Jamari Animated Update: A Halloween Special, Recording Voices, 3D Swings and The Power of Twitter for Filmmakers

I hope everyone had a great Halloween! I had a great time with my nephews Jamari and Bralyn. While I was helping babysit them Halloween morning, we created a Halloween cartoon over at GoAnimate.com. I broke out my little microphone and they went to town. They wrote it and Jamari co-directed with me... and their grandma was the voice of the ghost! You can check out Part 1 and Part 2 of Jamari and Bralyn's Halloween Special here.

Jamari and Bralyn's Halloween Special, Part 1

I'm really proud of this... they did a great job!


The recording for the Jamari Animated project is on again. The best time for all involved seems to be November 9th. Cross your fingers and say a prayer everyone that it happens this time. I'm praying that it goes without a hitch! I'm going to take advantage of the recording time and get the actors to also record for fundraising trailers. I've got a week to figure that out, so I'm watching tons of fundraising trailers on IndieGoGo.com. I really want to avoid the clichéd "Making of" video... I want them to be fun and interesting so people get excited about being a part of it. I'm leaning towards either an "interview" kind of thing or a dramatic movie trailer voice over kind of thing... or maybe a combo of both.

I'm thumbnailing out some of the scenes from the project that will be using the stereoscopic effects heavily. Here are some thumbnails from the scenes where Jamari is running from Raincoat throwing lightning bolts. Jamari grabs onto a merry-go-round and swings around it, dodging the bolts.

The plan with this is for Jamari's feet to swing out of the screen as he spins around the merry-go-round. I'm learning as I'm designing this and I'm not sure how much of a challenge doing this with Flash (or possibly ToonBoom) is going to be. I'm just thumbnailing the depth script and going from there.

I just wanted to take a minute and talk about Twitter and what it could mean for my project... and all audience funded film projects. At first, I didn't get it. I thought it was just a site for "Facebook Updates". After using it and watching other Twitter users use it, I get it now. Twitter can be just for personal updates if that's what you want, but it's also a fantastic tool for fast, viral networking, promoting your work and tracking performance. For example, I posted my nephews' Halloween cartoon on my Twitter page and checked its performance after a day. When I checked the stats, GoAnimate said the cartoon had 30 hits. Bit.ly reported that 13 of those hits came from Twitter. Bit.ly can also tell you if your link has been retweeted or shared on Facebook.

So, as a creator, I can put a piece of work out there and be able to tell exactly how popular it is and how big of an audience I have. This is key with fundraising (in sales, we called it prospecting). Using Twitter and Bit.ly as tools, I can tell how many people see my fundraising trailer, how many of those people actually donated and come up with a success ratio. With that ratio, I'll know how many people I need to get my trailer seen by to raise the amount of money I may need during my projects. Right now, I have around 100 followers on Twitter and 13 Twitter users watched the Halloween cartoon. That's 13%. So I know that around 10 -15% of my followers will click on one of my links. For sake of argument, lets say 1 person made a donation. So, I would then know that for every 13 views I should get around 1 donation. Of course, those numbers wouldn't stay the same. I would look at those numbers over time and analyze how effective the tweets are, follower to click ratios, click to donation ratios, etc, and I would repeat what works and stop what doesn't. And I used to think that a background in sales was a waste for an animator...

Of course, I'm not saying that we must spam people. I've seen that the best Twitter users mix promoting their work with personal tweets, news related posts and trending topics, all related to what they do. I think the key is that your Twitter stream has to be interesting and fun... while staying focused and true to your brand. In other words, your followers expect a certain kind of tweet from you.

....haha, as if i'm a social media expert.  I'll keep you informed on the results as I go, though.

I also want to thank Twitter for their new lists feature. They basically took the weekly Twitter ritual of "Follow Friday" and turned it into a feature. Now, we're all grouped together in iconic categories. It might seem shallow for some, but hey, every time I'm on an "Animation" list, that's a little victory. It makes things easier too. Say, for example, you're after tweets about cooking, and you trust Paula Deen's opinions on the subject. Well, if Paula Deen's Twitter page makes a list of chefs or cooking Twitter accounts, you can just follow Paula Deen's list instead of tracking them all down yourself. I see it as a Twitter user giving a "seal of approval" to other Twitter users on a specified subject. If you're on Twitter (and if you're not, I highly suggest it), check out my @chaostoon/coolpoints list. Thanks to @GoAnimate, @Hollywood_Tweet, @TheBriness and @Skookum86 for putting me on their lists of professionals. Thanks to @mbusse as well for putting me on a followed Lynchburg, VA list!

Check back for pictures from the recording session!