So Graham Samuels has drawn us a lovely Blue Peter style diagram to represent reaching our God Help The Girl fundraising goal of $3 million (US).  If that sounds like a lot to you, rest assured, it does to us too.

We’ve already had an incredible response to our first call for investors via the Belle and Sebastian  and God Help The Girl mailing lists. There are some very supportive and, luckily, financially blessed individuals out there – from Germany, Australia, the US and the UK who have come forward. We’re very grateful for their support and enthusiasm, and we hope to make a good film which lots of people will go see so they can make a lot of money.

Now is crunch time.  We need to start pre-production in March, 2012 for a July, 2012 shoot.  The weather in Glasgow won’t permit us to delay.   So if there are any of you out there who might want to invest in the movie, please get in touch via godhelpthegirlfilm@gmail.com.

As the money flows into the pot, we’ll keep updating the chart so keep checking back to see how we’re doing.

Thank you!

Stuart and the Gang

We hit the target and beyond! - 04/02/2012

Incredible! Kickstarter went crazy last night in the rush to $100k and we reached it at 23.17 GMT thanks to Soulboyjohn who upped his pledge at the crucial moment. All on the team were refresh button junkies last night!

We are hugely grateful to everyone who has pledged throughout the campaign. We are now way past the target at over $102k. This is no small feat. The generosity of our backers has allowed us to join the exclusive ranks of only 5 other narrative feature film projects who have raised over $100k – see the links below to view those precious few. We’re the first EVER UK narrative feature to raise this amount.

We really have achieved something here and a successful Kickstarter campaign has always felt like it would be pivotal in making this movie – so off we go! It’s so encouraging to have over 1000 of you backing us.

It’s not over yet though, we still have 8 days to go on the campaign so there is plenty opportunity for others to get involved. The more we raise on kickstarter the quicker we can get the film into production so we are more than happy to push on past our target.

This is also the last window of opportunity to become part of making the film happen – there’s still the chance to shout action on the first take of the film, get your name in the credits, sign up for an exclusive kickstarter only dvd, receive a god help the crew badge and lots more. These rewards will only be available for the duration of the campaign so get in now if you want to join us.

Thank you all again, we are delighted.

Pledge before the end of Sunday and you’ll get this ‘Still’s demo in your inbox on Monday.

Kickstarter top funded narrative feature films:

Save Blue Like Jazz , $346k , U.S.

Man-Child , $125k , U.S.

Thankskilling , $112k , U.S.

I Am I , $111k , U.S.

Lust For Love , 101k , U.S.

AND God Help The Girl !!!!

Kickstarter update from Stuart - 26/01/2012

Hi kickstarter people and everyone else,

Just want to say hi. I’ve been laying quite low, leaving other to adminstrate this whole process. Last night I went through the names of all the contributors. I was surprised to see how many names I recognised! Either friends, or people that have had some connection with the band. Very, very cool.

And the rest of you, in such dark and exotic places, from Singapore to Des Moines, Iowa! I feel very grateful of your support, and I hope that we can do a good job for you, if we get funded, and justify your effort.

Though kickstarter is only a piece of the budget that we are in the process of raising, it is the most important piece. I have this feeling that for every dollar you chuck in, in the long run it may be worth three to us. That’s because the people that may have money to give us, in funding agencies, or in broadcasting or distribution, will look at what you have done here. They may think “Well, all those people must know something.” And they may hopefully throw their weight behind us. That’s what I’m hoping anyway.

So in the meantime, I’m going to look out some nice photographs from the God Help The Girl archive, get them framed, put them up on sale here, and perhaps we can make it over the finish line.

We’ve also just added Eve’s diary from the film as a reward – it will be a one off, full of notes, pictures and sketches…

Just over two weeks to go.

Video download of 'Perfection As A Hipster' Live - 16/01/2012

We’ve made a self imposed target to try and reach $70k on our Kickstarter campaign by the end of Friday 20th January. Everyone who pledges by the end of that day and everyone who has pledged so far will receive a link to download a high res version of the full track. Even a donation of $1 will help us on our way so dig deep, and if you’ve already pledged, get your Mum to dig deep!

View a short teaser here.

Half way and almost half our target! - 12/01/2012

We are half way through our Kickstarter campaign and almost half way to our $100k target which seems like a pretty good position to be in and a pretty good time to add some new rewards.

Our producer Barry has written a diary entry as well to let you know what we are up to as Stuart is busy doing some refining on the script.

Check out the page to see what we have to offer from the chance to yell action on the shoot to the rarest B&S record of all!

New rewards on Kickstarter - 06/01/2012

Happy New Year! We hope you had a wonderful time over the festive period. We have returned to the project in 2012 with some very exciting developments from Stuart and Barry’s pre-Christmas London meetings. Hopefully we can disclose more soon but for now we’ve made a short video diary from Stuart and Barry in London discussing their meeting and the kickstarter campaign.

We’re currently sitting just below $40k on our Kickstarter campaign which is great but we have a long way to go and remember that we (and you) receive nothing if we don’t hit our target of $100k by February 12th.

