The fabulous Misselthwaite Archives is running an IndieGoGo campaign to fund the rest of their webseries.
First of all, if you haven’t read our previous review of the series, go check it out.
Here’s a short synopsis of this Secret Garden adaptation from the team’s IndieGoGo page:
“The Misselthwaite Archives is a modern adaptation of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, told through a series of online videos, images, and written vignettes. The show re-imagines Mary Lennox as a surly seventeen-year-old who moves to her uncle’s large, lonely estate near the Oregon wetlands after the death of her parents. With a supporting cast of characters, including a cat, Mary searches for a hidden forest glade
The videos, which constitute the main narrative, air on Wednesdays and Fridays on YouTube, and the supplementary multimedia content (consisting of emails, text logs, photographs, newspaper articles, music playlists, social media accounts, and other documents created by or about the characters) is posted on the series website on Mondays. We have a total of 40 episodes that have been airing since January 2015 and will continue until July.”
If you’re intrigued (and you should be!), here’s the first episode:
Now that we’re on the same page, let me tell you a little more about the awesome production team that is Pencil Ink Productions (LLC) and their campaign. The company, founded in 2012 by female-owners Amanda Daly and Aileen Sheedy is based in Portland, Oregon.
The campaign is running for about a month, and the team is aiming for $8,000. After two days of fundraising, the crew have already funded 24% of their goal, which speaks to the dedication of their fanbase. If there ever was a webseries to fund, this is the one. I love supporting small, independent media, especially when it’s done well.
Production value and writing quality are both unsurpassed on this project. Furthermore, the team behind the series seems extremely budget conscious – they borrow all they can and then fund the deficit out-of-pocket to produce this series, and the cast is working for free. The largest portion of the funds from the campaign go toward cast and crew expenses (e.g. providing a small stipend to the members), reserving the plurality of the rest of the funds for set necessities like port-a-pottie rentals (proving the film life isn’t all glamorous) and food for the starving artists.
As with a lot of crowdfunding campaigns, this one comes with some pretty sweet perks. The perks include everything from a digital thank-you (the lowest $5 contribution) to an executive producer credit (the highest $1,000 contribution), with perks in between ranging from props on the set to sheet music, soundtracks, bookmarks, and stickers, among others. I’m all about webseries swag, so I’m probably going to donate $10-15 for a bookmark with a quote from the series and a sticker with the Misselthwaite logo (the multi-colored rose.)
So go support the series, and don’t forget to subscribe to The Misselthwaite Archives!
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