We’ve been following the Cosmonaut since we discovered it back in December (even if the project kicked-off more than 2 years ago), patiently awaiting a new trailer, a new sequence, news, script reviews, international collaborations, evolution of the funding… a big drama, but an exciting one.
Because since its creation, the Riot Cinema collective behind this idea (Nicolás, Bruno & Carola) have become one of the biggest European referents of community based filmmaking mixing the most popular financing & production techniques the Internet era has brought… crowdfunding, community participation, early engagement with the viewers from the beginning of the project…. and a distribution of material licensed under Creative Commons.
This is where the hype is now, and with successful examples & platforms such as Kickstarter (who have enabled crowdfunding for countless projects) they have a good chance to succeed if they make it appealing enough.
Apparently last week one of those big initial investors reduced his contribution to the film and now the guys behind the Cosmonaut are asking the community for a bit of a contribution… you know, the crowdfunding game again. They’re asking for small contributions from a couple of € to several hundreds.. and they need to raise the 4K figure within a month.
As it usually happens with this sort of projects the web community answer has been instantaneous and after just a couple of days they’ve already raised 92% of that big figure. We’re pretty sure they’ll have reached their goal before the weekend ends. But just in case we thought you could help them a bit just like us (this way).
For those of you who just discover this project, The Cosmonaut about “Stan” who in 1975 prepares himself to become the first Russian cosmonaut on the Moon. Andrei, his best friend, manages the mission; but in the tense last days before departure, Stan thinks about Yulia, the woman they both have been in love with since her arrival to the City of the Stars, more than ten years ago. Two days after takeoff the spacecraft loses communication with Earth and after many months the ship returns one day to earth… without the cosmonaut.
The big buzz around the project hasn’t been for the story itself but the great mix of crowdfunding, distribution and sponsoring plans they initially outlined to reach their 860.000€ budget… This first round of investment the project raised around 30K, but will they meet their ambitious plans?
We really hope they do.