With this in mind we’ve added some more rewards today. We’ve got drumsticks from the shoot, Stuarts baton that he uses to conduct the orchestra on the soundtrack, backstage passes to GHTG or B&S shows, even your very own Duke’s cafe uniform that Eve and Cassie wear in the film and a bunch more rewards besides. Check out the page to see what else is up for grabs.

Please help us spread the word by sharing on facebook, twitter or with friends and family. Every $1 really does help.

Thanks

GHTG HQ

Kickstarter going great and we are working with Hanway! - 21/12/2011

happy holidays!  last minute shopping to do?  we’ve added lots of new prizes so please consider giving the gift of god help the girl to someone you love.  we’re happy to mail your prizes to whomever you specify.  we can also email them directly if you wish, just let us know.

regardless, we’re feeling very grateful this holiday season — thanks to you, our first week was a fantastic success, we are almost a third of the way to our target. we’ve heard from so many of you offering donations and encouragement and it’s put a great wind at our back.

stuart and i went to london this week for over a dozen business and creative meetings, and the momentum of the kickstarter launch was felt by all, your enthusiasm and belief added excitement at every turn.  thank you!

the trip was a great success.  we’re very pleased to announce that we’ve struck up a partnership with the incredible hanway films to sell the film for us internationally.

as background, hanway are currently the company working on steve mcqueen’s shame and david cronenberg’s a dangerous method.  they were founded by oscar-winning producer jeremy thomas, and his team there, matt, thorsten and richard, are going to take our film once we finish it and sell it to distributors in each territory around the world.

we’re very honoured they want to take on the film. it’s another big step toward our film becoming a reality, and they will do a great job on behalf of our kickstarters in spain and germany and brazil and everywhere, finding distributors in your part of the world who can make the film available.

we videotaped our recap meeting of the london trip and will post that sometime soon. we’re also hoping to be able to announce who will distribute the movie in the UK in the new year.

however, in order for there to be a film, we need to keep it going with the campaign.  we have two-thirds of the way to go, and that feels like a lot!  so please keep doing exactly what you’re doing, telling your friends about us and staying tuned.

in the meantime, if you can support us, thank you, and thank you if can tell a friend.  we are amazed and inspired by your support.  it feels like we’re doing this all together.

a safe and happy holiday,

barry and the gang

New Rewards:

We called the hire company and they’ve agreed Stuart can drive a bigger minibus! So we’ve upped the bus tour places from 10-15. It will still be a fun and intimate affair and these will be the last places added so grab ‘em now.

We’ve also added a Glasgow preview screening date due to popular request.

Graham Samuels will be drawing GTHG artwork sketches of 10 of you with a signed postcard from Stuart as well.

We’ve had demand for the walk-on roles as well and we think we can manage 3 without driving Stuart crazy writing in new lines! So there are two more chances for a speaking part in the film.

Finally – we’re offering up the clapper board that we are going to use in the film, signed by Stuart and DoP, including a photo and a DVD with the very 1st and very last ‘boards’ of the film. A collector’s item of the future!

Check all the new rewards here.

Support God Help The Girl at Kickstarter! - 15/12/2011

We are very excited to announce the launch of a Kickstarter campaign for God Help The Girl.

If you don’t know it already, Kickstarter is a website where creative people – artists, filmmakers, dancers, designers etc – pitch their projects to the public and ask for money to realise them in exchange for rewards (not financial). It’s crowd funding, where fans and consumers decide which projects they believe in, back them and choose from a list of rewards which they will receive along with the knowledge that they have been part of making that project happen.

Please check out our Kickstarter page and support the project if you can (and want to!) There are some big hitting prizes like Stuart’s director’s chair from the film or even a walk on part for those of you with money to burn! But you can donate as little as $5 and still receive our eternal gratitude, a lovely personalised digital thank you postcard by Graham Samuels and, more importantly, you’ll have been a part of finally getting this film made. We’re still hitting up private investors, public funding and distributors to reach our funding goal but the Kickstarter campaign is really important to us, it will fill a funding gap for the project but also prove to financiers that we have a growing audience waiting to see the film when it’s released.

Read what Stuart has to say about it in the diary or watch him and Barry having a transatlantic power meeting about film finance!

The campaign runs for 60 days and we’re going to add more prizes as we go, so if there is anything you’d like to win then get in touch here and we’ll see what we can do!

To succeed with Kickstarter really takes word of mouth so please share with friends and family so they can get involved.

We've reached $1,120,000 on the accumulator! - 12/12/2011

Thanks to some enthusiastic private investors and the rebate we know we will receive from the UK government for money spent on the shoot we are edging towards 50% of our funding goal – currently sitting at $1,120,000 on the accumulator chart ! Great work but still plenty to raise…

Own a piece of God Help The Girl! - 12/12/2011

Over the next ten weeks, we’ll be accepting investors in the film. To see how fundraising is going, visit the newly launched budget page. If you’d like to know more, please email us on godhelpthegirlfilm@gmail.com