TL;DR: We are making progress, slowly but surely marching towards a finished film.

Our apologies for the radio silence since the campaign. While our IndieGoGo campaign was quite successful, 60% funding isn't quite letting us work on the film as smoothly and quickly as we had hoped. Matt and I have been doing other (paid) work in order to add to the budget ourselves, there has been time put into grant applications, and we've been meeting with a number of freelance artists and vendors to get the film made within our means and non-linear pipeline.

We are happy to say that it is working out quite well, despite not being able to meet the projected schedule!

At this point we have rough versions of all of the environments, and rough layouts of the entire film. We're working on near-final layouts (e.g. camera tracking and placement within the environments relative to the characters) so that we can make final calls on the environments and move forward in the pipeline.

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We were nervous before the campaign started that it would flop, and we wouldn't be able to finish the film. While we didn't hit 100% of our ideal goal, we certainly have the means to finish! We will need to be a bit crafty about it though.

I think Matt and I both have some other work we've been neglecting during the campaign, so now that the pressure is lower I need to refocus for a bit. I'll get back to you in the near future with our thoughts on the timelines for the film, the timeline for perks (some of which need us to finish the film first, and some do not), and what we need from you for the various "colony" perks.

My biggest thanks to the 275 generous people who are helping this film happen!

~ Mike

There is less than a day left in our campaign; it has certainly been a roller-coaster!

We're sitting at ~60% with ~$21k. We do have a "flexible" goal, so we will get that amount at the end even if we don't hit 100%. Which is amazing, because thanks to your generous support we are certainly past the threshold of being able to make the film reasonably(-ish). We will be able to hire artists to fill whatever skill voids we have, we can pay for render-time, and cover some other small supplies.

It might be a bit of a long-haul because Matt and I will still need to do so much of the labor. We might miss the estimated delivery dates because of it, but we will most certainly make this film. We are focused on it, and are so passionate that we simply must make it!

The campaign tagline is "A visually stunning, emotionally engaging short film about space travel, A.I. & human evolution.", and I promise you that the film is certainly that. Even being so close to it, my spine still chills at certain parts. We've seen friends tear up watching the current cut.

When we finished Blind Spot, I thought it was okay, but it took me years to distance from it to be able to really appreciate it. Not so with Shadows in the Grass. The science (of evolutionary psychology, AI, and space-travel) is not only accurate (or at least plausible), but also really compelling. The characters, and the dynamic between them, are really wonderful and subtle. You really empathize with them after only 9 minutes.

We're going to make this short. It is going to spark a ton of great conversations. I'm going to love the final product, and I think you will too.

So on our last day, please support a handful of indie filmmakers in following their passion, and try to share this campaign one last time. You can participate in our referral contest; you could easily take the lead by convincing someone to pick up one of the sale perks, or into the top-10 with a digital download. We also just made a "secret perk" for our Mission Patch for only $5 for you to share!

Thank you all so much for your support! We would not have been able to get this far (and be able to make this film) without you!!

Wish us luck on this last day.

~ Mike

Only 7 days left in our campaign, and we've been picking up some steam; we're up nearly 10% in the last week thanks to 254 amazing people, both donating and telling others about our project!

The first place in our referral contest is still within easy reach. To make it even easier, we've added a single "Colony Specialist" perk at $150; you can help support this film by getting one of your friends/family to be in it! Just make sure to use Indiegogo's share tools at the top of our campaign while logged into your account. See the "Referral Contest" section of our campaign for more info.

We are specifically interested in any connections you may have to film/scifi media or websites. If you can get someone to write about our project and it results in donations, we will take that into account too.

We've also gotten some great feedback on our new NASA-inspired mission patches, so we decided to open those up as a perk instead of just part of the referral contest. Check out the "Mission Tailor" if you want to get a patch of your own; we will even cover the shipping (to Canada/USA).

We are blown away by your generous support so far. Now lets push it the rest of the way!

~ Mike

Happy Friday, everyone!

We have only 14 days left in our campaign, and we really need your help to push across the finish line. We can do it!

We thought it would be great if we could reward you for helping spread the word about our project in these last few days, so we have a few fantastic new perks that you can get by referring others to this campaign!

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