Project London

Our Story

Project London is an independent, almost no-budget, feature-length, live action movie with vivid, intense, and marrow-vibrating visual effects and animations created with the open source software Blender (and other traditional software) and 250 (or so) worldwide volunteers. The movie is a labor of love launched by Phil McCoy, Ian Hubert, and Nathan McCoy. It will be available for worldwide viewing in its entirety as soon as we finish it.

We currently have picture lock (all the visuals are in place including 774 visual effects!), but still need to finish the soundtrack and color correction. Ian and Phil started story development in the summer of '06. We completed principle photography in August of '07, and then jumped into post-production. We've been working diligently to cross the finish line! Ian provides more detail on our process in this interview by JawboneTV.

When we finish the movie, we are going to enter it at select festivals, bring it to conventions like Comicon and PAX where our target audience comes out in force, make disks available from our website, host a live streaming premiere and get it on Netflix and iTunes. Learn more about the movie, including the synopsis and characters, at the official Project London website.

The Impact

Project London is the direct result of easy access to technology, tools and talent. We just woke up one morning and realized we could make a movie! A really cool movie. And we could work with people all over the world, from Thailand to Turkey, Europe and the U.S.A.. Thank you Internet.

We didn't realize how arduous and difficult it really is to make a feature length, sci-fi actioner. Now that we are close to the end, the last stretch to finish seems to be the most difficult in terms of volunteer time and real progress toward completion. We've faced all of our challenges and have overcome them, but now the main obstacle we face is that the producers can no longer reach into their own pockets to keep the movie going.

We want to finish this project to show it can be done. But more importantly, we want to give all the artists involved a chance to see their work finished and presented to a global audience. And we want to see the cycle repeat, with up and coming artists inspired by Project London to realize their own dreams.

What We Need & What You Get

Our campaign goal of $30,000 was calculated by adding up how much it would cost to hire a professional sound mixer/editor for two months and a color correction professional to work for a month at an average cost of about $60 an hour. We have our fingers crossed hoping that's enough time to get both jobs done.

The plan is to create a stereo (two channel) mix. If we exceed our fund raising goal, we'll see if there is enough to create a 5.1 mix, which would be really cool for all the robot battles and explosions, etc. For color correction, we want to create a look that inspires belief in the world of Project London. Color correction is an umbrella term used to describe the finishing stage of a movie where software tools are used to create visual continuity from shot to shot, adjust exposure, and shape the overall look or mood of the movie.

We are really hoping that the funding goal will be exceeded so we have money to help with DVD and perhaps Blu-ray authoring and replication. If we exceed the goal, the fees on Indiegogo.com drop from 9% to 4%! Plus, money that is collected above what it will cost to finish and release Project London can go to repay what has already been spent.

In addition to this campaign and the cool premium items that you can collect with your contribution here on Indiegogo (see the list of premium items in the column on the right), you can also contribute directly to us via the official Project London website.

Note: Everyone who contributes $20 or more will receive a "Thank You" credit that will appear at the end of the movie. Credits that will appear in the end credit roll can be confirmed here.

Also! If you are a 3D animator, you may be interested to know that we are giving away a collection of animation rigs created for Project London--the robots, ships, tankbots, etc.--so you can have some fun creating your own animations with actual stuff from the movie. Information about where to download this stuff is available at the official Project London website.

Other Ways You Can Help

We are very grateful for every contribution including sharing this campaign with others. If you can't help us financially, please help us by using the share tools on this page (up above, under the video) to spread the word about our campaign. This is huge for us, and we THANK YOU for every share.