Camera Obscura: The Walerian Borowczyk Collection

[MichaelB]

With £13,373 now pledged, we're two-thirds of the way there in just six days.

A HUGE thank-you to everyone who's pledged already - I recognise quite a few names on the list!

And while I won't relax until the target is actually passed, with 54 days still to go I'm now feeling quietly confident that Goto will indeed be getting a HD upgrade.

[alacal2]

I'm in. Consider it a thank you for some top-class releases this year and for those to come.

[swo17]

That Kicktraq site is saying that this project is trending toward generating almost £100,000, but that's clearly just assuming that the average pledge over the first 8 days will be realized over the next 52. You would think that a website solely dedicated to projecting the success of Kickstarter projects would have gathered sufficient information to know how to fit a realistic projection curve. For instance, if £200 more are funded each day (which is much closer to the average over the past 4 or 5 days) it would take about a month before the project is fully funded, and it would ultimately raise about £25,000 in total.

[Berzeli]

That Kicktraq site is saying that this project is trending toward generating almost £100,000, but that's clearly just assuming that the average pledge over the first 8 days will be realized over the next 52. You would think that a website solely dedicated to projecting the success of Kickstarter projects would have gathered sufficient information to know how to fit a realistic projection curve. For instance, if £200 more are funded each day (which is much closer to the average over the past 4 or 5 days) it would take about a month before the project is fully funded, and it would ultimately raise about £25,000 in total.

They fully acknowledge that trends aren't realistic projections (see: blog post), if you hit the red tab that says [Exp]Projection you will get a somewhat realistic projection curve.

edit: Also, if you hit the "Daily Data" tab you can see that the average over the last 5 days has been 532 £ so I wouldn't worry too much, especially since the last 48 hours usually contains a massive surge of backers.

[Izo]

I just pledged purely based on Arrow's recent track record.

For those of us who are unfamiliar with the director, can anyone say what we can expect?

[jindianajonz]

Every time I see that chart, I panic a little over the fact that it's leveling off, until I realize it's early in the day and that last segment is only going to get steeper as the day goes on.

I'm glad to see that the last few days have been very steady.

[MichaelB]

My brother knows a fair bit about Kickstarter, and he says this is very very typical - a big surge at the start, levelling off in the middle, and another surge at the end as the deadline approaches. And he seems completely certain that we'll hit the target, and I tend to agree - at the moment, we're only one box set away from hitting 75%, after less than ten days.

(UPDATE: Someone pushed us over the 75% mark a few minutes later - if it was anyone here, thanks!)

As for Izo's question, if you're a fan of Luis Buñuel, Terry Gilliam, the Quay Brothers and Jan Švankmajer you're in roughly the right ballpark - in fact, the middle two were strongly influenced by Borowczyk, and Švankmajer certainly knew his work (Borowczyk's Renaissance has more than a touch of Švankmajer about it, although it was made the year before Švankmajer's own cinema debut).

Both the videos attached to the Kickstarter page offer glimpses of Borowczyk films - in fact, I might as well itemise which clips are featured in the Terry Gilliam intro:

1. Les Jeux des Anges (1964) - the impression of a speeding train
2. Grandmother's Encyclopaedia (1963) - the vertiginous car journey over the viaduct
3. The Concert of Mr and Mrs Kabal (1962) - the stumpy corpse falling on the ground
4. Renaissance (1963) - the broken plate reassembling itself
5. The Phonograph (1969) - animated phonograph
6. Joachim's Dictionary (1966) - the "doorbells"
7. Rosalie (1966) - the unravelling mittens
8. Les Jeux des Anges - the wrestling torsos and body parts

...and the second video has numerous clips from Goto, Isle of Love, his first live-action feature.

[swo17]

Someone's post about this was deleted for some reason, but this is a helpful link for a more realistic view of where the funding is headed, currently ranging from about £40,000 to £84,000 (though the low end looks more realistic to me).

[jindianajonz]

Well, as Michael said, there's often a surge at the end of the kickstarter- probably from people who were on the fence about the set, but decide to "impulse buy" at the last moment before that 60lb (sorry, American keyboard) price goes away. I think that may push it a bit closer to the middle of the spectrum, even though the high end seems VERY unlikely.

[MichaelB]

Boro's Dictionary reaches the letter B, which unsurprisingly turns out to be for Beast.

This includes a new short video by Daniel Bird exploring the links between Borowczyk's La Bête and Władysław Podkowiński's scandalous painting Frenzy of Exultations (Szał uniesień, 1893).

[Drucker]

I've read this thread, but still have a question, so sorry if I've missed it: is the 60 pound donation going to get me a box set AFTER the goal has been reached? I would like to give, but also would like to wait until next paycheck if I can.

[EddieLarkin]

Your card will be charged the £60 on January 11th, and not before. You'll get the box set in May if things go as planned. So you're safe to donate now.

[Drucker]

Thank you.

And to Arrow/other industry folks: this is an awesome project. I have never heard of this filmmaker. From what I've read, I don't think this is going to be the kind of films that are up my alley at all. But I'm going to support this because this is an absolutely righteous project, and if this is successful, hopefully it can be with other films in the future.

