Happily, I really enjoyed the film, which of course was the main point of wanting to help it get made. But I've also thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience of being a backer.
Rob Thomas, the cast and other members of the team kept us feeling involved throughout the year it's taken to put the film together; the backer 'rewards' easily justify the $60 spent (including $10 for postage to the UK) - and I feel I now know quite a bit more about the processes involved in turning an idea into a film.
Of course the next projects I back are likely to be much smaller, in completely different sectors and less high-profile, giving a completely different experience. But I'm glad to have picked this as the first - I don't think that there is a single thing they could have done better (other than not be tied to Flixster for the actual download, but that was outside their control).
For a start, there's been the regular emails - we've received 89 so far. Rob and the gang have kept us posted with news, videos, photos and all sorts of insights into the various stages (and challenges) of movie making, from assembling the cast through shooting and editing, and a whole host of other issues too. The emails have always friendly, informative and entertaining - very welcome whenever one arrives in the inbox. I'll rather miss them (though I imagine there will still be a few more to come).
The reward delivery process was very well managed too - the parcel with the t-shirt and stickers arrived bang on schedule some time ago...
...and links to download the movie and a personalised copy of the final script came as promised immediately after midnight on Friday, the day of the release.
OK, so we (like many other people) had problems with the Flixster software - for some mysterious reason it won't run on my laptop - so we couldn't play the downloaded film and ended up streaming it from the Flixster website (which did glitch a bit). But it didn't really spoil our enjoyment and certainly wasn't the project team's fault (and indeed Rob's latest email says that Warner Bros have given customer services a lot of freedom to help make things right, either getting it working on Flixster or providing an alternative). I do realise that other Marshmallows have had worse problems accessing it and that we may have been relatively lucky.
Still to come is a copy of the DVD (including a documentary on the making of the movie and the Kickstarter campaign) and we're looking forward to watching the film again then.
Next task - I'll be ordering the new paperback, Veronica Mars: the thousand-dollar tan line from Amazon. I'm sure I'll enjoy it every bit as much as I did the film.
