Hello friends,
I hope you all are well, had a great holiday season, and are starting 2023 on a good note. For me, unfortunately, I became caught up in the Southwest Airlines meltdown so things didn’t turn out as planned, but I was able to eventually spend time with my family in Illinois and I hope any travel you might have had went smoothly.
This update comes later than I had anticipated when I sent the previous email, but rest assured that we have been busy behind the scenes taking the steps needed to make a funding plan. Those steps include starting a website for the project and an information platform (I suppose some people would call it marketing) to bring attention and hopefully funding, to the film. I am happy to report that Steve Rausch’s son-in-law, Clay Winowiecki, has been going above and beyond to help make this happen. He is building a website on WordPress, a popular blogging platform, and has set up a MailChimp email automation platform for the project. I honestly could not have done this work myself, so I send a hearty thank-you to him and to his wife Margaret as well, Steve’s daughter, who, I suspect, has been supporting him in this work more than I realize.
Here is a little preview of the website:
The finished product will probably look different – I’ve already changed the header image three times since Clay set it up. These production updates that I currently send out by email will eventually be posted on the website as blog posts and will also go out to all of you and to any new “subscribers” as MailChimp automated email blasts. We will transfer your email addresses to MailChimp once we have the website completed.
You might be wondering what content will be on the website. In the first iteration, the website will provide information about the documentary: what it’s about, how it began, who is on the project team, an estimated timeline for completion of the film, and why funding will be important for what is to come. Eventually, I hope to build out the website further and include the documents I’ve acquired through research at the National Archives, videos of past reunions recorded by Ray Bailey, digitized footage of the Franklin, and other information about the ship, the Museum Association, and the reunions. We will also include production photos and videos of work in progress, plus a donation portal that will connect with the fiscal sponsor of the documentary project, the Center for Independent Documentary (CID).
As the fiscal sponsor, CID typically manages all the incoming funding and outgoing vendor payments for a documentary project, keeps the books, sends weekly updates regarding the film’s finances, and provides documents for tax purposes. CID is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, so any donations people make to any of the film projects CID sponsors are tax deductible. In return, CID retains a small percentage of the donated funds to pay their personnel and support their operation. Fiscal sponsors are particularly important when applying for grants, as most granting agencies require that a film project have a fiscal sponsor to ensure that their grant funds are being spent appropriately. What I like most about CID is their location (right here in the Boston area) and their experience (they’ve provided me with a lot of support and advice about applying for grants). You can see the page for the Franklin project on their website here: USS Franklin Documentary at CID
You might have noticed that I’ve mentioned funding a number of times in this message. That’s because once the filming is completed, which I expect will happen in 2023, the project then will approach a critical and expensive phase: post-production. That is when all of the elements of the film will be put together, like fitting pieces of a puzzle to make a final big picture:
- hours and hours of video footage from five years of filming will be organized, clipped, and edited together into the story
- the soundtrack will be engineered from all the different recordings to be smooth, high quality, consistent and align with the action in the footage (the sound is actually the most important component of the film – audiences will tolerate poor visual footage but not bad sound)
- the motion graphics will be created and edited in amongst the video clips
- all of the different video clips in the film will be color corrected so they have consistent exposure, contrast, and color balance across all of the different camera formats and lighting scenarios that were used to shoot the footage
I cannot do these things — I will need to hire professionals to bring all these components together and that will take time and cost tens of thousands of dollars. The kind and generous donations by the USS Franklin Museum Association and by some of you have been used to help pay for the current production, which I’ve otherwise been paying out of pocket since the project began. However, the post-production is something that will require an elevated level of funding that will be beyond my means, so the work on the website and marketing platform will be critical for launching a funding drive.
And that’s a wrap on Update #5. In our next update, I’ll tell you about how we are getting ready to film the Franklin reunion in Corpus Christi next month.
Until then, take care,
Andy
This update was sent out to subscribers before the website was created.