Wing Commander Music Kickstarter Enters Final Week (March 15, 2014)

ChrisReid

Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
It's been another productive week for George Oldziey's mission to produce a Wing Commander album with a live orchestra. An impressive $20,000 has now been pledged toward the cause. However, the funding drive is now in its final seven days, and another $15,000 must be contributed or no funds will be paid out and the album won't move forward! A lot of people wait until the end of a fund raiser to donate, however, so we're all hopeful that your generous pledges are still on the way.

In order to spur some big numbers, two very exclusive $3,000 tiers have been added. The first offers up an authentic Kilrathi rifle used in the opening sequence of Wing Commander 3. It's from the personal collection of Ben Bandit (LOAF) Lesnick, who doesn't give up priceless Wing Commander memorabilia lightly! But this is a worthy cause, and the rifle will surely find a loving home. The second $3,000 item is a rare leather jacket given only to the development team at Origin who made Wing Commander 3. This one was given to George in 1994. Finally, the $5,000 option to sit in the booth during recording and choose some of the music that will be produced has been lowered to $3,000.

Hello everyone!

I'm Ben Lesnick, Community Manager and Designer on Chris Roberts' Star Citizen. Many of you know I initially became involved in Star Citizen's campaign because I ran the Wing Commander community at WCNews.com for over fifteen years. Star Citizen is full steam ahead right now, but the Wing Commander universe will always be my first love... and I'm incredibly excited to hear the Wing Commander III, IV, and Prophecy the way it was meant to be heard. George Oldziey's project is, to my mind, the most pure use of crowd funding possible: he's not funding a product to sell, he's doing this so that we can hear music that wouldn't otherwise exist. When you think about it, that's pretty cool!

To that end, I'd like to do whatever I can to make it a reality. I'm kicking in one of the star pieces from my personal Wing Commander collection as a big ticket item to try and make this recording session happen: a Kilrathi rifle prop used in Wing Commander III. Watch closely during the introduction or any of the other Kilrathi court scenes and you can see it in the background! It's a really cool prop weapon made of wood and plastic, and looks great on a shelf. It's one of the few physical items made for the Wing Commander III shoot, and it has decorated my office for years (my wife will be very happy to see it go!)

Now get out there and pledge; I want to hear this music!






Greetings all! First of all, I want to truly thank EVERYONE for their great support so far. You've all been amazing! I've noticed several people increasing their pledges over the last few days. That is truly inspiring and humbling for me!

We are approaching our final week of pledging. For those of you who may be new to Kickstarter, basically if you don't reach your goal the project does not get funded. So I'm hoping that we can meet the target number in the next 7 days so that we can have AT LEAST 15 minutes of fully orchestral Wing Commander music! It's been my dream since I wrote the first notes for Wing Commander III!

But even if we don't get there, I'll always remember the tremendous support from all of you.

Always,

George

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Original update published on March 15, 2014
 
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I would love to pledge for this, but I don't know how to pay? I have no credit card, but I could pay with PayPal. However, Kickstarter does not seem to support PayPal. Does anyone have an idea?
 
Hate it to be the naysayer here, but IMHO Georges's campaign is crap. Not the idea, never mind, but while I am onl ymildly interested in an orchestrated soundtrack I definitely cannot bring myself to buy a CD for a grand total of 9 minutes of music. And I guess many people think the same. Again IMHO the campaign should have aimed for a full 60 minutes album from the get go and raise the minimum donation amount accordingly instead of being a stretch goal. Might be work to try the fund raising again with this approach.
 
What is supported for this KS? Amazon Payment? Amazon should also accept non credit card ways of payment. If they don't I assume that someone here would also be willing to act as proxy. Or ask the creator of the project if you can also pay by paypal.
 
I checked and Kickstarter does allow Amazon, but Amazon only appears to allow credit cards for this transaction. Two ideas:
- Go to a retail store (Wal-Mart, for example, or a drug store like KMart or CVS) and buy a prepaid debit-type card that can act as a credit card. This might be simplest - you can buy them with cash and just buy however much you want to donate, use it, and get rid of it.
- As cff suggested, find a proxy who'll put in a donation in your name, and you can then pay them via PayPal. (I'd be willing to if you went that route, though I'm not sure the logistics, but I'm sure something could be figured out.)
 
Hate it to be the naysayer here, but IMHO Georges's campaign is crap. Not the idea, never mind, but while I am onl ymildly interested in an orchestrated soundtrack I definitely cannot bring myself to buy a CD for a grand total of 9 minutes of music. And I guess many people think the same. Again IMHO the campaign should have aimed for a full 60 minutes album from the get go and raise the minimum donation amount accordingly instead of being a stretch goal. Might be work to try the fund raising again with this approach.

