With 4 days to go, Boston filmmaker sweats it out on Kickstarter
| December 15, 2011 | Posted by Anharris under Film, Journalism, New Media |
With just four days to go, Boston independent filmmaker Bill Lichtenstein needs to raise another $34,000 in order to receive any of the $70,000 he’s raised so far for his newest film project. He’s using a Web portal called Kickstarter to encourage individual donors to hep fund a nonprofit documentary about the innovative Boston radio station where, in the 1960s, at age 14, Lichetenstein was the nation’s youngest DJ.
And he’s sweating.
“Tell people that if we don’t get the entire $104K, we don’t get anything,” he says.
Lichtenstein chose $104K as the goal because (a) he needs the money and (b) the station was at 104. 1 on the Boston FM radio dial.
The film, entitled ” “The American Revolution: How a Radio Station, Politics and Rock and Roll Changed Everything” documents Boston radio station WBCN from 1968 through 1974.
As reported in the Boston Herald (Dec. 5, 2011), during those years, Bruce Springsteen did his first radio interview ever on WBCN; Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir, of the Grateful Dead, and the Allman Brothers’ Duane Allman stopped into the studio at 2 AM and jammed for an area. When Nixon invaded Cambodia, “BCN got local college kids to strike.
WBCN ”had tremendous national impact both musically and politically,” Lichtenstein told the Herald.
Lichenstein, who has produced TV and documentaries for ABC News and PBS, has gathered more than 50,000 photos, documents and tapes, including early performances by Led Zeppelin a, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground.
“We changed the world one time,” Lichtenstein says. ” And we can do it again.”
But not if he doesn’t reach his goal on Kickstarter–a nonprofit that allows contributors to get tax deductions–but gives fundraisers just a month to get the entire bundle.
Lichtenstein and Kickstarter were featured on Boston’s WCVB-TV ”Chronicle” on Dec. 13, 2011.
More info, the WCVB piece and the film trailer are available at www.KickstartWBCN.com
——Anita Harris
Anita M. Harris is president of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning public relations firm located in tyhe Cambridge Innovation Center in Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA. Anita is a former national journalist who got HER start in the alternative press–as a founder of the Harrisburg Independent Press and writer for the The Real Paper and Phoenix in Boston, MA.
I’m pleased to report that Bill Lichtenstein made his numbers…with $5K to spare.