Archive for October, 2011
Fund Your Project With Kickstarter
Ever since one of my favorite bands, Beats Antique, started a funding campaign with Kickstarter, I’ve been a fan. Artists who a good idea along with a business plan can share there idea with like-minded people who are interested in making sure those ideas become reality. Take a look at whether your next project could be funded by Kickstarter.
Develop a creative project worth backing, and create a Kickstarter Campaign
To qualify for a Kickstarter campaign, you need to meet the following criteria (adapted from their website, dudes):
1. You represent a project, such as albums, films, specific works – that have clearly defined goals and expectations. If you are really bad at creating goals, ask someone business-minded to assist you [and you'll have to figure out a viable way to compensate them for their troubles].
2. You have a creative purpose, such as the creative fields of Art, Comics, Dance, Design, Fashion, Film, Food, Games, Music, Photography, Publishing, Technology, and Theater. [If your project is on a grander scale, you might want to look into grants from organizations such as the National Endowment for the Arts].
3. No charity or cause funding. Examples of prohibited use include raising money for the Red Cross, funding an awareness campaign, funding a scholarship, or donating a portion of funds raised on Kickstarter to a charity or cause. [If you need a charity or cause funding campaign, go to Give Forward].
4. No “fund my life” projects. Examples include projects to pay tuition or bills, go on vacation, or buy a new camera. So if you’re an artist and you’re broke and have no work, this isn’t the place for you. [Come up with an awesome project, however, and you could find your project funded. You'll still have to pay your own personal bills.]
5. Rewards, not financial incentives. You can’t pay people back with money. But you can offer some cool stuff. Say you want to produce an album. You could give a signed edition to the contributors, and credit on your website. Their names could be listed in a liner note, or sung in a song. That’s up to you.
Here’s the catch: if you don’t raise all the money you asked for your project in the time frame you asked for it, none of the money is given to you. Translation: THIS IS AN ALL OR NOTHING CAMPAIGN.
If you’re going to use Kickstarter, try looking through a few successful projects. See how they described their works. You’ll notice that the best campaigns have good photography and videotography, well-written descriptions of the project, and reasonable incentives for involvement. Do yourself a favor, and watch a few of the videos posted on the website. Learn from your predecessors, and don’t feel like you have to reinvent the wheel if you’re not the best writer in the world. But at least have someone else edit your work. There are plenty of people with money who have an interest in helping your project get off the ground IF your project is worthwhile. Just because you think playing the kazoo is cool doesn’t mean your potential donor pool is as easily convinced of your skill set.
Have you used Kickstarter? What was your experience? If you haven’t, what’s stopping you from creating a campaign?
On Que
Having participated in many dress rehearsals and stage productions as a dancer and musician over the years, I don’t always get the time to see the other critical elements of a show, such as lighting, set design, and audio. Yet a casual observer of a show can tell you, if there is poor lighting or a buzz or crackle over the audio, it can literally ruin the enjoyment of a show. Ever have people suddenly cover their ears when feedback blows through a room? How does a sound engineer master the sound effects for dance, music, and film in a way that makes sense for the live performance stage? If you like Apple computers, you’ll like QLab for Mac.
Que your sound effects for live performance with Q Lab
With a tip from co-artistic director, composer, and audio wizard Joshua Kohl of Degenerate Art Ensemble, QLab is a developer’s download that has the typical basic free version, allowing basic control of a que of movies, cameras, audio, animation and music that works well for live performance. While I haven’t had a chance to personally test it on my own performance work, Kohl showed me his own set up on his MacBook after the performance, “Skirmish” as performed by dance artists and experimental vocalists Haruko Nishimura and Christian Swenson (known for their works within Degenerate Art Ensemble) at Olson Kundig Architects October 23, 2011. With sophisticated choreographies and vocal input from the audience that necessitates an on-site audio engineer, Kohl’s use of QLab showed me that with a knowledge of the choreography and good timing, someone like myself who does not possess a lot of experience with live performance audio queues can learn take on this role and give a professional appearance and feel to stage performances, even when interaction from the audience is involved.
We’ll see how long it takes before I’ll need to purchase more elements (unlock the additional developer’s content) to make QLab work for my purposes. But I can visualize using QLab for my future ventures in small-stage productions requiring intricate sound queuing adjustments.
