Welcome to the Fund This column! Each week, we’ll look at a planned web series or other online video project currently in search of funding on crowdfunding sites. We’ll tell you what the series is all about and explain why it is worth your money. Do you have a project that’s currently being crowdfunded? Contact us to let us know and we may feature it in upcoming installments and check out previous installments right here.
Project Name: Social Medium
Asking For: $20,000 on Indiegogo
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Amount Raised Thus Far (At Time Of Post): $2,385
Days Remaining In Campaign (At Time Of Post): 28
Description: The Internet’s finest “hipster psychic” is back for more. Social Medium, which stars Tara Jayn as a medium who believes she can use the web to communicate with the dead, is looking to complete its first 16-episode season on Indiegogo.
In Social Medium, which was born out of a series of tweets from creator Brian Newlin, Jayn portrays Beatrix Beckett, a psychic who encounters mysteries like “The GrubHub Demon” and “The Etsy-geist.” Along with her boyfriend Fallon (James Brent Isaacs) and her friend Zola (Kate Hackett), Beatrix must use her paranormal expertise to exorcise these online spirits.
Social Medium initially caught our attention in the fall of 2014, when it launched its first episode. Beyond the seven episodes posted to YouTube, the series also includes a number of transmedia elements, including official Twitter accounts for the main characters. Should Social Medium achieve its funding goal, it will tackle a number of other cases, including a “ghostly Uber driver” and the “Yelp from beyond the grave.”
Creator Bio: Beyond his work on Social Medium, Newlin has also worked on visual effects for several Dreamworks films and created werewolf and whale, a website that offers “short stories for weird kids.”
Best Perk: The campaign’s $60 perk is titled “Farmville Chupacabra,” and it includes a lesson from Jayn about Beatrix’s makeup. It’s hard to dislike a perk with that sort of title.
Why You Should Fund It: Social Medium is a web series that already offers a proven track record. Its first seven episodes were fun, light, and winsome, and its transmedia tie-ins were well-realized without being overdone. The series was reasonably well-produced, especially in light of its budget. As Isaacs explains in the pitch video, “craft services was a jar of pickles and a fun-size bag of chips.”
Should it reach its funding goal, Social Medium will be able to up its production values across its remaining episodes. Newlin and his team have already proven they can deliver an interesting concept, a funny script, and strong performances. With an enlarged budget, they can perfect those elements even more.
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