Pre Production - Starting Our Fundraiser

To help raise the much-needed funds for our project to become a reality, we created our fundraising page in late November 2018. I chose the website Kickstarter to raise funds as we wanted to give back to people who donated. Many other websites such as gofundme do not allow people to receive a gift for their kind donations. An example of how they are shown on the website is on the right and a full list of our reward tiers is below. We wanted to give gifts in return for funds as we hope this will convince people to donate. We have set aside £200 for shirts (£180) and poster printing (£20) and have a additional money set aside for the postage of each item.



Pledge £1 or more
You Just Want To Contribute

Pledge £5 or more
Your Name In Credits

Pledge £6 or more
Name In Credits w/ Social In Description

Pledge £10 or more
Behind The Scenes Photos And Videos

Pledge £20 or more
Signed Documentary Poster

Pledge £30 or more
Limited Edition T-Shirt

Pledge £45 or more
Limited Edition T-Shirt & Signed Poster

Pledge £100 or more
Join Us On A Edit Day! (Be A Producer!)

After deciding the fundraising tiers I wanted to film a promotional video which told possible donators about the story and why we are trying to tell it. I wanted to have more time planning and editing this trailer, but we had set ourselves a deadline to have our Kickstarter page online by the end of November. I was happy with the trailer and many backers have since said the trailer was what made them donate, as it clearly got the message across. I had written a script which gave George an idea about what shots I wanted to capture.

The Script & Trailer

Script (V/O):
My name is Alex Baldwin and I want to know how hard it is to follow your dreams.Since I was a child I have been a motorsport fanAnd this is a passion that has led me all over the world to watch my idols race.But one thing still burns deep, The dream of being a race car driver myself.I have tried in the past to accomplish this,but it was to no avail.This documentary is about my journey as I prepare for my first ever motor race.It will let me evaluate my passion for the sport and what stopped me from doing this sooner.There will be many challenges that I will face before I compete for real.My fitness, Money to race and a racing license to name a few.This is where your support can helpBy pledging a small donation you can us document the experience of a lifetimeAnd ensure our 3rd year University Documentary is a successYou can find various options on our kickstarter, chose one that suits youYour support is hugely appreciated, thank you for helping and see you soon.

Shot list:
Alex pulling up in car M/S
Alex sitting in car through window C/U
Alex getting out of car M/S
Alex standing on south bank looking around W/S & C/U
UCU of eyes
Alex sitting on barrier looking around (low angle) M/S
Alex walking to druids hairpin (from behind- following) M/S
Alex standing there as cars go around (Side profile of Alex @ druids) M/S
Pan of car going around while alex is watching M/S

This is the final video. You can see that I ended up changing a lot when it came to editing the trailer. I was still able to use the majority of the shots recorded, but I ended up having to use a lot of archive footage that I had captured earlier in the summer.

The reason for this was because the voice over took longer than expected, meaning the original shots did not cover the 75-second commentary. This was not an issue as it enabled me to show more shots of the car which helps show the viewer what the documentary is about.

The video went through a few versions in the editing phase. I re-recorded the voiceover on multiple occasions to ensure it was not too fast and clearly got the message across. I was happy with the overall video and it looked professional and suited our stories tone, even though it was shot in 90 minutes and planned a few days before. In the future, I would have liked to have more time for this, but under the circumstances, I was given, the video works really well.

Main Body of The Website

Kickstarter gives you the opportunity to clearly explain what your motives are for your project and we spent a long time as a group deciding how best to pitch our project. The conversations we had enabled us to create a clear and accurate description which further explained our ideas and the need for a fundraiser. This is what we collectively wrote as a group:


About Our Project

My name is Alex Baldwin, and together with my team I am going to be embarking on an ambitious 3rd Year university project. By the end of this year we are going to be putting together a 20 min documentary following my journey from a complete novice to following my dream of competing in a motorsport race. We want explore the challenges that I will have to overcome in this documentary, finding out exactly what it will take to make it in the world of motorsport. Giving viewers an insight into the intense requirements that you need to fulfill in terms of fitness, budget etc. Finding out just how hard it is to achieve your dream and reflecting on what stopped me before. In this documentary with the help of my team, we will delve deeper in to my passion for motorsport and my history with it… Our producer has identified the key tasks that will form the narrative of this documentary and if completed, will give me and the viewer a greater insight into this thrilling world.

