millsworks

As you may have noticed I’ve been posting a lot about our efforts to get Ruffus The Dog’s “A Christmas Carol” financed through contributions from the crowd-funding web site IndieGoGo.

The time has run out for that effort and while we didn’t raise the full $8,500 we were hoping to, we did clear over $2,000 and managed to garner a bit of attention for the show itself. It’s all good.

The process of using IndieGoGo was an interesting learning experience. I have no doubts we’ll bring other productions forward through that site. The level of participation from contributors is a difficult one to anticipate; I’m sure everybody thinks their own project is the absolute most bestest in the whole universe. There are a lot of great recommendations from the operators of the site on how to best leverage awareness of your project and ensure you are getting the maximum return for your efforts – but it is up to you to make it happen.

Did I do everything humanely possible to guarantee full or even excess funding of “A Christmas Carol”? No, of course not – I’m a lazy procrastinating slob with too much work in front of him and preternaturally shy about blowing my own horn. We did have a lot of help from many people out there – friends, family, colleagues and total strangers – to which we are indebted. It’s gratifying and humbling to see others get out and make noise in an effort to help us in this quest.

Thanks to you all from the bottom of my sordid little heart.

Today is Tuesday – next week, on Monday, we will begin shooting “A Christmas Carol”. I’ll be documenting the entire process here on this blog and probably on another site set up just for that show. There will be photos and tweets and possibly a live video feed on UStream. We can’t get too ambitious with all that because we do have a show to shoot and that is, perforce, ambitious enough in its own right.

When it is all finished and ready for release it will, of course, show up on the official Ruffus The Dog web site as well as its own online location, and right here and on YouTube and anywhere else we can place it.

There’s a lot for me to do between now and when we wrap the shoot – as well as thereafter with our tight post-production schedule – and while there is plenty for me to be raving, raging and ragging on about (TSA, Copyright, Internet Censorship, stupid cat videos, Net Neutrality, the Singularity, government corruption, cool art, corporate malfeasance, fascist hijinks and general monkey assholery to name but a few) I shan’t be able to indulge my usual blog musings in earnest for a while. That doesn’t mean you won’t see things posted here – I am, after all a lazy procrastinating slob – just that my posts may be somewhat minimal for a few more weeks.

After all is said and done will it have been worth it?

Of course! I get the chance to play with my friends in a creative endeavour and tell a great story in our own way and show it to the world. What’s wrong with that? Paying the bills would be nice too but that’s gonna have to wait until we’re finished this – then I’ll go out and get a job and complain about it at length here.

In the meantime, I’m taking great comfort and inspiration from a slender little volume I picked up at our local bookshop – The River Trading Company, on Queen West (the real Queen West: Parkdale) – where I found it perched in their front window display of nifty holiday stuff.

It’s an Atlantic Monthly Press 1920 reproduction of the original edition.

I don’t believe in omens and signs but I’ll take what I can get – and this will be the book Ruffus reads from in the show.

Once again – my deepest thanks to everyone who contributed and supported our fund raising efforts – our creative team will now strive to make the best Ruffus show possible. Keep tuning in for updates.

Cheers.