Onboard Diary

The Cosmonaut begins pre-production

We have been waiting almost two years to write this post. With goosebumps all over our body, we are ready to tell you the big news. With this post, we officially start working on the pre-production phase of the movie.

That means that in about five months, we'll begin shooting The Cosmonaut in Russia. That means that we have successfully pass our first test.

This is the most important news since we began the project and we have a lot of things to tell you, so let's go one by one.

Since the beginning of the project until today. The Cosmonaut vs a conventional film.

Conventional films start with a script. We started with a web page, an idea and a huge excitement to share it with a lot of people.

Conventional movies start summing viewers the day of their premiere. With The Cosmonaut, the week the website came out we already had 200 producers and 4 investors. Or what is the same, 204 future viewers.

Along the road, we have learned many things. The project increased in size, far exceeding our own expectations. We learned, shared with you each step taken and grew with each one of your ideas.

We appeared in El País, CNN, Wired Magazine, Cahiers du Cinéma and three hundred more magazines, TV shows and blogs (many more to come). Conventional movies rarely get a few press notes in the week of their release.

Along the way, we made The Plan so all of you were able to create a new era in cinema inspired in our model, we made an Aesthetic Dossier and a teaser to tell you how The Cosmonaut was going to be and, most importantly, we finished the script, which received several good reviews and was put at your disposal.

We hosted concerts and parties to which hundreds of you showed up. We travelled to Moscow, Cannes and Los Angeles. We gave more than a hundred talks in Spain, Paris, Brussels, London, Hamburg and New York.

Conventional movies remain in a hermetically sealed silence until the day of their premiere.

We, on the other hand, decided to share everything. Today, we can say it's the best decision we've ever made.

In return, you have become producers (2367 at the time of writing this post), investors (70 to this date), fans (too many to count in Facebook and Twitter), you've helped us, you've asked us for help, you've advised us. You've taken pictures of yourselves wearing our t-shirts all around the globe. You've talked about the movie and shared your enthusiasm, making the community bigger. You've made us bigger. This little revolution has started thanks to our common effort, and we have triumphed.

The Cosmonaut is finally going to be a reality.

But... (there's always a but, right?)

Nothing is ever as good as it sounds.

If you are going to shoot... then where's the problem?

The problem is that we haven't successfully reached our goal.

We had an ideal budget of 860.000€, of which 444.000€ corresponded to the crew's salaries. A wonderful team that decided to defer their salaries so we wouldn't need all the money to shoot the film.

The subvention of the transmedia project gave us 99.500€ so we kept deducting.

Thanks to our investors and the crowdfunding, we have amounted 85.406€. After the expenses that the project has generated over the past two years, there are 40.202€ left on the bank.

So? So, there are 276.298€ that we still need.

It's a very important nuance: still.

The process of production of a movie is based on the cashflow. When have you money to spend on what.

We now have some cashflow and we can still keep on moving forward and tackle the phase of shooting, but we keep working hard on the four ways of funding the movie.

Crowdfunding has proven to be a success. We've collected far more than the 5% that was our goal, and every day new producers join the initiative.

You still haven't told your friends? What are you waiting for? We need the community to grow more than ever and extend our income to finish the movie.

We have an important number of private investors (thanks to all of them!), even though most of them invested a moderate amount of money. We haven't got any business angel or capital funds to take interest in us yet. We could blame it all on the recession, but we tend to think that we haven't knocked on the right doors. After all, we are filmmakers, not businessmen. We are still working on making our financial plan better and trying to find our particular angel.

Do you know anyone you could introduce to us? You can even tell him or her about the project yourself and get a share of what he or she gives us.

We've tried to close some business deals with several commercial brands, but we haven't given them the time they deserve. If only we could have 36-hours days, we're sure we could fulfill a great deal of the movie's funding through that way.

Last but not least, we have some ongoing negotiations with several TV channels that could invest a substantial share of our ideal budget. Will they join the future with us? Who knows. We are still meeting and negotiating with them, with the hope that they'll think we're a winning horse worth betting on.

As you can see, shooting the movie is a crucial step in our project. At last, there will be images that you can see and touch. But it's only one step of the long way in which we enthusiastically keep on working.

"Eh, uh, wait. I don't understand. How are you going to shoot the film if you still haven't got all the money?"

It's easy to explain, not so easy to do.

• We have reduced the crew (less plane tickets, less hotels, less catering...)


• We have adjusted the budget for actors, production design and wardrobe (even more)


• We have readjusted some expenses that would bring commodities but weren't necessities (we have decided to call this strategy "post-indie" :P)


• We have less money for incidental expenses.

We haven't counted the money needed for distribution and part of the postproduction (as some friends say, "we'll cross that bridge when we get there")

So, basically, we've checked our numbers, and we have reached the conclusion that, though with a very narrow margin, we have enough money to finish the shooting.

Was the movie obverbudgeted? No, not at all. It was what it had to be. The difference is that we are going to do it with less. It will be harder but we've secured the minimum amount for the end result not being compromised.

What after that? After that, well... a great deal of things can happen from here to the beginning of the shooting, and in the subsequent months. We expect to give closure to the many things we've got up in the air right now.

You can help us with it.

Risky?

Yes, but also necessary. We have an intense urge to shoot. We don't want to spend another two years to complete the funding. It's much more important to shoot the movie no matter what. In the end, there's two kind of people: the ones that do things and the ones that give talks to explain why they explain things rather than doing them.

We are the first kind.

And maybe seeing that we were capable of doing it and that it's an excellent movie will help us find the rest of the money.

"Well, I think you guys have totally failed"

It could very well be. But, in the end, time will tell. At this moment, the only thing that worries us is doing the movie as best as we can. Exactly the one we have in mind and that we want to share with you. And there's still everything to prove in the distribution phase.

"Where do we go from here, now?"

We have to look for a casting, the locations, and the myriad of other little, necessary things for a film. And, of course, we need more money.

We're gonna need help with all that. We, both you and us, have taken the first step: to develop a project like this.

Now comes the hard part: making it. And we're going to need to join all of our forces.

Don't be fooled, this is a call to arms. The project is going to be made no matter what. Now is when you have to truly bet on the movie and make it better.

If you were thinking about investing, do it now. If you were thinking of offering your technical material or expertise, now is the time. If you have a business and you would like to produce a derivative work, sell our merchandising, organize a party... The opportunity is now.

In the next few days we will make a post explaining how you can help, just by simply recommending us (english speaking) actors and actresses, technicians or just by helping out with the day to day production chores. We'll open a project on Wreckamovie and give you more details about it.

We also may need a little help with the financial part. Once again: if you have a rich uncle or a friend that's into business, if you know any brand or have a contact within the production sector... You can convince them of how important it is that this movie gets done and also take on a percentage of the money they bring in.

We're also going to need sets, wardrobe... a bunch of stuff that for sure you can help us with.

In the upcoming days we will tell you about it with more detail. In the meanwhile, raise your glasses and make a toast on behalf of us (and you).

The Cosmonaut is finally becoming a reality. We made it.