A film about Jim Varney and Ernest P. Worrell. See more at BeingErnestFilm.com
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Our Kickstarter campaign for "The Importance of Being Ernest" documentary is complete, having raised just shy of $77k over the course of a month!
Not only that, but y'all managed to unlock the "Ernest Archive" stretch goal on the final day!
On behalf of the entire IOBE documentary team, I want to extend the biggest of thank-yous to everyone who supported, shared, backed, and otherwise put in the effort to make this campaign the success that it is. We could not have come this far without help from all of the families, friends, fans, and every single person who showed up to help preserve Ernest and Jim's legacy. Not only have we raised a significant amount of our budget, but we've also got concrete proof of the Ernest audience's existence. As Dan Butler put it: "A tremendous vote of confidence from the fans is the creative force now."
With the urgency of this leg of fundraising complete, our posts won't be quite as frequent as they have been for the past few months. But you can rest assured that we'll be posting all of the latest updates, discoveries, and progress made on this documentary right here for you all to follow along with. We've got a few new contributors to the film awaiting confirmation, and we're also working on ways that folks who missed out on the Kickstarter can support the documentary after the fact.
In short, there's lots more coming soon. KnoWhutImean?
- David
Well, Ernest P. World, we are in the FINAL LEG of this Kickstarter fundraising marathon! As of right now, we are well over the $60k mark, though still just a bit shy of our $75k stretch goal...
With that in mind, we've got a few more final promotions to carry out! One is this ad for ABC Warehouse that we digitized recently—yet another company Ernest pitched for back in the day that now has a social media presence. (Also, note the Detroit Lions pennant in the background! That's how you play to the local audience.)
We've also got a few more add-ons to, well... add on! First is some extra stock of that Neil Fraser "Jim Varney is Ernest" poster everyone was so jealously fond of. We received more than a couple of requests to increase the available quantity, and got approval to include 10 MORE POSTERS in the add-on offerings! Don't forget: this documentary fundraising campaign is the only place this poster design will ever be sold!
Again, you can find images of our add-on items on the main Campaign page (scroll alllllll the way down to the bottom of the page) and add them to your new or existing pledge using the "manage pledge" feature.
Finally, after seeing how fast the official Ernest photos sold out last night, we went and found two more prints. They're not Ernest prints, though:
These official vintage photo prints of everyone's favorite naïve, semi-mad scientist are EVEN MORE LIMITED than the Ernest prints were, with only one of each Dr. Otto image available. Go get 'em!
And that's about it. 21 hours to go, and we'll be wrapping up the "Importance of Being Ernest" Kickstarter campaign! That's when we, like Dr. Otto, will move on to the next phase of our plans. (Don't worry, it doesn't involve a giant magnet.)
- David
THANK YOU, EVERYONE!
- David
WE DID IT! At just before 10pm ET last night, the Kickstarter campaign for "The Importance of Being Ernest" documentary reached its fundraising goal of $60,000. And we woke up this morning to discover that, even though we've reached $60k, folks are still showing up to donate to the cause:
As ever, a HUGE thank-you to the hundreds of backers on here who have pledged to make this film happen, and to everyone who has been posting, tweeting, and emailing to spread the word about the documentary. We are humbled and grateful for the amazing response this project has received!
But it's not over yet! We still have 3 days remaining in this campaign—plenty of time to pick up new supporters. There are a bunch of add-on rewards left, including:
A few eagle-eyed supporters noticed a reference to this in the description of the $500 reward tier—that's the pledge level that really starts enabling us to digitize more stuff. We didn't want to introduce stretch goals too early (especially if it looked like we wouldn't even reach $60k), but campaigns like ours often see a fundraising surge in the final few days.
So yes! If we can reach $75k, everyone at the $15 level and above will receive BONUS Ernest content for no extra charge. There's some really interesting and cool stuff we've come across in our research to date, and we'd love to have yet another reason to share more of it with you!
- David