[effigy105]

I hope this campaign isn't running out of steam. It seems to be hovering around the £15,800 mark for a few days now. Unfortunately, the Region B encoding has been a deal-breaker for a few people I know who I've mentioned this project to. Of course I understand it's not Arrow that are pulling for this.

This campaign put me in mind of Project X, and their quest to restore and release all of Peter Watkins' films. I would dearly love to see more of his work and maybe something like Kickstarter would be just the ticket. I'll just keep hoping, I guess.

[MichaelB]

I hope this campaign isn't running out of steam. It seems to be hovering around the £15,800 mark for a few days now. Unfortunately, the Region B encoding has been a deal-breaker for a few people I know who I've mentioned this project to. Of course I understand it's not Arrow that are pulling for this.

It's just passed the £16,000 mark, so we're 80% of the way there.

And I'm pretty relaxed about the way things are going - even the worst day brought in half as much again as the minimum daily amount that we need to make between now and mid-January to guarantee hitting the target, and of course every day that we exceed that minimum amount (currently £85, down from £88 only this morning), it'll fall still further.

And there'll be new promotional pushes over the next few weeks (notably in the next issue of Sight & Sound, perhaps Borowczyk's most consistent champions in the English-speaking world), plus the usual surge towards the end of the campaign as people who've been wavering finally decided to take the plunge, so it's now all but certain that Arrow will indeed raise all they need.

In fact, even if the campaign stopped dead right now I'd probably take out a bank loan to push it over the target myself - I think I could just about do that without letting my children starve.

[matrixschmatrix]

I've literally never seen a Kickstarter campaign that hit 80% with weeks left to go fail. For that matter, I've only very rarely seen one fail that was anywhere near halfway before the last couple of days- I'd be considering stretch goals if I were in charge here.

Do you know if there are any in the pipeline? I bet you guys could hit £30,000 or more with further incentives.

[MichaelB]

At the moment, we're simply focused on hitting the target - although obviously if we hit it way ahead of the deadline (which I agree is by no means unlikely), there's every possibility that we might resurrect ideas that we reluctantly dropped due to lack of funds.

Put it like this, we have a definite wishlist, but as the more ambitious/attractive plans require third-party collaboration I obviously can't discuss them now.

[swo17]

I bet you could easily get a lot of people to donate more if some non-Borowczyk Arrow-related incentives were added into the mix. For example, pledge $X and receive an Arrow release of your choice, $5X for 5 releases, etc.

[jindianajonz]

I bet you could easily get a lot of people to donate more if some non-Borowczyk Arrow-related incentives were added into the mix. For example, pledge $X and receive an Arrow release of your choice, $5X for 5 releases, etc.

Very much this. I've only recently started buying Arrow titles, and there are quite a few that I've been eyeing lately. If I knew my purchases were going towards adding features to the Boro box, I could easily see myself parting with a hundred or so quid (it's still called quid, right?)

[rwaits]

Has the total pledged somehow decreased?

[EddieLarkin]

Yes. It appears one of the two £1,000 backers has reconsidered.

[MichaelB]

I'm the other £1,000 backer, and I won't be reconsidering.

[Lino]

Boro's Dictionary reaches the letter B, which unsurprisingly turns out to be for Beast.

Many thanks for that post, Michael. It alone drove me to a search for the Loki film, which I eventually found over at YouTube (albeit sans english subs, which nonetheless didn't stop me from enjoying the marvellous visuals on display and beguiling soundtrack by the no less beguiling talents of Wojciech Kilar) and consequently held my hands in prayer for a dreamed Second Run release (definitely their cup of tea). Really anxious to know more about the director, though. And terrific poster, too!

By the way - would love if the artwork for the upcoming boxset would be along the lines of these examples:

http://www.cine-songes.com/images/produ ... 000001.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.cinemotions.com/data/films/0 ... 1974-1.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[MichaelB]

It alone drove me to a search for the Loki film, which I eventually found over at YouTube (albeit sans english subs, which nonetheless didn't stop me from enjoying the marvellous visuals on display and beguiling soundtrack by the no less beguiling talents of Wojciech Kilar) and consequently held my hands in prayer for a dreamed Second Run release (definitely their cup of tea).

An English-subtitled version is included in Telewizja Kinopolska's three-film Horrory box set, which I see is currently going for just 59.99 złotys (that's £11.91/€14.27/$19.40 at current exchange rates) plus postage.

[kekid]

I am interested in supporting the Walerian Borowczyk box set being discussed elsewhere. However, I do not understand how the kickstarter process works. Specifically, these are my questions.

(1) Is there a minimum one needs to pledge?
(2) Does one have to give a credit card number at the time of pledge? If so, is the pledged amount taken out immediately or when the box ix actually released? What are the security mechanisms if credit card information is required?
(3) If the item does get released, is anyone (including those who did not pledge anything) able to buy it? If so, what, if any, are the privileges of the early supporter? Is the pledge amount deducted from the eventual price of the box? If the venture makes profit, is it distributed to those who pledged according to some formula?
(4) If the total amount pledged falls short of what is required to release the item, and the item does not get released, what happens to the pledged amounts? If they are taken out at the time of commitment, are they refunded? And any further information that will clarify how this process works will be much appreciated. Thank you.