter campaign (3 days!) so hopefully the tangible monetary scale of donations will push us to carry on - it feels like we're at the end of the race, but really we haven't even started!

Gotta get back to work now, speak soon,

Sam

Ps. Oh! One last thing - Jan and I have now said we're making a BitterSuite cake for the launch day party... Let's hope there as good as these ones at the shop opposite The Jolly Butchers, or we'll look awful in comparison! THE CHALLENGE IS ON!

Teasing a Kickstarter campaign... Day 8

After some big internal debates we decided to come up with a way of unifying everything BitterSuite under one umbrella, and redesigned the DOG BUTTON website's homepage splash to reflect something from the individual character one-sheets.

Pretty, ain't it?!

Let's just hope it funnels people to the Kickstarter page, eh?!

That's your lot for today,

Sam

Teasing a Kickstarter campaign... Day 7

12 DAYS UNTIL KICKSTARTER LAUNCH

Today's reveal is... this!

This blog!

on and on and on and on and on and on

I'd say that if you're new here (and that's 100% of you!) the place to start is with the first post. In it I talk about what this blog will be, and what it won't.

(Cliff notes version; it's gonna be raw, non-party line individual views, and not a slick media outlet - this is where everyone working on BitterSuite will have a place to post whatever they feel like.)

Hopefully the blog will be a fun and informative look at what happens when you try to crowd fund budget for a £11,000 first time feature, and what subsequently happens when you try to make it.

It's gonna get messy.

Sam

PS. Jan and I are having a rehearsal with Cordelia and Sarah today, so look for some posts on how it all went, and what we got up to, in the near future - to tide you over here's an unused poster still of the gang hanging out on the sofa.

Teasing a Kickstarter campaign... Day 6

13 DAYS UNTIL KICKSTARTER LAUNCH

After the release of all of the posters for BitterSuite, today is the first day of the "teasing" campaign that didn't have a image to go along with it; instead Jan and I had planned to release an overview and synopsis.... but it looked pretty damn boring, and didn't really work so well on Twitter!

Instead, I decided to take one of the major pieces of the project's visual identity (the wall from the first 'sofa' poster) and put the text we'd written over that. I think it looks a-ok.

As a bit of an experiment I made the image a 9x16 ratio, so that if people looked at it on their phone it would fill the frame entirely when held in portrait mode. I'll be interested to see what people make of it.

One thing I didn't expect, was that close friends already seem to be eager to help - the final poster, and this synopsis, were both shared without any prompting by us. I reckon this is a good sign as we approach the campaign... but I really want us to hit the magic 30% mark within the first 48 hours of our launch - that means, £3,300 so we're all gonna have to push hard to bring the sofa home!

That's all for today, smell ya later,

Sam

Teasing a Kickstarter campaign... Day 5

Today is the final poster release, and it's the group poster of all three of our leads; Sarah, Myles and Cordelia.

The final Bittersuite poster

We imagine that either this poster, or the more motif 'sofa' poster, will be the face of BitterSuite throughout production and release - of course, we could be completely off base, and find that the project has another identity after release, but that'll be another blog post!

Today we also publicly announced the launch of the Kickstarter campaign, and our goal - on Tuesday the 17th of June we'll launch our campaign for £11,000.

I'm getting pretty obsessed with tracking other feature film campaigns on Kicktraq, and preparing for the campaign is already shredding my nerves; I can't think what I'll be like when we actually launch!

That's all for today,

(a worried... but excited) Sam

Teasing a Kickstarter campaign... Day 4

Today's tease is the final character poster release - Sarah.

The fact the 'tagline' ends on the word "sofa" was no accident!

Sarah is going to be played by Sarah Barker, who also featured in 'room for two', along with Myles - if you've seen 'room for two' I'm sure it'll come as no surprise.

Here's all three together, just so you can see all three of our leads together...

Awwww bless!

With that done, we're all done for today!

See you tomorrow sofa-surfers!

Sam