We plan to shoot and produce a native 4K, professional short-documentary following me throughout the process as I gradually learn what it takes to be a motorsport racing driver. The documentary team consists of myself, Director of Photography Cailan Cook and Lead Producer George Nicholls - we plan to put together a 20 minute piece for our final year at University. In order to achieve the professional look we’re aiming for, we’ll be filming in multiple locations across the country, speaking to a variety of exciting contributors and making use of a variety of equipment, including:

1. Panasonic DVX200 Professional Video Camera (Industry Standard)
2. Panasonic Lumix FZ330 Camera
3. Panasonic Lumix G7 Camera 
4. Sony AX53 Video Camera 
5. Go-Pro Wide Angle Mini-Cameras (for usage inside vehicular scenes) 
6. Portable Clip-Mic’s w/ TASCAM (Industry Standard)

With your support, we can be certain that we document this truly personal story in the most effective way possible. By backing us here on Kickstarter, you will become an integral part of the production process, ensuring we’re able to execute on the vision we’ve had for this piece from the very start, perhaps you’ll even receive some goodies in exchange for your generous support!

If you cannot donate via Card, use this Paypal link: https://paypal.me/alexzafro

Please consider which reward tier you want and donate accordingly. If it includes the poster or t-shirt, please send your address along with the required tier money and £8 for Postage (Europe Only)

Risks and challenges
Our 3rd Year University project is about chasing your dreams. This, inherently, has some unique challenges which we will need to overcome.

I am a novice in the world of racing, which means I have a lot of tasks to complete before I race for the first time. Achieving a racing license, being fit to race and obtaining money to race are a few of the hurdles I will need to overcome. This will all be documented, which will help show my evolution as a person and a race driver. Afterwards, we will see if this experience was all I expected it to be and if I would have done anything differently.

I will have the personal challenge of understanding what stopped me from trying to achieve this earlier, which will delve more into me as a person and my family who got me into motorsport. This may bring out some memories and emotions I had never shared before!

-END OF DESCRIPTION-

Branding and Identity 

After clearly stating our projects intentions, I started creating some basic branding for the Kickstarter. I had done some similar for my website which enabled me to understand the style, but our aim was for our branding to be bold. I first chose this image, but quickly realised when importing it into the project, that the picture needed to be 16:9 in landscape orientation, so we had to choose a different image.

After some time in photoshop adapting some images that were taken of me when I was karting, I completed this image which we used for our Kickstarter page. The picture is dramatic and the bold text gives a clear indication of what the subject of this documentary is. The blue shadow on the text enables it to stand out and add another layer to a dramatic poster. The importance of strong branding is to show the tone of the project as well as it's professionalism. This along with the trailer I created, enabled us to have a fundraising page with a lot of information and visual material.

After our branding was complete we were ready to launch our project. We had worked effectively to have a fundraising page that had a lot of effort put into it. We know the effort put into the page will draw in possible donators as it is visually pleasing and shows our concept well. We were wary of sharing a basic fundraising campaign with little effort, as we knew it would detract from the professionalism of the project. Time spent creating a well thought out campaign will hopefully bring in more donators.

The project launched and had great support from the very first days. We received just under £200 in the first 3 days, already going through the 1/4 goal. We were very happy with this early progress and time spent creating a visually pleasing and well thought out campaign helped lead to these donations. We have until the end of January to reach our £800 goal if we do not reach that goal our project will not have succeeded. If that is the case we will not get any money as Kickstarter runs an "ALL OR NOTHING" policy to help protect donators. We are confident we can reach the goal and we believe the time spent creating this page would be worth it. 

Update - Monday 10th December

Our early success on Kickstarter continued as we have now received over £350 of our £800 goal. We are still less than 2 weeks into our 8-week fundraiser and to have made this much progression has enabled us to be very confident that we will reach our goal.

We have had contact with a number of people who said they will donate in the next few weeks and we will continually share the page to help create further backing.

We are aware there may be an influx of donations after Christmas, as people will be saving their money for that. We hope to get a boost in the new year to hit our eventual goal. Overall, progress has been fantastic and we are excited to see what further donations we receive.