Now it’s your turn. Are you new at sound for stage productions? What do you do? Do you hire out someone else to take care of this aspect? Is a DJ enough, or have you run into challenges when your DJ is limited only to playing musical tracks end to end? Does that limit the creativity you wish to put on the stage? Where could you allow yourself to grow if you had a tool like QLab to help you?
DIY Hoop Making And Repair
I had a little accident. After placing my hula hoops on an unused light bracket that I thought was safe and practical, I forgot to keep the light off the circuit one dark evening about two weeks ago. The result: two perfectly good hoops with three-inch sections melted almost completely through. Luckily, they melted so slowly, there was no damage to either the light bracket (which apparently gets hot enough to melt things over a few hour’s time!), and nothing caught on fire. Since I’m the type of person that hates wasting things and hates unnecessarily adding to the world’s garbage dumps, I felt there was only one choice. I would have to learn how to repair and make a hoop. Here is a blog post on how you can repair a hula hoop, which is also the same process of making a hoop.
Hoop repair is just a hacksaw away.
How To Repair Or Make A Hoop
What you’ll need to make your own hoop:
1. Professional gaffer’s tape. You can buy it online from places like TapeJungle.com in a variety of bright colors.
2. A mini hack saw, such as the Stanley 6 or 10 inch with a medium sized blade.
3. Plumber’s piping, 3/4 diameter. This is available in 100 ft. rolls costing around $38.
4. A lighter or a small-flame torch.
5. A plumbing connector piece made for 3/4 inch diameter plumber’s tubing for each hoop you wish to create or repair.
6. A yardstick or measuring tape (optional, if you need your hoop to be a specific diameter).
Making a hoop doesn't require a lot of advanced knowledge, just elbow grease and heat from a flame.
In my case, the melted portion on the two hoops need to be removed with the hacksaw. Cut straight through, and don’t be afraid to just go for it in terms of cutting away. You want the two ends to fit snugly together, so concentrate on getting a clean and straight edge.
After removing the melted piece, carefully fit the connector in by warming the ends of the hoop one at a time with a lighter or small-flame torch. This makes the ends pliable enough to insert the hard-plastic connector into the two ends of the hoop. The hoop ends should then meet fairly closely together, especially if you cut the ends cleanly with the hacksaw.
If the flame isn’t warming the ends enough, you might have to use hot water to soak the ends. In the case of my hoops, a flame was enough.
Finally, cover the area where the two ends are now touching with professional gaffer’s tape in the color you wish. You might also wish to inspect the entire used hoop for other bites in the gaffer’s tape, as sometimes broken tape (especially metallic ones) can have sharp edges that irritate skin as it rolls over the body.
To make a hoop, you’ll need all the same materials as repair. Measure off the amount of piping you’ll need to make your hoop. The larger the diameter, the slower the hoop will be (because of weight as well as the force you’ll need to get it to move around you), but the easier it is to work with for beginner or intermediate hoopers. Expert hoopers will likely want a smaller and lighter hoop for faster work.
After using the connector piece to create the base of the hoop, your imagination is all you need to create the design. I recommend crawling the Internet for design ideas, and then use lightweight tape decorate it to your heart’s desire.
Wanna Make Your Hoop On The Cheap?
If you live in the Seattle area, hooper Thierany Seriflame is offering a one hour hoop-making workshop! For the cost of the hoop itself (and a little extra to cover studio rental space), you’ll get a hoop and a mini-hooping lesson at the end. The catch: we need eight paying participants (or less if someone wishes to make more than one hoop) to make it worth it, as the materials are more expensive to make a single hoop than it is to make eight hoops. The hoop making workshop will include all the materials to make a hoop of less than 42″ in diameter (and in limited gaffer tape colors, unless you have your own).
This is a really inexpensive way to start hooping with a professional grade adult hoop, as well as to be in the environment of enthusiastic learners. If you’re interested in making a hoop of your own, please email me off line at info at hips for hire dot com and put the words “hoop making workshop” in the subject box.
If you decide to make your hoop on your own, please send a picture [or better yet, a video!] of you and your new hoop.
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