Today I worked all day getting ready for San Diego Comic Con and the launch of the Indiegogo campaign. Diana and I had a 10:30 call with the head of the entertainment division, which helped us understand their system, what they could do different for us as a “special” client and answer some questions for us. Then it was off to sit at the Firestone shop for 3 hours while they told me what was wrong with my car (bad bearing…$800 please). Can’t drive it safely, so we drive Diana’s car to San Diego. UGH!
But what was really time consuming was working on the financials, which are in Quicken. I wanted to create a budget for the Axanar Annual Report and a budget so donors could see where their money went. But since I hadn’t really been identifying categories for all the transactions, I had to do that and identify transactions and I was up till 4:19am!
The good news was when I woke up 3 hours later to a firestorm about the trolls attacking us for how we spent the last Kickstarter, well, I was ready to publish the budget and shut them up instantly!
You the donor, deserve to know WHERE your money goes and so we tell you, all the time, what we are doing.
I am so pleased that you were able to have a response to shut down the haters in such a timely manner. This shows how deserved our faith in this project and in you really are. Keep up the great work! Have a great time working SDCC!
Even without a published budget, the fact that you were willing to produce one (and stay up until 4:20am [get the reference 😉 ] when having to head to SDCC says A LOT about your character. And that says a lot about who the team is behind Axanar — because someone that would go to those lengths, perhaps when other Kickstarter supported project would not, is someone that would surround themselves with a like-minded team.
So, let the detractors say what they will, we the supporters know better and are behind this project all the way!
And with your stretching out your workload for the supporters done (for now), go and represent Axanar at SDCC, AND TRY to enjoy some of the atmosphere that is SDCC.
Sorry to hear about your car, Alec! But don’t lose any more sleep over the haters. I honestly haven’t found anyone who didn’t like Prelude, and I’ve shown it to several non-Trek watchers who agreed that it’s theatrical quality work. Personal grudges from sore losers do not diminish the value of the piece one bit.
What the haters say is unimportant, and we do not hear their words.
If only our government was so transparent. I saw the numbers on the other blog and was a bit confused on if that was what was spent to date, or if it was just to cover the Prelude and next scene piece? No need to answer that question and maybe I was reading something wrong on it.
Other than that question, I can’t see anything I would be up in arms over if I had sent money into the Kickstarter campaign. Other than the money they kept, seems high to me, but they have to make money too.
I really have been enjoying seeing the process that is taking place to put together a professional level film. As a film fan, I have always wondered what all it took to make these fantasy worlds come to life but now I see just how much of it I didn’t know and I’m learning a lot.
My wife and I are huge Star Trek fans and we loved the Prelude piece and it really wet our appetites that there is a new cannon appropriate Trek coming out.
Thank you for this blog and I can’t wait to learn much more.
I’m so sorry you had to use Quicken. My company uses quickbooks and am enthusiastically unimpressed with the lack of quality, technical support and PITA features provided by Intuit.
Good luck!
There is nothing new I could say which was not already stated here or in the Facebook Group. We are all appreciate the work of the Axanar Team and as we can see from the new Kickstarter, Donors are loyal and from all over the world so Haters will never have a chance to succeed bad mouthing this project.