Ashens and the Polybius Heist

Sat Mar 9 '19 Announcement
about 7 years ago – Sat, Mar 09, 2019 at 05:10:35 PM

Hello!

The time is finally upon us to pull the plug on the "InDemand" funding for this very campaign, so that we can take stock of the money we have before filming starts in a month or so. I'll be flicking the off switch in about 23 hours from the time this update is sent, which will be 11:59pm on Sunday 10th March UK time. If you want to get hold of the new Unseen Ashens video bundle or my series on Weird British sports (or both!) then now is the easiest time to do so. But don't panic - You lovely people who have already backed the film will have another chance to get those bits when we send out Backerkit surveys in a week or two.

Here's a quick look at the content of the video bundles if you haven't seen yet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcQTdpNNAS4

Perk-o-update! The Terrible Collectable perks for outside the EU are being sent out next week. And after more tests than any sane person would want to be involved with, all the GameChild Blu-rays and DVD's are now in my garage in MANY BOXES. They'll be sent out before the end of this month.

One of MANY BOXES, yesterday.

And that's it for the moment folks. The next time I contact you will likely be with confirmed casting news and the date we start filming. Blimey.

Thank you all once again for backing the film. Your support means an incredible amount to all of us here at Team Polybius, and the extra backing we're seeing over this last week has helped immeasurably. Soon the heist will make the leap from the page to the screen, and that's down to you folks.

Cheers,

Stuart.

Secret Postscript: We've got a few more of the unfathomably popular sofa slices available after I found an old piece of sofa material I cut out 6 years ago for the GameChild campaign. I'm saving them for you guys as part of the backerkit thing. Sshhh.

Tue Jan 22 '19 Announcement
about 7 years ago – Tue, Jan 22, 2019 at 06:52:08 PM

Hello!

Hope you all had a lovely new year and all that. I spent most of Christmas Day morning fixing a toilet, which I am hoping does not become a festive tradition.

We're back into full swing on Polybius: Sorting the script and searching out the last few pounds of private finance and all that pre-production jazz. Plus we've just secured a major crew member we were missing so that's a massive load off our collective minds. All together now: PHEW. I'll introduce you to them in a future update.

Perk-wise, all UK based sofa-slice pledgers should have their terrible colectables in hand. (If not please contact us immediately!) I've just managed to fix a supply problem with the frames and now have all I need in hand, so they'll be sent out to non-UK folks over the next couple of weeks. I'll do another update when that happens.

Excellent news on the international GameChild discs - the Blu-Ray has passed all the checks and is ready to be produced. We're waiting on one final test of the DVD then both can be sent off to the duplication plant. To put the testing into perspective, three of us have now carefully watched the movie twenty-six times between us over the last two months. And none of us seem to have gone mad!

I've also designed the new case art for them. I'm using the fantastic poster painted by Norwich-based artist Nigel Potter for the cover. I'll attach it here in case you haven't seen it:

Over the next few months things will obviously be ramping up considerably with production, but I'll keep updates to a sensible digest format rather than spew out a load of tiny annoying messages. (I recently backed a campaign that sent out so many that I ended up tuning them out, which led to me missing an important survey. We will not fall down that hole!)

Cheers,

Stuart.

Sat Dec 8 '18 Announcement
over 7 years ago – Sat, Dec 08, 2018 at 04:26:25 PM

Hello!

I hope you are all well. I’ve had flu. Don’t get flu – it’s rubbish.

This is more of a checking-in update than an exciting-news update. I’m going to split it into two parts to make it look more important!

Part One: The Film

By filling in what seems like a billion forms, we’ve managed to get most of the financial gubbins sorted which is great. We’ve also set a date for filming to commence, which will remain secret for the time being.

