My film-school friends Todd Luoto and Jon Frechette have been working for a few years now on a documentary about the mysterious urban legend video game POLYBIUS.
From Wikipedia:
Polybius is an arcade cabinet described in an urban legend, which is said to have induced various psychological effects on players. The story describes players suffering from amnesia, night terrors, and a tendency to stop playing all video games. Around a month after its supposed release in 1981, Polybius is said to have disappeared without a trace. There is no evidence that such a game has ever existed…
The trailer Todd and Jon have up on Kickstarter right now is pretty sweet. (The cinematographer is our friend Elisha Christian, who also shot the Monocles commercial.) They’re fundraising to shoot more interviews and do all the post-production required to finish the film.
They’ve got 8 days left in the campaign, and to be honest, they’re pretty far from the finish line. But in an email, they told me:
Right now — even a $5 donation will help us a ton.
Truth is, there’s a good chance we won’t be able to pull this off (…which means you wouldn’t have to pay anything anyways). But on the flip side, we’ve been getting a ton of amazing press that just simply hasn’t translated into the donations we were hoping for. But we’re confident that with enough noise online (which, ironically enough, we’re actually getting), and some more backers displayed in our profile, we can at least take this to a financier and show them this is a project worth investing in.
Todd and Jon actually had a financier almost lined up, but when the deal didn’t go through, they turned to Kickstarter. If they can use Kickstarter press — funded or not — to help attract more industry interest, then the more backers they get, the better.