From Bedrooms to Billions: The Amiga Years!

[lifeschool]

New Interviews Announced + DICE (Pinball) Perk


Hi all,  

We drafted this last night as we wanted to let you know about some great production elements that have occurred in recent days and then woke up to see we had gone over 1,700 backers and are very close to our fifth stretch goal, so thank you so much for that and a big welcome to all the new backers!

Production update

As some of you may already be aware we have decided to now include English subtitles and English Hard of Hearing subs for both digital and physical versions of the film regardless of where we end up. This is testament to how useful the Kickstarter comments and messaging system is. Very good reasoning and suggestions from you and we went off and found a way. The other languages will have to remain where they are in the stretch goals, but if we reach them then the entire disc (including download) will have all those languages throughout.

New Interviewees!  

As many of you know we already have locked down a lot of people, but this week we are very pleased to announce many new interviews to be filmed which include RJ Mical, Chris Huelsbeck, Tim Wright and 'Flashback' creator Paul Cuisset, expect more news soon!

Also slightly different from our original film we seem to be almost accidentally causing developer reunions, entire teams are coming back together to be interviewed or share the experience. This will see Team 17, Magnetic Fields, Sensible Software, Bitmap Bros all come back together.

Also only today in fact the four founders from Digital Illusions Creative Entertainment, or DICE as they’re also known as, Fredrik Liljegren, Andreas Axelsson, Markus Nyström and Olof Gustafsson came on-board to be interviewed.


NEW PERK!

PINBALL TRILOGY (signed) The four DICE founders have also very generously donated 3 signed Pinball trilogy game bundles (Amiga versions) to help with our campaign, those games are; Pinball Dreams, Pinball Fantasies and Pinball Illusions, along with 4 specially designed DICE postcards and a high quality glossy Pinball Dreams A2 poster, all items signed by Fredrik, Andreas, Markus and Olof. Please grab one as there are only 3 available!!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1195082866/from-bedrooms-to-billions-the-amiga-years

POSTCARDS PICTURE HERE!

Now that also means we can add the DICE postcards to the collection (top row of image below), you can either increase your pledge by £10 (unsigned) or £40 (signed) to receive the DICE Postcards, or of course any of the other developer postcards also shown below, and you can have as many sets as you wish while they're still available!

Thank you for your continued support for our film, especially now we’re pushing for those stretch goals, we want to make that extra content for you along with all the other elements we have listed. And as a side note it would be wonderful during shooting the film this summer to be putting a nice cold lager down on that floppy beermat! We only came up with it because we want one…what does that tell you about the two of us! However if we do end up putting a lager down on it then it means we’re making a lot of content for you which would be wonderful.

And Finally…

We would also love for you to share with us a picture of you and your Amiga setup. We will need pictures for the main film which ideally (if you have any) are taken from back in the day (80’s and 90’s) but also we are just as interested to see any pictures of your current Amiga setup.

We did this with our original film ‘From Bedrooms to Billions’ and some ended up in the main film and in addition we love hearing any anecdotes and stories that may be linked to the setup shown in your photo. Martin Edmondson told us once that during making Shadow of the Beast he slowed the disc speed down by gluing a piece of a cornflakes packet to the disc giving them extra write ability to the disc which helped the game development. We love stories like this, we are in that kind of ‘knowledge soaking’ period right now so nothing will be wasted and we’ll read it all…plus we have the feeling we’re going to hear some pretty amazing things.

Please post the images, stories or both to either our Facebook page ‘From Bedrooms to Billions’, or our twitter @frombedrooms, the Kickstarter comments or messages or just email us at b2b@graciousfilms.com. Any that we end up using for the film we will need to credit you so please made sure we get that info (even if you email it privately separately) so we can keep track.

We like to support others where we can so please cast your eyes towards the very fine Amiga musician Dave Lowe (composer, Elite II: Frontier, Starglider and many others) who is running a great Kickstarter project to rework some of his fantastic music. Kickstarter is perfect for talent like Dave and allow him to find his audience so please take a moment to check it out here; https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/278860000/uncle-art-elite-ii-orchestral-and-retrogaming-musi

Thank you all again, we have only 5 days! left to go so please continue to share our project wherever you can by using this link; http://t.co/kMrIEiiMU2

Best wishes and thank you for believing in us!

Ant & Nic

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PHWAA!!, we're getting close now!
 
4.5 days to go (including today) and we are just a little over 9K short.  
 
WOW!  Lets keep this going.
 
1,723 backers
£70,778 pledged of £80,000 stretch goal
4 days to go

[lifeschool]

4th Stretch Goal Reached - Photo Gallery!

Hi all,

We are very pleased to announce that we have reached the 4th Stretch goal!!, allowing us to add a photo gallery to the DVD and Blu-ray version of 'The Amiga Years!'

We plan to document the film production itself so intend to take lots of photos during the filming so the very best of these will form a photo gallery to go onto the DVD and Blu-ray so thank you every one of you for your support in getting the project to yet another goal.