We’re about to go back to the script and make some changes. We completed it well over two years ago and some things have changed since then, both technology-wise and to do with availability of some actors. Plus this is a great opportunity to tweak it to make it as good as we possibly can. We’re actually very excited by this – with a bit of distance we’ve identified a couple of areas for improvement which we possibly could have missed if we’d made the film in 2016 as originally planned. (Also we need to change one of the scenes to enable anime cosplay, of course…)

Part Two: The Perks

I’ve been fighting an uphill battle sorting out the Collectable Sofa Slices but they’re almost ready now – they’ll start being sent out next week. My apologies for putting in the campaign that these would be sent out in October, which I had completely forgotten about until someone pointed it out! That date was based on only about 30 being made, which I originally thought was the upper limit as that was all the sofa material I had. Then I ended up skinning another sofa piece entirely and being able to offer loads more. I’m putting them all together by hand and by gum it’s taken a while, but hopefully they’ll be with you by Christmas. (Unless you’re in Canada where the postal service is on strike I believe.)

Many boxes, yesterday

We’ve also had EXCITING UNEXPECTED TECHNICAL TROUBLE with the region free GameChild DVD’s and Blu-rays, mostly based around certain popular American devices (AHEM Playstation 3 AHEM) being super fussy about frame rates. Fortunately super-editor Linton has been on the case and seems to have fixed everything with his almost magical powers. There’s some more testing to be done but it’s looking like we’ll be able to get these made within the next couple of weeks. (I wonder if this is the only time in history that a movie’s editor has personally prepared the disc version of their own film?) Annoyingly I think it’s likely we’ll miss the Christmas post for these and they’ll be sent out very early in the new year.

So: If you’ve pledged for the sofa slice or a GameChild disc (or both, obv) please please please ensure that your address on Indiegogo is correct because they’ll be going out soon.

Part Three: Extracurricular Activities

Here's a nice thing! Last year a group of us including director Riyad and Chef Excellence himself, Dan Tomlinson, teamed up to make a short mystery-horror film called Another Game. It's done well on the festival circuit this year, being shown at 16 screenings and winning 5 awards. Except! It's now 6 awards, as Riyad was awarded Best Director at the British Horror Film Festival a couple of weeks back. This means that Ashens and the Polybius Heist now has an award-winning director. Boom!

Rumours that Riyad is having his own skull surgically replaced with the trophy are unfounded.

That’s the lot, I think. Updates will become more exciting next year as we’ll have casting announcements etc. Until then: Thanks again for your support folks, it’s all coming together.

Cheers,

Stuart.

Fri Oct 5 '18 Announcement
over 7 years ago – Fri, Oct 05, 2018 at 06:16:01 AM

HELLO LOVES.

As you probably know by now, I enlisted the help of Mr. Barry Lewis and fulfilled the nasal nightmare of eating everyone's favourite fermented fish, Surströmming. I'm embedding it below in case you haven't seen it. Remember: It was your fault.

Movie-wise there's not a lot to say, and there's probably not going to be before next year. It's a mass of admin and forms and financial gumph at the moment. And what fun it is! Turns out the US tax form W-8BEN-E is now four times as long as it was a few months ago, so watch out for that if you have to fill one in soon...

I had a bit of a breakthrough with the perks and finally have enough frames to produce the sofa slices! It turned out much more difficult than I expected to secure 100 for a non-insane price. I've now cleared out the entire online inventory of a major retailer twice, who probably think I'm opening an art gallery on a very small budget. (I've also spent 6x as much as strictly necessary on packaging, but I really don't want them arriving with broken glass.) So your terrible collectibles should be sorted relatively soon.

That's the lot for now. I'll give you a shout when something interesting next happens.

Cheers,

Stuart.

Tue Aug 21 '18 Announcement
over 7 years ago – Tue, Aug 21, 2018 at 09:36:50 AM

Hello!

Well folks, we certainly did it! The current total sits at just over $156,000 which puts us in a great position. And means there'll be a new Chef Excellence Mysteries cartoon. Blimey. Please watch this audio-visual presentation for further information:

The campaign has now entered "In Demand" which is a way of keeping the basics - in our case the movie - available for people who still want to back it.  (I thought this was some kind of special technical feature but what actually happened was that the campaign finish time arrived and... it just didn't end.) All the big perks will be removed soon as we move towards finalising the finance.

Again: Thanks so much folks. Pre-production will begin soon, and when we have something interesting to tell you the updates will begin.

Cheers,

Stuart.