Spread the word

I’m not going to ask you to donate money. I’m going to ask you to donate 10 seconds of your time. I’m going to give you the link to our IndieGoGo fundraiser and I want you to share it somewhere: Facebook, twitter, mixi, tumblr, YouTube, … It doesn’t matter. Here it is:

http://www.indiegogo.com/letspopculture

We have until December 1st to raise $1,999 USD or I’ll collapse from stress, my teachers will go back to teaching soul sapping lessons, my students will lose hope in anything they do for school, English education in Japan will continue to fail and earthquake/tsunami victims will still struggle to rebuild their lives. So help, why don’t you?

It’s been one week, that’s 20 % of our time, and we’ve raised $305 USD so far. That’s only 15%, so we are a little behind schedule! That’s to be expected, as word has yet to be spread of our work. As more and more people share, donations will start to come more frequently.

Back at school, I have put up a quick poster to show students how well our fundraiser is doing. So don’t disappoint them, and don’t embarrass me! Share that link!

I’ve also been bugging students to contribute more illustrations for the book. So far I have gotten a few doodles but I’m hoping I’ll have some more drawings worthy of being chapter headings and not just page decoration. Still, they are cute.

That’s it for now. Keep following the Facebook page for more regular updates, and the Indiegogo page for more regular, detailed and fun updates. Videos coming soon!

Started!

It’s on!

The IndieGoGo page is here and it’s on. We are now accepting donations until 1st December.

So please get over there and do what you can. Donate if you have money, even a dollar could change lives, but if you can’t, then share, share and share again! This really means the world to me and it could really change lives, but only if lots of people know about it! So please, I will never ask for anything again! Unless, I get stabbed or something, then I may ask you to pull the knife out. Be realistic here,

As the fundraising continues, I will continue to blog here, giving updates of our progress and our efforts to advertise the project. I’ll also be posting interesting tidbits such as videos and photos directly on the IndieGogo page, so be sure to keep following that!

So there we go! After months of hard work, this is finally happening! Here’s to a big success!

Countdown

This is it! Or rather, tomorrow is it. Tomorrow the IndieGoGo page will go go live! In 24 hours you’ll be able to start donating to our project, and we sincerely hope that you will. All the teachers and students here at Mukaiyama are counting on you to help them and those people still struggling to rebuild their lives after last year’s earthquake.

Full information can be found on this site (hint: try the links above) but to donate, and watch the awesome video, you need to go to our IndieGoGo page at http://www.indiegogo.com/letspopculture

Please, please please tweet this link, Facebook it, tumblr it, anything, just spread the word, especially if you know someone interested in Japan, helping charities or teaching. This project really can make a big difference, but only if more people know about it.

So tweet away, my friends. What would you have me do in return? I’ll do it! I promise.

Premiere

Hey there, normal people. I’m a movie star now. Haven’t you heard? We made this great film telling people all about our project and its just so fantastic that people have propelled its stars into outer space. Literally. They strapped us to a rocket and now as we float through space our heads are popping…

But enough of the bizarre imagery. There is some truth there, and that is that we have made a video. It even tells people about the project, but I doubt it will propel anyone to fame. It’s online, on YouTube, you may even be able to find it, but I’m not advertising it yet because I want my select audience of beta testers to have their premiere so they can inform me if there is any problem first.

I don’t think there are any major problems. In fact, I think it turned out really well. Some parts surprised even me. However, it was a little rushed as I only had just over a week to film and edit it, ready for the Indiegogo project page’s launch on Friday. So it is a little rough, but I really tried hard to make it much better quality than my usual YouTube efforts and the students put in a great performance too, after a little persuasion.

So this is it! We are only 3 days away from starting the funding drive! Now is the time to start telling people about our project and the all important soon to be open page at www.indiegogo.com/letspopculture.

…

So what are you waiting for? Go! Tweet! Facebook! Tumbley tumblr…!

That’s a wrap

Today I finished filming the video to promote the project. The students ran their annual half marathon leaving the school nearly empty. So I took to doing some location shooting without interruption. I finished my bits quite quickly. I had some speeches in the media room, I had some speeches in the halls, I even had some speeches while writing on the walls…. wait! No! Don’t got complaining to my school. I actually wrote on the blackboard and did some (almost) stop motion animation, but walls rhymed a bit.

After that, I was stuck marking until the students returned from their run and were ready to film their part. At first we only had a few boys volunteering, but while we were waiting for some organization we all tried to rope in any girls who passed by, to give the project some balance. It’s bad enough having no students in the video and people thinking there is just me on this project, but neither did I want just boys in the video as its supposed to represent the school, and guess what?! We have girls! So we all kept asking girls if they anted to join in, but even though faces would be hidden, everyone was very shy. Eventually we got three girls to join in and filming got underway.

It took a few minutes to explain what I wanted to do, but they are smart kids they got it. We had a practice and then filmed it three times before we got the perfect run. Then we filmed a goodbye message at the school entrance. This was more fun because other students were running around and we had to try and avoid them, but they got to see what we were doing.

Now this weekend I had to edit it, then it should be up on YouTube in a few days. It’s a week until the Indiegogo page goes live. So, I think, we will be ready! Please check it out.

