The Creativity In Action: JoshKnightTheFirst

September 2, 2014

Anonymous asked: "FamiKamen Rider RIDES AGAIN! [FKR Completion Project]!" ....why should we pay so a bunch of people can make a little student film? I don't see why this is something that WE should fund rather than themselves. What's its purpose? Informative? For charity? No. Just some knockoff fanfic that aids nobody but those involved in making it. If they wanted to make a film that badly, they should find the cash instead of coming begging the fandom for it.

marzgurl:

monstrosities1138:
Damn good question. What is it for? Entertainment. A celebration of a man’s body of work that brought a lot of people together. Maybe even to offer some kind of closure to an awful, awful event. You don’t think its something you should fund? Trust me, totally and completely understood. There are projects ALL the time that I’m left scratching my head as to “why the hell couldn’t they just fund it themselves?” Look at the Godzilla fan who raised nearly $20,000 for an all expense paid Japan vacation. What he films will be turned into a ‘documentary.’ Right.
But people apparently got behind his ‘begging’ to make that happen. Or is it only ‘begging’ when you don’t necessarily agree with the project that’s being funded? You get what I mean, I think (not trying to be insulting there, btw). I’m almost positive if it was an option, they would be funding this out of pocket. But being as that is not the case, they are requesting donations, whether through money or otherwise (people’s skillsets, props, etc.). This kind of thing is an undertaking and—-from what I can tell, I don’t have direct involvement in the budget—-its being done as thriftily as possible. For the record, I can tell you that I’m getting to San Antonio by my own means and that I will not be receiving a cent for my work on this.
I don’t think the ‘fanfic’ point holds up too much as a lot of the people working on this were involved in the production and writing of Justin’s original FKR series. Given the circumstances, this is arguably as official as one can get. Also, about the “aids nobody but those involved in making it” bit … again, I can see where that might be seen but I don’t think anybody has any kind of delusion of grandeur about this. Speaking only for myself, I see this what I mentioned in the first paragraph: a celebration of a man’s body of work that was enjoyed by many and a way to offer some kind of closure to the awfulness of what happened earlier this year.
Really hope none of this came across as snarky as that is not at all the intent. Honestly, this is the kind of genuine discussion that should be happening all the time.
To further this thought, the absolute ideal is absolutely not to raise money for it. If we could just have props and costumes on the ready, that would be all we need. Aside from that, I’d say you really have no idea how much work we’ve already done, how much we’ve already done out of pocket, etc. We’d have never even made our initial video had we not already gone through months of work to get it ready as it is.

Furthermore, there will be a lot of questions because people only know so much about the content of the movie. You’ll understand that we can only reveal so much right now in order not to spoil it for you, but I hope you’ll trust us when we say that the movie is a lot more than fan fiction. Although the major thing we DON’T have access to are the funds raised by Justin’s original IndieGoGo project, what we DO have are a lot of source materials and creators who were on Justin’s original project, and all of us have his best interest at heart. There is not a single person we’ve reached out to on this project who is not intensely passionate about dong the absolute most right thing for a dear friend that we’ve lost. While things have to be changed because we don’t have Justin, this absolutely does not mean that it is not about Justin or that this project does not utilize things that he was already planning and dreaming of.

For complete transparency’s sake, the total amount we’ve received in donations as of the time of this Tumblr post has been a grand total of $150. Why? Because people want to donate not money, but time, effort, and skills. Because Justin encouraged them. Because Justin meant something to them. Because Justin told everyone, “You Can Do This”. You would not believe the intensely powerful outpouring from people I have heard this week. The love is bigger than I could have ever imagined, and this is NOT about me, this is NOT about Josh, this is NOT about Matt, this is about Justin. Nobody is coming together over this because we’re the ones doing it. They’re coming together over this because Justin deserves it. All these E-mails I’ve received about, “Justin made me feel like I could do x because he actually listened to me and gave me a shot” or “He made me feel like I was normal”… you canNOT put a price on that. Which, aside from the fact that people already gave toward Justin’s original IndieGoGo, is yet another reason why we are NOT doing a standardized crowd funding to raise X amount of dollars. What we have in time for MAGFest is what we get, and I’m proud to say that with the love and support of countless people, it’s happening, whether people are reaching into their pockets or not.

Who does this aid? Everybody. You haven’t read the script yet, so I can’t expect you to understand. Nobody would understand unless you’d already poured over it as much as a handful of us have. Justin’s fans and friends want and deserve this. This is a story of a wonderful person, a story of laughter, a story of hope, and a story of heroes. This movie is for everybody who misses Justin, for everybody who wanted to see FamiKamen Rider get the spotlight he deserved, and and for everybody who needs this feeling that, even if someone is gone, there’s still room for hope. THAT is who it aids. THAT is the intention behind what we’ve spent months working on already, and it has nothing to do with bringing glory to us. This movie is Justin-centric, period.

Finally, to repeat what I’ve stated elsewhere, we have absolutely no plans to make ANY money off of this project. The money raised is going directly into making the movie. Once it hits the Internet later, we will NOT be generating ad revenue on it. And even if one day there becomes demand for a DVD release, proceeds would likely end up going to charity. Not a single one of us is in it for the money. We’re in it for our friend and to give his fans hope.
And that’s all I have to say on the subject.