Kosmos: A web-series from Simon Horrocks Kickstarter Campaign
Kosmos is sci-fi web-series from Third Contact director Simon Horrocks. The KickStarter campaign enters its final week in effort to raise the £30,000 budget.
Kosmos is set in the near future and follows a research scientist as he desperately tries to save his wife’s life, who lies in a deep coma. Using a newly developed technology, he steps across an electronic bridge into her unconscious; into her dreams and memories, probing buried ‘psi-complexes’ to discover the mystery of her illness, and her families reluctance to help.
This promises to be a mind-bending journey that will refuse to spoon feed the audience. Horrocks is keen for the audience to influence the plot and has created a story-world with room to develop. The KickStarter campaign ends on Thursday 18th December and all donations over £5 will receive rewards ranging from behind-the-scenes videos, shooting scripts or even appearing as an extra.
I interviewed Simon Horrocks about Kosmos recently. Have a read below.
Why a web-series instead of a film?
While I was using crowdfunding and a “cinema on demand” strategy for Third Contact, the old method of distributing film seemed increasingly inadequate. Media has rapidly become digital and web-based. It’s global; even for a guy like me with a tiny amount of resources – my audience is global.
Of course, the film industry is still pretty healthy. I’m not saying it’s doomed. But I had a vision of using social media and digital technology for its strengths instead of battling its weaknesses (like piracy for example).
Social media is exactly that – social. It’s a conversation. But a feature-length film isn’t the best method for encouraging a conversation or involvement with an audience because it takes so long to make. Once it’s done – what then? Your audience just waits for your next film.
With a series, you can hope to create a dialogue and interaction with your audience. You can bring your audience closer and say “let’s build this together”. The future, in my opinion, will involve a more interactive audience.
How have you planned your kickstarter?
I actually started to write a book on how to run a crowdfunding campaign. It’s currently at 17,000 words and I have a lot more to say. It’s a very specialist form of marketing, which so many people with film industry or business experience fail at because they don’t realise you can’t run it like a traditional business. So, I’d need more time and space to answer this question.
How important is it to build momentum before launching your Kickstarter project?
Very. You need to hit the ground running. But this is how any launch works. If you released Interstellar now without telling anyone or building up anticipation, you’d probably get 10% of the audience. The way to do it is like with any traditional marketing for a launch – tell people something is coming, feed teaser info, start a countdown, don’t give everything away at once. Build anticipation. Again, there’s at least one book worth of information to relay here. But you can see how others do it successfully and learn from them.
Tell us about the team you assembled for this project?
The casting was done mostly through an open call. We had over 4000 applicants. Andrew was the lucky one who had to narrow it down to a few hundred for me to go over. This was several weeks’ work, which I had to juggle whilst setting up the kickstarter.
The crew are people I have worked with in the past, such as the great Mike Myshko and Steve French (who I have known for many years now). Yana produced a feature for £100 which did well at Sundance last year, so I thought she would be a great person to work with on Kosmos, knowing we would have to make every penny count. Valentina and I met on the Southbank when she was handing out leaflets for her kickstarter campaign. I offered to help and we got chatting.
I wanted to create a crew of all-rounders as much as possible, so we can all wear different hats if needed.
Why should people pledge to your Kickstarter campaign?
To create a new sci-fi concept which could grow into something big. It’s very hard at present for new ideas to break through into the mainstream, but I believe this is possible with audience support. If enough people want it, it will happen.
I’ve always attempted to steer away from crowdfunding as a charity. The rewards we give in return I hope will be enough to entice people to get on board and back us. In fact, 99% of our backers are not friends or relatives but either fans of our previous work or people just discovering what we are doing and wanting to be part of it.
So I want people to back us because they believe they will get value for their pledge and they’ll be involved in creating something new, fresh, exciting and meaningful.
What will you do with the funding?
About half the money will go to pay the actors. The rest will be spread out around crew, locations, costumes, props, make up, equipment hire.
What advice would you give to people about using crowdfunding for a project like this?
Crowdfunding is about having a relationship with your backers. Make sure you are having a conversation and you know who your potential supporters are. Otherwise you’re just guessing and most likely you will fall short.
How important is it to have strong concept art from an early stage with a project?
Depends on the project but of course a strong visual can create an instant impact which you just can’t get from words. You NEED strong art work from the start.
How important is it to keep complete creative control of a project?
It depends on what you want. Every project is different. Some projects are more team efforts than others. I don’t feel that either is better or worse, but obviously a project which is more generally appealing to a mass audience probably suits a bigger team effort than something which is very personal and specific. In that case, you would think it’s the individual with the personal experience who should have greatest creative control, as she will have greater and deeper understanding of the project.
Are UK funding bodies like Creative England doing enough to support emerging talent?
Last time I looked, I just got the sense they were bureaucratic bodies filled with people trying to hold onto their jobs, with little vision, little sense of risk taking outside of their inner-circle. But I could be completely wrong, I’m really just guessing, because I don’t take any interest in what they do. Maybe they need to tick boxes to keep their jobs, just like in many other companies, and who can blame them?
If your project happens to tick their boxes, then you have a chance of funding. So, in effect, the art supported by them is designed by an application form. And that form was designed by civil servants who were put in their jobs by other civil servants, who also just want to justify their jobs. Perhaps. I’m not sure if that’s a particularly healthy method for funding art? But I am just guessing.
I find the whole applying for grants idea so uninspiring and dull. Just the thought of filling in one of those forms and getting all the material they need prepared makes the creative part of my mind fall into a coma. Then, when I think of who will be reading it, I wonder what would be the point of all that pain and trauma?
How do you see the future of cinema in the UK?
The future of cinema is safe. What that cinema will look like is difficult to foretell. Cinema probably doesn’t have the power it had, pre-1980s. I don’t think we can afford to restrict ourselves to “British” cinema any more. The marketplace is global.
Culture is changing so rapidly, due to digital technology. I don’t just mean the way it’s made and distributed, but the content – is your film globally appealing? If we don’t embrace this, we will get left behind.
The kickstarter campaign we are running now, for example, got noticed by a sci-fi blog in Slovakia. They ran a piece on it and we started getting backers from that country. We have backers in USA and Canada, as well as many European countries. Would this happen if Kosmos had more of specifically British theme?
The kickstarter campaign ends soon, back it here.
Twitter: @sihorrock
Written by Martin Stocks | @Stocks1986