The making of the introduction video

Hey viewers and welcome to another exciting edition of “It’ll Be Alright On The Night”. I’m your host, Matthew Rowe, and… I guess I got carried away with the whole video making thing.

I’ve been filming clips for the Indiegogo project introduction video. It’s been fun but harder work than I imagined. Now, I try to make a short video on YouTube about my daily life every day, well, five times a week, but I don’t spare much time for production because I don’t have that much time every day. However, for this video I want it to look good so I’ve been practicing lines, setting up shots, dressing the set and patrolling security too.

The results are quite good, I can’t really tell until I edit later, but there have been a lot of bloopers. I never realized how hard it is to remember and deliver lines correctly, and then it’s even hard to remember what you are supposed to say after a difficult bit. So, if there is enough room on my iPhone and iPad to save the clips, I might make a bloopers video as a bonus later. It’ll be nice to post on Indiegogo.

Slowly, I’m getting there. The wrapped footage – ooh, look at me, I used a proper filming term – is piling up. I just have to work out a few location problems. Basically, I want to do a walk down the corridor as I talk through a few points, but they keep having lessons in the extra lecture rooms so I can’t disturb them. Hopefully, in today’s last period I will have the space I need.

Very soon, I’m going to visit the classes to instruct the students who want to appear in the video. Due to permission problems and personal safety, students will be appearing wearing masks, but still I have only had a handful of volunteers, and all boys! I want to get some girls interested for the sake of balance! So I’m also thinking of how best to use students in masks. I might get them to do something else funny. We’ll see what happens.

And that’s it, production continues.

Multitasking

So here we are again. I’d love to update the blog more often but it takes a bit of time and I just keep getting busier. For quicker snippets of information keep an eye on our Facebook page and my twitter feed (below).

So, I had lessons with the second grade today, their first since they finished their writing for the project. So we’ve moved onto something else now, a discussion about environmental waste, but at the start of the lesson I made announcements about our final book cover image (see previous post) and the opening of our Indiegogo fund raising project. That’ll open on October 26th, so please join us and contribute, if you feel so willing.

I’m also putting together the reviews into one massive text file that will be our book.

However, mostly I am setting up the Indiegogo page for the project. As I reported last time, we opened a bank account to store the funding. However, before I can input that information into the web page I have to complete and post our introductory video. So I’ve moved that forward.

I’ve just finished the script. I’ve leaned towards the humorous, but it depends on if I can pull it off well enough to be charming to make people willing to hand over money. Hopefully, as long as they understand how passionate we all are about this – helping the students realize their potential, doing something creative, making changes to the English education system and helping victims of last year’s triple disaster – they will be convinced. Fingers crossed.

Now excuse me, I have to go speak to a man about arranging all the students in the hall to shout “Hello!” at my camera.

Banking on it

Hi there folks! What’s that up there? Why, it’s a bank book! Yes, the school has just opened a new bank account so we have somewhere to put all the lovely funds for the project. That’s assuming people look at our Indiegogo page.

That was the last hurdle. So now there is nothing stopping us from having the fundraiser.

Let’s make plans! I’m going to rush off and set up the Indiegogo page, right? In the meantime I want you to tell all your friends when and where to go. We plan to start the fundraiser on 26th October and it’ll finish on 30th November. There will be a countdown on the blog and on our Facebook page. When it reaches zero the fundraising begins! Please donate generously for my students, my school, the earthquake victims and Japan’s English education! We need to teach them that creativity is the future.

Thanks, as ever!

Covered

Hello again,

Sorry to keep you waiting for almost a week. I have spent the past 3 days at work marking exam papers. It was exhausting. Each day my brain just could not take in any information. Then last night, I went the other way and I got all hyper. My brain was racing! Anyway, I’ve calmed down a bit now.

I posted on our Facebook page that I had received the final image for the book’s cover and promotions. Now, I finally ave time to post it here. So please have a look and let me know what you think.

It was drawn by the talented Chevi. I asked for a group of students cheering on as a crowd, in the iconic Japanese school uniform even though my school doesn’t have a uniform, with the school mascot, the triangle headed guy. She delivered!

Over the next few days, between more marking, lesson planning, book formatting, work training and extra jobs, I’m going to play about with the lettering and get the text for the cover sorted. I’ll post some samples here and I’d like you to tell me which one looks best. So please stick around, visit regularly and help us out with our huge, life changing project.

Cheers, me dears!

Scatter-gories

Afternoon all,

Now that I have (nearly) all the reviews safe on my USB, and laptop, and the other teacher’s USB and laptop, I’ve started to think about putting them together into one file to make the book. It’s the dreaded formatting stage. It’s presented a number of quandaries.

For example, movies, music and the like can be easily grouped together. What of the traditional subjects like fireworks, kimono and mochi? Yes, I can put these all in a ‘traditional Japan’ section, but some may seem out of place.

Then there are the people. Should I have a separate section for people or should I put their articles next to the products they made, such as a director with his movies in the movie section?

It’ll keep me thinking and maybe I won’t have a solution until I finish the book completely. However, if anyone reading has a suggestion, please leave a comment.

See you again soon