Rejoice! 2 Player Productions have released the Minecraft mini-doc announced last month for free this morning, alongside plans to fund a feature-length Minecraft documentary using Kickstarter. The full 20-minute film is available from GameTrailers, and you can find it embedded below:
Look. If you didn’t get chills during the bit where the fireworks are going off in sync with the Minecraft music, that’s okay. It just means that you either A) have never played Minecraft or B) don’t have a soul.
By the way, if the soundtrack seems particularly excellent, that’s likely due to the excellent chipmusic pedigree of everyone involved. 2 Player Productions is responsible for that fantastic chiptune documentary Reformat the Planet, and for this doc, they employed the help of The Tank’s Jenn de la Vega, who actually joined 2PP in Sweden to assist in the minidoc’s production. Sweet!
And no, you’re not mistaken: that is George & Jonathan’s “Whale” used during the beautiful sequence about 5 minutes in, which I’m pretty sure means we just saw the best song of 2010 get used in the best montage of 2011. Emotional stuff. (By the way, if you find the combination of Minecraft and George & Jonathan appealing, you might enjoy our exhaustive Minecraft episode from last year, set to the fantastic tunes of their album “The Best Music.” Just saying.)
The most exciting part of all this might be the Kickstarter. Essentially, what 2PP is angling for is to create an in-depth, full-length documentary called Minecraft: The Story of Mojang that’ll document. They’re trying to raise $150,000 over the next four weeks to fund the film, and since they’ve already raised $6,000 since launching the page this morning, it doesn’t look like they’ll have any trouble reaching their goal!
But it wouldn’t be Kickstarter without backer rewards, would it? To incentivize donations, 2PP has teamed up with FanGamer to produce some exclusive gifts for those willing to pledge their cash to make the doc happen, including signed DVDs, a copy of the soundtrack, a wind-up Creeper toy, a piggy bank modeled after the in-game pig, and a ton of other seriously awesome stuff. If this sounds good to you (or you just want more details), head to the Kickstarter page where you can make a donation in the amount of your choosing.
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Made my donation. Wow, in one just morning it’s already gotten more in pledges or backers than the 2009 Blip Fest did. Then again, this movie needs a lot more money and very few people were familiar with Kickstarter in Fall ’09.
I’m no expert or anything, but yeah, this is definitely the fastest-moving Kickstarter I’ve ever seen! It’s pretty thrilling that seemingly everyone from all walks of Internet would like to see this movie happen.
The documentary is called “Using Kickstarter”?
Haha, good catch! I originally had the working title in the lede, but opted to move it toward the end since there’s always a chance it isn’t the final name. Fixed!
150K? What do they need $150,000 for? I could quit work and live comfortably for 3 years on that. I could make the next minecraft clone on that much money, and no it wouldn’t be text based. (It might be star control based.) Is there a legitimate reason for that figure or is that just greed? I know travel and recording equipment is expensive, but it seems like they’ve already got the equipment and I don’t know what they’re planning for post-editing, but unless they’re CGing in Jar-Jar Binks that number still seems a bit high for a documentary. Just saying I think they could figure out ways to par down the costs a bit.
According to the Kickstarter page, the $150,000 will be used to “make frequent visits to the Mojang office in Sweden and other locations around the globe throughout 2011,” as well as to “enrich the film by hiring additional crew to handle post-production effects, audio engineering, an original musical score.”
At any rate, I don’t think $150,000 for a feature length film is “a bit high for a documentary,” especially considering that it takes place across both hemispheres! Just to pick an example at random: “The Cove,” that documentary from last year about dolphin hunting, cost $2.5 million to make.
That just astonishes me. $150k is a lot of money. $2.5 mil is a lot more, true, but $150,000! Like I said, I could quit my job and my family and I could live comfortably on that for 3 years which would leave me lots of time for filming a documentary if I were so inclined. Heck, that would pay off my not insubstantial student loans 3 times over.
It seems to me they could cut down on expenses if they paid for someone to live over there for a few months or maybe a year to do the filming. I guess replacing ‘s head with a sprite is going to cost them a license of Adobe and someone to animate the sprites. Because obviously they don’t already have that all ready to go.
Plus, i doubt they’re planning on giving away that double DVD for free. This just seems like an abuse of Kickstarter. These are the guys doing Penny-Arcade TV. They have the equipment, talent, and if I’m not mistaken they’re not poor either. They don’t need a boost from the community to get off the ground. It just seems to me like they see a golden opportunity to milk the Minecraft community for all it’s worth and they’re taking it.
They’re not doing Penny Arcade anymore (PA’s decision, not 2PP’s). They are still doing the Uncharted and Infamous promo docs for Sony, though, which means they still need their crew on the west coast.
I imagine another factor here is the projected cost of getting the film into various festivals, something they sort of stumbled through with Reformat the Planet and now understand how much work and money it takes, added with the idea that the Minecraft movie probably has more international and business appeal than an admittedly fun movie about making music with Game Boys in New York.
All this and 2PP is still just five people, so I totally understand the need to hire a couple extra people to finish this projects in a timely manner (at least the Sony stuff needs to be finished on a deadline before those games are released to the public later this year).