Heart of Neon - a teaser for a film about Llamasoft

[d0kk]

Hey there, missed this. I've been totally distracted, and for some reason I thought I'd get emailed an alert if there was a post to this thread, which totally didn't happen. Anyway, I'm here now. What's your critique? Feedback is always welcome.

Looking forward to watching this quite a bit, but do you mind a single critique based on the little I've seen of the trailer?

[d0kk]

I've been away, but now I'm back. Things have moved along quite a bit. There's another, much shorter teaser that's doing the rounds on social media. You can see it here: https://vimeo.com/321259804

There's a round of fundraising ahead. I'm building a Kickstarter campaign that I'm structuring to be as much a celebration of Llamasoft as it is promoting a movie (which it obviously, very definitely is). I'm creating some merch, because there can never be too much Llamasoft related merch in the world. I'd love some input from YakYak. Rather than rewrite the whole spiel here, here's a link to the most recent Heart of Neon newsletter that is mostly me writing on the topic: https://mailchi.mp/19b01db1f483/heart-o ... tter-59317

The notion is to focus on a different facet of Llamasoft each week, as a theme to run with. Week 1 would be establishing a bit of history. Jeff and the 8-bit/16-bit/pre-next generation platforms - up to and including T2K. Week 2 would be about the art, with me blogging the making of the film poster, the donated art from Steinar and Gary Penn. Week 3 would be music related, the big gift incentives being the double vinyl TxK Official Score and the digital retrospective album, and, if I can figure out how, I'd love to include the light synth.. That would be a big deal if we can do something with that. It's in the movie, but outside of the context I'm finding it hard to explain to non-game, non-music people in a compelling way. It's a tough nut I'd like to crack. And the last week would be the next gen games, so lots of tunnel shooting on Twitch or something similar...

I find a lot of Kickstarters to be just dull. It would be a criminal shame to let that happen to this one. I want this to feel like a party. If you have suggestions on how to make that happen, I'd love to hear them

(I'll be checking in here at least once a day from here on out, not just messages like I've been doing lately)

[d0kk]

Not sure how many of you are on the Heart of Neon mailing list (if you're not, I recommend it ) but at the risk of being redundant, I'm doing a survey to find out where people stand on the various artworks Steinar made for Llamasoft back in the day. Steinar is making a number of his prints available for the HoN Kickstarter campaign To best know which designs we should include, I'm conducting a quick online poll to find out who likes what. If you have a couple of minutes to spare, I'd appreciate your participation!

https://heartofneon.typeform.com/to/BSm7kY

[RiK]

I'm conducting a quick online poll to find out who likes what. If you have a couple of minutes to spare, I'd appreciate your participation!

https://heartofneon.typeform.com/to/BSm7kY

Done.

Still got one of Jeff's old business cards here somewhere with that 'Jeff on the moon' image on, tucked inside my Trip-a-Tron manual :-)

[RiK]

There 'tis...

[d0kk]

This is going out in the newsletter in the morning (US EST that is) but since it's done I'll share it here first!

Heart of Neon KS t-shirt design survey

I've made a bunch of t-shirt designs for potential Kickstarter backer rewards. I wanted a lot of shirts because I happen to really like shirts. Anyway, I know some of these designs are stronger than others, but I can use your help to get some perspective on what's worth pursuing here. The images are all mockups. I do have test prints of some of these shirts already, but to keep the look in this survey consistent these were made in PS. Please take a minute to flip through these images and rate them 0 to 10 based on your initial reaction. Your feedback would be tremendously helpful!

Link is here: https://heartofneon.typeform.com/to/nqlmjM

Thank you!

[Rhythm]

Voted. Some really nice ones in there

[d0kk]

a quick note for people who haven't been following the HEART OF NEON Kickstarter updates, I'm looking for a few good people to help spread the word outside of the social media. I know a few people who don't mess with that anymore (and some who never did) but who also might be interested in supporting a film about Jeff.

The thing is crowdfunding is a lot like releasing movies in the cinema. A big opening weekend goes a long way to reaching a wide audience. To do that the ideal situation is getting HEART OF NEON promoted by Kickstarter itself. Kickstarter determines which campaigns to feature and promote based on which ones get a lot of traction very quickly, (i.e. everybody shows up on the first couple of days) so I'm looking to get the word out to as broad a cross-section of people as possible in the next few days.

I've been reaching out to friends to write an email about the HEART OF NEON Kickstarter to at least one other person not already on Facebook or Twitter, or to a person who has abandoned those apps. I even wrote a template people could use or not as the basis for an email:

"My friend Paul is about to launch a Kickstarter campaign to finish a documentary he has been working on for years. Called "Heart of Neon" it's an insightful and personal story about one creative programmer, Jeff Minter, and his career that spans the entire history of home video game entertainment, For decades Jeff has been a pioneer indie game design,. His story is the embodiment of digital artistic endeavor and doing what you love against all the odds. This is a story that celebrates every independent creative artist, writer or programmer who has experienced the struggle of working on the fringe.

The Heart of Neon Kickstarter campaign begins this Thursday, the 12th of September. You can see the campaign here: http://www.wewantthellamasoftmovie.com.

Please consider supporting this important film through this Kickstarter campaign on Thursday."

If you know a person who is likely not to have heard about this Kickstarter but will respond to an email from you, please take a minute or two to reach out to them today. I'm going to be asking people on launch day itself to make the social networks buzz with Heart of Neon, but before then if we can bring a few more people into the fold before the big day then so much the better.

I hope you''ll help. Anything you can do to help will be gratefully appreciated!

[merman]

Backed, shared on social media and posted on a couple of forums...

[bcass]

About the kickstarter - does the digital download include everything that will be on the 2 disc blu-ray set?

[Jamesac]

Hey there, missed this. I've been totally distracted, and for some reason I thought I'd get emailed an alert if there was a post to this thread, which totally didn't happen. Anyway, I'm here now. What's your critique? Feedback is always welcome.

Looking forward to watching this quite a bit, but do you mind a single critique based on the little I've seen of the trailer?

Ah! Never saw this so never responded, sorry- The thing I wanted to note is that, at the time, the bits on display were 100% white middle-aged guys. Just saw the new trailer-

https://vimeo.com/344873410

And it's still very heavily weighted that way. I'm not looking for an artificially-enforced diversity, but it does kind of stick out when you realize how uniform the people that we've seen are.

Having said that- backed! Bluray and TxK album are must-haves.

[Harlequin]

Ah! Never saw this so never responded, sorry- The thing I wanted to note is that, at the time, the bits on display were 100% white middle-aged guys.…
… it's still very heavily weighted that way. I'm not looking for an artificially-enforced diversity, but it does kind of stick out when you realize how uniform the people that we've seen are.

I suspect that is Llamasoft's traditional demographic. I would be surprised if more than two or three percent of this forum's membership fell outside of it.

[Misfit]

For easier reference, the Kickstarter is here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/do ... ideo-games

I'm in, once I can work out the rewards. Not at all complicated.

It certainly seems ambitious with talk of premiers and parties but personally I can see it struggling to make it and can't imagine much of a cinema release. Luckily I know nothing and will hopefully be proven wrong.

Good luck, I'm very much looking forward to the results.

[RiK]

Needs VLM Crew flight at the launch party eh?

[Harlequin]

https://www.hardcoregamer.com/2019/09/1 ... ter/357373.