It was never only 9 minutes. It was always 15. It's still a low number, but you get that in digital format at the 20 dollar level. George has since thrown in an additional 10 minutes of modern sampled music at the 50 dollar pledge level so technically if it gets funded for the base amout you're supporting 25 minutes of new WC music. That's not too bad really.
You can't view kickstarters on a value per dollar level though. Kickstarter is for people that believe in a project and want to see it happen regardless of the rewards. If I was worried about how much I was spending I would wait for the CD or digital sales once the orchestration is done.

George is kinda inexperienced in crowdfunding though. It would be nice it had been clearer what comes with what pledge levels now that he's adjusted them all (since he can't edit the pre-existing pledge levels).
 
Hate it to be the naysayer here, but IMHO Georges's campaign is crap. Not the idea, never mind, but while I am onl ymildly interested in an orchestrated soundtrack I definitely cannot bring myself to buy a CD for a grand total of 9 minutes of music. And I guess many people think the same. Again IMHO the campaign should have aimed for a full 60 minutes album from the get go and raise the minimum donation amount accordingly instead of being a stretch goal. Might be work to try the fund raising again with this approach.

It's easy for us to second guess after the fact, but what an excruciating decision to have to make. Say he did put the full hourlong album out there for $60,000 and only raised $50,000. Then what a shame that would have been that we missed getting a 30-40 minute album because we set our sights too high! The stretch goal option provides the most flexible campaign.

But, it's not 9.5 minutes of music! The opening paragraph should probably have been worded differently to clarify this from the get go. 9.5 minutes was what was already orchestrated for the concert, and the top backers are to pick five or so more minutes for a total of 15. Then, at a minimum, there's ten more minutes of orchestration done personally by George with his latest hardware. So the minimum length of the CD is 25 minutes. Not a long album at the minimum goal, but more than twice what some people think it is...

$50 +
Listed on the CD as Member, receives a digital download of the original 15 minutes of music recorded by the orchestra plus an ADDITIONAL 10 minutes of music from Wing Commander (above what's included in the $20 level) orchestrated in my studio using my instrument sample libraries. And or course receives my undying and everlasting gratitude!

I've raised my pledge!
 
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I have mixed feelings on this. I never really knew much about how much it costs to record orchestral music. Funnily enough, I first learned just how much of a process it is from the Star Citizen segment on the music production for the game (4 hours of orchestra time = 7 or so minutes of music!). I can't say I wasn't *a little* disappointed at the initial goal of 9.5 minutes (which I later learned to be ~15, which wasn't immediately clear, to me at least). But the more I thought about it, the more it worked for me for the quality we'll be getting, and like AD points out, this isn't strictly a value cost analysis for me - it's to contribute and help make something happen that otherwise wouldn't.

Still, if this doesn't happen, I really think George should consider doing a Kickstarter for the electronic composition method he's adding for the project to do the whole thing (45 minutes plus). It may not be the true orchestral treatment he wants, but it should still be a fantastic upgrade to the original music and something worth doing, for probably substantially less.
 
I don't want to write anything off with the whole week left to go - we're still thinking about what else can be done to make up that last gap between today's amount and the goal - but I will say that George is extremely dedicated to his Wing Commander music history and fans.

The idea has been in place for this since before the CIC opened! We have an update from August 1998 that talks about some of the initial ideas: https://www.wcnews.com/news/1998/08/21/the-man-gets-around And an informal non-orchestrated prototype was actually made around 2003: https://www.wcnews.com/news/2003/10/25/eight-cd-changer-required George started talking about a live orchestra in 2005: https://www.wcnews.com/news/2005/01/12/george-oldziey-releases-new-wc-inspired-tracks and this morphed into a concert idea by 2010: https://www.wcnews.com/news/2010/04/25/wing-commander-music-coming-to-live-orchestra That was on the books for 2013, but it turned out to be a lot trickier than expected, plus relatively few fan would be able to experience it, so here we are today.

I know George won't give up if the campaign falls through - but it would be a whole lot easier if we just made this thing happen right now!
 
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Whoo...well we got a nice bump - someone went for LOAF's gun. Such a cool piece of merchandise. Hopefully someone will go for the jacket too as it's pretty sweet as well!
 
Yes, awesome - it's going to be a exciting end run. Come on, that flight jacket is cool too as are the posters (though, had I the funds, I'd have taken the Kirlathi gun as well).
 
Whoo...well we got a nice bump - someone went for LOAF's gun. Such a cool piece of merchandise. Hopefully someone will go for the jacket too as it's pretty sweet as well!

Woohoo! If only 2 more backers are willing to spend like that we'd be within spitting distance of the goal line!
 
Just under 800 to go!!! This is amazing! lets go for those Stretch goals!
 
Aaaaand.... We did it ! Amazing! If this rate keeps up we might very well hit those stretch goals.
 
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