Developer Postcards

If you are not aware of these please look at the front of the campaign here Many of you are raising your pledges to take advantage of the developer postcards, thank you for that, a very common questions is can you have more than one? The short answer is of course yes! To get one set or more just raise your pledge £10 (unsigned) or £40 (signed) per set, we won't be doing them again so you have a few days left if you still would like to help us in our bid to reach those stretch goals.

Extra Content...

We have noticed a couple of messages on the boards wondering why we are putting 'items' such as badges or Oliver Frey postcards before extra footage. The short answer to this is we didn't. We actually budgeted out the extra content first as that is our priority.

As filmmakers we want to make as much content for you as possible, especially while we're actually working on the film itself. Once we knew how much it would cost to produce those extra minutes we then added items such as badges and postcards simply to go in-between to help us reach those extra content goals. To produce an extra 30-mins of properly made content, let alone an hour is a lot of work to do it properly. You can't just run interviews on for an extra 30 or 60 mins it has to be woven into the main narrative, structured and mixed in with everything else, sound mixing, grading, overlays, extra archive footage to be licensed in if needed to help reinforce those new narratives, all the elements you would expect in a properly made documentary film.

The fun perks are in-between those extra content goals simply because there were 'gaps' in-between and we wanted to make the steps more gradual. Those items such as badges, postcards, even the floppy beermats are items we thought about, items we would want, and they are there simply to help us raise funds to reach our main goals, which is always first and foremost the production of as much material as we can.  However we decided that if we were making items such as the badge it would be unique and well made, not plastic but metal, something that would last and be remembered as part of this campaign!

And yes...even the floppy beermat!

Wherever we end up, we're going to do the best work we can for you all!

Please use these last few days to spread the word, 1,700 Amiga fans out there have pledged which is fantastic, hopefully there's still a few more Amiga fans out there.

Help us find them, spread the word and share the link; http://t.co/kMrIEiiMU2

Best wishes,

Ant & Nic

[lifeschool]

[lifeschool]

**COME TO 1ST PREVIEW SCREENING!**

Hi all,

A few backers have written to us with a very good idea which should be both a lot of fun and a very useful way to help reach our stretch goals.

For our last film we showed a very early ‘rough cut’ of the film at a cinema and many backers came along joined by several cast members from the film. Then afterwards we had a Q&A session on stage where the audience could discuss the film.

Creatively we found this not only highly enjoyable but also very useful to the film itself as some very useful points were made, some of which helped us in our final editing sessions before the film was finished. There was also a bar and afterwards many stayed behind to have a drink (or two) with ourselves and cast members, still talking about the film.

Therefore after several of you have written suggesting this again we have decided to this time offer the opportunity to all of you now. We will hold an early preview screening of ‘The Amiga Years! At a cinema in London. It will be a fantastic opportunity for you to see an early cut of the film before it’s completion in the company of the Directors and some of the film cast and then take part in a Q&A session and join us for a drink afterwards at the bar. Anyone present will also receive an exclusive 'one off' VIP press pack commemorating the event!

If you would like to be part of the film making process itself simply increase your pledge by £95. We have decided to not limit this for the time being as we want to see what the interest is like as obviously we can hire a bigger cinema if needed. You may buy more than one ticket, obviously slide your pledge up per number of tickets you may want.

At time of writing we are just £7.5k away from hitting £80k. Hitting it means we would be giving you 2.5 hours of content, so out of 1,800 backers if just 75 of you decided to come along to this wonderful ‘Amiga' event in London, get a unique press pack and be the first to see an early cut of the film along with cast members and ourselves we would hit that goal!

We hope to see you there!  

Best wishes,  

Ant & Nic

This is nail biting stuff, and with only 3 days to go, I am starting to feel worried its not going to make the 2.5 hour cut.

1,770 backers
£72,693 pledged of £80,000 stretch goal
3 days to go

[lifeschool]

SIXTY NINE DUDE!!
 
69 Hours to go!
 
1,830 backers
£74,127 pledged of the £80,000 2.5 hour stretch goal
69 hours to go!

[lifeschool]

I've been watching the total climb today and its like a life-bed vigil.

1,977 backers
£79,282 pledged of £80,000 stretch goal
41 hours to go

[lifeschool]

I just heard the devs have secured more items; such as Factor 5 huge wall mount collages and signed Signed Turrican Anthology CDs from Chris Hulsbeck.

The backers post is too long to re-post here, and has lots of pictures too, so here's a link.

Latest Backers Newsletter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1195082866/from-bedrooms-to-billions-the-amiga-years/posts/1181073

[lifeschool]

hi all,

Well we did it, you have believed in us and this film and we will put all our efforts in to make the best possible film for you all, of that we assure you!



We are a little shattered this morning, as i'm sure some of you are...especially those who tracked the progress of the floppy beer-mat which we are very happy to say we also secured.

Please see below the final stretch goal progress chart, it has been an incredible last 72 hours and ticked off quite a few that will really make this project special. So please let's all rest up, and pat ourselves on the back because we've got work to do...well we have...you just get to watch!

final progress chart here

thank you!

best wishes,

ant & nic

:roflmao: