A Kickstarter Film Documentary about Autism in Las Vegas

Documentary to help autism via the arts and tech in Nevada.

by David Berkowitz

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1456183616/documentary-about-autism-in-las-vegas-and-music-th

Our goal is to make a documentary about autistic people in Las Vegas, what is being done the programs, people & results, real life.

In April 2012, the Centers for Disease Control announced that 1 in 80 children are diagnosed with autism. This has drawn global attention with over 71 percent of Americans expressing interest in learning more about autism alone. We aim to capture how real autistic people in Las Vegas, NV are dealing with the realty of autism. Personally I have a vested interest in bringing attention to autism. I am a high functioning father of 3 autistic kids and I would like to tell my story of our lives with autism as well as others in Las Vegas and their experiences with autism. In addition we will illustrate what is being done to help autism in Nevada as well especially in programs targeted to music, the arts, dance, music therapy and theater related programs .This film is targeted towards those families impacted by autism. As mentioned earlier I truly have a vested interest in helping bring exposure to autism, autism awareness and the autism programs in Nevada.

I met Temple Grandin a couple of times and she says that arts saved her life. I was in band for 7 years myself and it certainly helped me.

In regards to the documentary it consists of:

1) A overview on some of the autism for profit and nonprofit in the Las Vegas especially the ones that are focused around the arts, music, technology and music therapy as well as respite programs. It will detail what is being done now as what will be done in the next 12 months to improve the lives of people with autism.

2) Interviews with 10+ families that have been affected by autism and their stories especially ones that have experienced beneficial programs involving music and the arts and what can be done to improve them as well as what has been effective.

3) Information on my experience with autism and that of my family as well as my intentions as far as trying to help people with autism via tech, music and the arts. I will elaborate as to our initial plans and long term goals to help autistic people via technology, music and the arts and what it will take to make it happen and the impact on the local autism community as well.

We plan to do local interviews with autism programs that are involved with tech music and the arts. We will talk to families of people with autism, their friends, if we can we will talk to the people with autism as to their thoughts and opinions of the benefits that the arts, autism programs and music have added to their lives and quality of life.

This film explores and will show how art, music and technology can help individuals with autism communicate and express themselves. We will also illustrate the benefits that the families of the folks with autism have as a form of respite and culture too.

We need your help to illustrate how the arts, music and tech have and can improve the lives of those with autism as well as their families.

The following is what we need help with:

We want to get our message out there to as many people as possible. Our intent is to submit the film produce a finished DVD for sale, on the web and maybe a film festival as well.

In order to do the film we need:

-Equipment to film the movie

-Equipment or outside services to edit the film

-Help to review, and make changes to improve the film

-Audio Editing and subtitling

– Final Color Correction

– Audio Mixing

– DVD Replication and Packaging

– Digital Cinematic Package production to screen in cinemas and festivals

– Festival submission costs

We’re asking for the minimum it will cost to get all this done, but every dollar we receive will help us accomplish our goal and distribute the film.

Please,

– Give what you can

– Tell everyone you know

– Help us spread the word

Thank you and we hope you love the film as much as we do.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1456183616/documentary-about-autism-in-las-vegas-and-music-th

Winsome Rites Kickstarter

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/767716106/help-us-make-winsome-rites

Two nine-year old girls’ lives unexpectedly intersect as they struggle with the prospect of life beyond their control.

Child suicide is a rising problem in our increasingly complicated society. This is a short film about how two young girls deal with circumstances beyond their control.

This short film written and directed by Transversal Theater Company co-founder Bryan Reynolds is a passion project to increase awareness about child suicide while also giving two little girls their dream of being in a film.

Please support us in this exciting endeavor!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/767716106/help-us-make-winsome-rites

“Rapp it Up” Cell Phone Security Kickstarter

“Rapp it Up” Cell Phone Security for All.

by Ceo RappitupWireless

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/73001661/rapp-it-up-cell-phone-security-for-all

The Rapp It Up stops cell phone location tracking in seconds.

The Rapp It Up provides a new and innovative device that protects against identity theft and enables personal data security for all.

The Rapp It Up Wireless Security Company’s innovative way to secure your cell phone and your life’s data.

• Launched June 14, 2013
• Funding ends August 14, 2013
• 60 days

Have you already seen the video?

What is a Rapp It Up?

The Rapp It Up is an RF/EMI shielding fabric security sleeve/pocket that prevents all wireless communications to and from a commercial wireless device. Product Concept: “Real Cell Phone Security for All”

A Rapp It Up is a simple and affordable device for everyone to secure the information in your cell phone, tablet and laptop computer.

Rapp It Up prevents GPS location tracking. Your cellular service provider can’t use you like a rented mule and sell your information to anyone willing to pay. It takes you off the grid in seconds!

Rapp It Up is easy to use. You can easily open it up and drop your device inside and in seconds know that you’re safe from all unwanted wireless communications without having to take the battery out of your phone.

Rapp It Up is a powerful security device that protects all the data on all your wireless enabled devices. The materials are durable but easy to care for.

Rapp It Up technology allows you to access to all your data as soon as you pull your device out of our device. You will never miss a voice message, text or email.

Rapp It Up provides a low cost method of flawless protection by utilizing a combination of innovative shielding technologies. It achieves its goal by stopping 100% of the wireless signals to and from your wireless devices.

Rapp It Up products give you a single product line that provides everyday users with every size they need to protect every wireless communications device they own. They are customizable to every style or fashion trend or company logo.

Rapp It Up is safe for your phone. The ground breaking RF shielding design allows for air flow threw the devices fabric so your device won’t heat up. This added feature stops cell phone signal transmission thereby extending battery life.

Rapp It Up keeps your personal, professional and families’ bank accounts and PIN numbers safe. Files, pictures, videos, private conversations and private information completely secure.

Backers can follow us and our progress:

https://www.facebook.com/RappItUpWireless

https://twitter.com/RappItUpCEO

http://instagram.com/rapp_it_up

http://pinterest.com/ceorappitupwire/boards/

http://rappitup.tumblr.com/

https://plus.google.com/u/0/100991709277169591274/posts/p/pub

Rapp It Up Goals:

• Develop an innovative wireless security device product line for the world market.
• To enable private citizens to protect their wireless “smart” devices security and their own identity at will.
• Offer a low cost device that serves across every brand of wireless devices.
• Provide “An Awakening” of social consciousness focusing on individual’s rights NOT to be forced share their private life/data with the world.
• Stop the ubber powerful wireless service providers from stealing your life’s data, your information right out of your hands.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/73001661/rapp-it-up-cell-phone-security-for-all

The Bull Run Game for Iphone, Android And Tablet #Kickstarter

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1703775908/bull-run

Help the raging bull reach the Bull Ring. Squashing runners and tomatoes while avoiding obstacles along the way..

Bull Run is designed for the i-phone, Android and Tablet market. I have been working on the Bull Run project since Autumn 2012. So far I have been working on it on a part-time basis. With your support I can afford to work on this project full time. I plan to have level 1 completed by October 2013 with two more levels completed by February 2014.

The money raised will also go towards employing a programmer for the game. I have worked hard to get this far and I am determined to see this project through to a successful conclusion.

Robot and Fox: The Amazing Journey children’s book #kickstarter

Robot and Fox: The Amazing Journey

by Jason Oshman

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/993696346/robot-and-fox-the-amazing-journey

Robot and Fox is the story of Roland and his epic journey with his buddy, Fox, as they search to find Roland’s ship and get him home.

Robot and Fox: The Amazing Journey is a children’s book about a robot named Roland Botemus and his journey across the galaxy to find the perfect gift for his fiancée, Rosie. But, when Roland accidentally becomes separated from his ship on a distant planet, his mission plans change, and instead, he must scour the planet to find his ship and return home. Luckily for him, one of the planet’s furry inhabitants is ready and rarin’ to help!

Meanwhile, Rosie receives a distress signal from Roland’s lost ship. When she tries to contact Roland and doesn’t get a response, she decides to venture across the galaxy and rescue the one she loves. Little does she know, she’s going to have to face her own set of perils as she encounters dangerous space anomalies and cunning, crazy pirates!

Robot and Fox: The Amazing Journey Book Cover

My goal is to release Robot and Fox: The Amazing Journey as an eBook and online. As a first-time self-publisher, this is the best way for me to make the book widely available for everyone to read quickly and inexpensively.

Robot and Fox will be available for purchase online to read on your tablet, e-reader, phone, or computer!

The world of Robot and Fox is full of robots, snow whompuses, pirates and more! Click the picture of the whole crew below to find out more about all the characters Roland and Rosie come across in their journey!

Click the image above to see detailed character bios on the website!

The funds from this campaign will be going toward the costs of finishing the Robot and Fox: The Amazing Journey eBook and getting it ready to release online.

These costs include the final editing and formatting of the manuscript, final touch-up and preparation of the cover and inside illustrations, and the legal costs associated with releasing the book (which includes purchasing the copyright, and ISBN numbers). The cost of all of these things would be covered by the $1500 raised and get the book ready for release.

I love the characters and world of the book, and there’s so much more I want to do with it! I’d be thrilled to raise the initial goal and release the book, but if we can raise more than that, there are more things I want to make the book even better!

If we can reach the $1500 goal, I have some other things planned for Robot and Fox and would love to do them!

My first goal beyond releasing the book would be to finish an animated trailer I’m working on to help promote and bring attention to the book. The trailer will be a 90-second, 2-D animated venture into the world of Robot and Fox. The goal would be to give potential readers a stunning and beautiful peek at the world of the story.

Trailer Preview

I’m currently working on animating and creating the backgrounds. There’s a long way to go, but here’s a few pictures of from the trailer in progress:

Backgrounds

Roughing in and creating a series of mountain ranges to fly over.

Creating the inside of a volcano.

Roughing in a shot in the desert with a stand-in image of Roland.

Animation

Fox smiling up at Roland, waiting to be animated and colored!

Animating in Toon Boom Studio

Going from storyboard to key pose drawing.

I’m extremely excited to bring all these characters to life with animation, but my little laptop can’t handle the task. The shot featured above took a full day to render on its own. In order to finish the entire thing, I’m going to need a more powerful computer to handle the complex visuals featured in the trailer.

There are some shots in the trailer also require 3D set elements. I would like to use a tool that works with After Effects called Element 3D to incorporate these set pieces in After Effects. The software is relatively inexpensive at $150 USD.

Finishing the trailer on my own would also be a Herculean task. Much of this stretch goal would go toward getting some helping hands in the animation process with animating, inbetweening, coloring, and compositing.

With the right equipment, and the help of some friends, I would love to release the trailer side-by-side with the book at the end of July!

If the campaign reaches its initial goal of $3000 and reaches beyond that to this level, I will commission my friend Steve Blumenthal to create a Robot and Fox: The Amazing Journey soundtrack! I’ve worked with Steve on all of my short animated films, and I know he’ll be able to make something awesome! He will create 20 songs (one for each chapter), and I will release the soundtrack as a free download on iTunes! It will be free for anyone to download!

I would be so stoked to raise this much for the book! If the campaign goes beyond these other goals, funds raised above and beyond the $4000 mark will go toward a paperback version of the book. The process for this is expensive, and the book as it is now is not well-suited for print. Color illustrations are extremely expensive to have inside a book, so additional funds will go toward creating a new series of black-and-white pen and ink drawings for the book. Printed books also require more exact formatting and setup for print, and fund would go toward making these changes to the manuscript.

I’m hoping through a combination of the funds received from this Kickstarter campaign, and the early sales of the book, I can deliver a print version of the book in the near future!

If funding does reach this level, stay tuned for other stretch goals for other fun Robot and Fox ideas!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/993696346/robot-and-fox-the-amazing-journey

The Kickback: Debut Album ‘Sorry All Over The Place’ #kickstarter

 

The Kickback: Debut Album ‘Sorry All Over The Place’

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1227271597/the-kickback-debut-album-sorry-all-over-the-place

After two EPs and a handful of singles, The Kickback is ready to record their debut album!

Sorry All Over The Place is a collection of songs about being terrified of dying, but even more scared of not living. But, you know. Really danceable.

Hi. I’m Billy. The Kickback started in my Criminal Justice book (the name was in a blurb about Enron. Believe it or not, things didn’t turn out so great for those guys) at the University of South Dakota and has since claimed my brother Danny, Washington D.C.-native Eamonn, and Mexico-born Jonny. All I’ve ever wanted to do is make an album of music I was proud to put into the world. All I’ve ever wanted to do is to make recordings that would define moments of your life. All I’ve ever wanted to do is to be your everything, all the time, and without precedent or competition. I want to make a record to make popes (multiple) weep, to make wingless animals fly, and make Michael Keaton notice us and decide to star in all of our music videos for the rest of our lives. And it’s time for us to try.

I can’t actually explain why this means so much to me the same way I can’t explain why “Walk Away Renee” by Left Banke reduced me to tears while riding in a van with my mom around age 7. I understood that after losing a girlfriend in the third grade, I should call the Sioux Falls, SD oldies station and request “Leader of the Pack” by the Shangri-Las and stay up until 10 p.m. (on a school night for God’s sakes) waiting to tape the song on my boombox. I understood that “December, 1963 (Oh What a Night)” by the Four Seasons was probably the greatest song ever written (my 10-year-old Christmas proclamation of 1996). Without music, my sorry life isn’t worth the skin it’s printed on (try shouting that at your wife in the middle of an argument about the volume of The Muppet Movie soundtrack in your apartment), and I want to make a record that will make someone feel the same. I want you to hear our record and feel hope/hopeless/doubtful/stupefied/rejected/rewarded/FULL OF EVERYTHING THAT HAS EVER BEEN A FEELING. This seems to be the best way to make that happen.

It ruined Danny and me fairly early on.

We’ve put recordings into the world. Ask a guy in this band how he feels about them.

Please don’t. It’s a touchy subject.

We’ve put out a couple EPs and a few singles, all with budgetary guns pressed so hard to our heads that the inevitable outcome sounded rushed, lifeless, and like the budgetary gun was used instead to shoot ourselves in the foot (to get the most mileage out of a useless metaphor). We’ve decided to do it right, despite how bloated the number may appear to you or how selfish and unnecessary a Kickstarter may seem when there are so many problems to fix in the world. This isn’t a humanitarian effort unless you count the mental health of four frustrated boys in Chicago. If you don’t think we won’t hate ourselves for every minute of this campaign, then boy you didn’t grow up Catholic or Jewish (we’ve got a healthy mix). But if it’s between continually putting out records we don’t believe in and putting out nothing at all, at this point we’re ready to defer to the latter. But just once, we want to do this right. Make a record as God intended.

But we don’t have a label or rich uncles. My desire to make music gets me out of bed in the morning and keeps me from sleeping at night, but wishes and hopes make not a pope weep from the new Kickback record he just heard on his solid gold pope turntable. The pope only weeps if we can afford to do this.

After pooling our collective money, we find ourselves about 16k shy of our goal. Your contribution will help pay for the engineering, the production, the mastering, the PR (eye-roll, yeah, but we have to if we want people to hear it), the packaging, and the distribution of the record. Best case scenario: A label decides to put it out and people are able to hear it all over the world. Worst case scenario: we put it on the Internet and people are able to hear it all over the world. We want to ensure that start-to-finish, what you wind up hearing is the best thing we can offer.

Hey, it’s Jim Eno!

When trying to bring the world to its knees with ecstasy (the emotion), it’s nice to have some help. When we found out that Jim Eno from Spoon (and a bunch of awesome records he’s produced and engineered) liked our demos and was into making our album, I went straight back to age 7 in the car with Mom. One of my heroes wants to help make our album. The one we’re trying to do right. Think of something you love. [Actually do this. Pause for a second, you speed-reading fiend] Now think of the person you think does it as well as it can possibly be done. [Again, give it a sec, Marion Jones] Now imagine them telling you they’d like to help you make something. There’s too many vague pronouns for that to make much sense, but sweet Mary Higgins Clark, maybe you can understand my excitement.

We hope some of the perks we’ve put together might motivate you to help us out, but frankly, you know it doesn’t really cover the cost of your contribution. Please know you’ll be giving life to something that we’ve been trying to achieve since I started putting songs into a Tascam Portastudio cassette recorder. This record isn’t just about us having a group of songs that we’re confident about or working with people that seem to get what we’re trying to do; those situations come and go. We want to make a record that does something to you. It makes you hate your in-laws or pity your life choices or love your neighbor or hug a landlord. If these things we’ve made can’t make you breathe heavy for a minute, we’ll have failed. And this means too much to us to fail.

Thank you for reading this. Thank you for maybe contributing or at least not publicly calling us names. We can’t stop this music thing because it’s a sickness. It doesn’t relent and it doesn’t forgive, but it’s what gives us life. I hope you have something you love as much as we love this. It makes the world a better place. It makes life okay even when you’re openly begging for money. Let’s make some popes cry.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1227271597/the-kickback-debut-album-sorry-all-over-the-place