Sundown: The Kickstarter
We’re done! Thanks once again to our backers for their support and patience. We’re very happy with how the CD, DVD, libretto, songbooks, and posters came out and we’re excited about sharing them with everyone!
Sundown: Whispers of Ragnarok has long since had its debut performance, and the CDs and DVDs are finished! Our Kickstarter helped raise the funds we need to finish. We had three initial goals:
- To produce and release a CD of the full song cycle, telling the story of the creation of the Norse cosmos, the strife between Odin and Loki, the murder of Baldur, and the coming of Ragnarok, complete with a lyrics booklet and mythological notes.
- To put on more performances of the play. The live debut performance at Balticon 2013 was a great success, and we managed to assemble members from all across the country to perform.
- To produce a DVD of the live Balticon performance. We hired a professional video crew, and with Kickstarter funds we have paid for professional video editing so we can share the live experience with friends around the world.
As the campaign went on and exceeded our initial funding goal, we broadened our plans to such possibilities as:
- Performing at Worldcon! It is another non-paying venue. We’re eager to share our music, but it will cost us thousands of dollars to get our performers to TX. Kickstarter support made this performance possible.
- Better quality digital mastering for the CD and DVD, allowing both recordings to look and sound their very best.
- Extras for the DVD. Unfortunately we were unable to include captions, but we did make sure the DVD had region free coding so it can be enjoyed internationally and included a photo album of pictures taken during the performance.
Our Kickstarter campaign met its $7,000 starting goal in a staggering 48 hours! We finished the campaign 233% funded, with $16,388.11 pledged! A huge thank-you to our generous backers. We are truly overwhelmed by this support.
As the project progressed, we met many exciting stretch goals. Though most of the benefits of the stretch goals were only available to Kickstarter backers, one of the Sundown-inspired poems Jo Walton posted when we met our $10,000 is publicly available on her Livejournal. Thanks so much to Jo for all of her amazing Sundown poetry, which was made available to backers.
We’ve finished mailing out all of the backer rewards, so hopefully all of our backers have already or will soon receive them. We hope you all enjoy the rewards! Please e-mail our Kickstarter coordinator, Tili Sokolov, or our main email address with any questions or problems.
Special thanks to our amazing video editor, Ciro Faienza. Find him on Google+, Twitter @cirofaienza, and freneticlicense.blogspot.com. Thanks also to our sound editor Nat Budin, our manager Ethan Bassford, our costuming consultant Christina Krupp, our Viking smith and leatherworker Marc Dunn, to David Kowarsky, who oversaw filming at Balticon, and to many other friends who have helped make this possible!
If you missed the Kickstarter, you can still order the CD or DVD through our Bandcamp page.
For more information, check out our Kickstarter page, and thank you for helping us bring Ragnarok to life!
Learn More about Sassafrass and Sundown:
- The Project (includes streaming samples)
- The Songs
- The Play and Characters (more streaming samples)
- The Costumes
- Our Contributors
- Pre-order CD & DVD
- Balticon 2013
- Our Other Albums
- About the Group
- Future Performance Venues