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.
This installment of Fund This is brought to you by Patreon.
Project Name: Wisecrack
Asking For: Monthly contributions on Patreon
Amount Raised Thus Far (At Time Of Post): $804 per month
Days Remaining In Campaign (At Time Of Post): One day until the end of the month
Description: Classic literature is best when told in the words of Sparky Sweets, PhD. Sparky is the host of Thug Notes, which serves as the flagship web series of Wisecrack, a media company that is seeking support on Patreon.
Each episode of Thug Notes takes a famous book and summarizes it in a video filled with ebonics, real talk, and simple language. Thug Notes videos are fun because Sparky’s scripts are sharply-written, and they’re educational because the Wisecrack team takes its time when researching each of its subjects.
Since Thug Notes turned Wisecrack into a YouTube hit, the studio has developed several other programs. It has gone to the movies (as an alien) with Earthling Cinema and has given brainy porn stars the opportunity to discuss famous women in Boss Bitches of History, among other concepts. With your help, Wisecrack can devise other ways in which it can convey scholastic subjects in a way you won’t find anywhere else.
Creator Bio: Wisecrack, based in the Los Angeles area, launched its YouTube channel three years ago with a Thug Notes breakdown of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. On average, the studio uploads about two videos each week.
Best Perk: Chip in $30 per month and one of Wisecrack’s hosts will record a message for your voicemail. Nothing says “thug life” quite like having Sparky Sweets screen your phone calls.
Why You Should Fund It: Wisecrack doesn’t just use the funds it picks up from its fans to develop new programs for its catalog; it also improves the quality of existing shows as well. As the studio’s Patreon page puts it, its videos are getting longer, and that’s not cheap. “We spend weeks and weeks researching topics, developing interesting and unexpected angles, writing and rewriting scripts, filming, recording, editing and animating each and every video we release,” says Wisecrack.
More subtly, you should give to Wisecrack because you’ll never know when you’ll need it. If you need to ace a test about Shakespeare or pull out some fun Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy anecdotes at an upcoming party, you’ll be happy that Wisecrack is around to summarize those works in a fun and concise way. And if you’ve used Wisecrack’s videos in an academic manner before, well, consider your monthly donation as a tip of sorts.
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