Safwat Saleem's not afraid to use a couple expletives. The local designer used plenty of colorful language in A Bunch of Crock, a project born out of sayings, conversations, and stereotypes he gathered following 9/11.
Why do you think Kickstarter was a successful platform for your project?
I had used Kickstarter for my last project, A Bunch of Crock, and enjoyed the experience. I can try taking pre-orders on my own website but my mom is probably the only person who ever visits my website. But Kickstarter has a large audience that enjoys being part of the entire creative process as opposed to simply purchasing something when it's done. It just made sense to use the lessons I learned from A Bunch of Crock and try to do a more ambitious Kickstarter project.
Below: Saleem's Kickstarter video starring himself (as a bear) and his dog, James.
How the (expletive) did you raise 1,000 percent of your project goal?
I am not sure. Probably by aiming very low. When I was setting up the project on Kickstarer, I was scared that I would not be able to make my $3,000 goal. I did have a plan in place but I didn't have any faith in those plans because most of my plans are pretty stupid and not very well thought out.
I had already spent over a month writing, re-writing, filming, re-filming, editing and then re-editing my Kickstarter pitch video. I had also spent even more time collecting a massive list of art, design and print blog links that I was planning to write to and beg them to post about my work. And I did it -- I wrote to every single one of those 90 or so blogs. Most of them never responded and probably thought my work was a total waste of their time but some blogs picked up the story and that really helped. It also helped that Kickstarter featured the project in their newsletter.
How many prints, T-shirts, and personalized videos are you estimating you're going to have to make ... and what's your time frame?
It looks like we will be making about 900 screen prints, 600 T-shirts and only 8 personalized videos. I think the hardest part will be the videos because I used all my best jokes in the pitch video. And by best jokes, I mean the fart joke. Fart jokes are all I got.
How does James feel about all of this?
You've said before that your were giving up on your own creative projects. Do you still feel the same way?
I feel that way while working on almost every project. At some point, the process becomes so frustrating that I realize that my life would be much easier and enjoyable if I just stopped doing this crap. As a project gets more frustrating, I increasingly imagine myself in a life where I come home from my (fictitious) high-paying corporate job and don't have any projects to do in the evening. A life where I can sit on the couch and catch up on all my favorite TV shows. But then quickly after that I think of another project to do and on we go.
Oh Expletive! will continue to raise money/take orders until February 10. Saleem says he's still making new work regularly and is giving away that work away (for free!) on his Facebook page. He's also working on a story telling project "that will probably take forever to do" and another short film project with local filmmaker Robert Kilman. You can follow his progress on his website.
