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: Ms. Guidance
Asking For: $35,000 on Kickstarter
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Amount Raised Thus Far (At Time Of Post): $11,515
Days Remaining In Campaign (At Time Of Post): 22
Description: Van Hansis and James Ryan Caldwell are taking aim at the culture of the East Coast upper crust. They are the creators of Ms. Guidance, which follows a failed actress as she returns to the boarding school where she received her education.
The protagonist of Ms. Guidance is a woman named Jenny Bump. Despite her somewhat adorable name, she is a self-absorbed egotist filled with vanity. As she returns to the stuffy place where she spent her formative years and takes up a guidance counselor position, she continues to think of herself and her potential career in show business. Her interactions with students and colleagues, as seen in the Ms. Guidance pitch video, often consist of two self-important sniping at each other.
Hansis and Caldwell have shot three episodes. With the money they hope to raise on Kickstarter, the plan to produce three more, resulting in a full, six-episode first season.
Creator Bio: Hansis is an actor who has appeared on TV and made an impression on the web with his series EastSiders. Caldwell, the writer of Ms. Guidance, caught the attention of the New York Times with his 2012 play Fantasy Artists.
Best Perk: The $50 package includes a personalized haiku from Caldwell. According to the campaign’s Kickstarter page, Caldwell “has possibly the most beautiful handwriting in the world. Seriously.”
Why You Should Fund It: Both Hansis and Caldwell have proven themselves to be talented artists, but with this project, Hansis in particular is drawing from his real-world experience. He himself attended the Walnut Hill School for the Arts, which serves as both the inspiration and shooting location for Ms. Guidance‘s fictitious Loch Hill School for the Arts.
At the same time, Hansis and Caldwell are hoping to approach their series in a way that will appeal to a large audience–not just those who will get the jokes about ritzy performing arts schools. “Ms. Guidance is about what happens when your life doesn’t turn out the way you expected it to,” says Caldwell in the pitch video, “which is everyone’s life, really.”
Oh, and it looks funny. That’s important, too.
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