I met Norman Burgess at Chinatown Fair the night it closed. I was impressed by his knowledge of games and his eloquence of speech. I saw on Facebook a couple weeks ago that he had built his own arcade cabinet at home. Norman did me the honor of inviting me to his weekly get together.
We filmed until 1 AM (their sessions regularly last until 7AM). The guys in attendance were all friends from NYC arcades from back in the day, who discovered that they all lived in the same neighborhood, Harlem. The atmosphere was friendly and relaxed. Norman’s friends took advantage of the home brew arcade machine, which is decked out with hundreds of games, as well as his chest full of every game imaginable- new old, obscure - for all the various game systems that Norman has collected. We were so lucky to have met an amazing crew of guys, plus Norman’s wife, who he met at CF ten years ago and who is a Tetris wizard.
A lively debate sparked up around 12 AM about the difference between online gaming and gaming of the past, which took place in arcades. Norman brought up a very interesting point, which I had never thought of before. He pointed out that online players have nothing to lose. They are mostly anonymous, have no reputation to uphold, and will show behavior which they would not show if they were playing head to head. Online players also are not paying to play each match, so they do not have anything to lose in that respect as well. Arcade play has much more dignity. There is a face, a person, a reputation, and there is hard earned money on the line.
-Irene
Kickstarter Update:
488 Backers
$28,943 pledged of $20,000 goal
13 hours to go
Irene just finished baking sugar cookies in the shape of Pac-Man to show our thanks to the Kickstarter office! We are going to be working hard today to help get our project to 150%. Please share the project with your friends today. We can do this!
Happy Memorial Day. I hope everyone has a moment to celebrate and remember those who fought for our country.
We are on the front page of Kickstarter today. It is great way to start the last 48 hours of our project. We are really pushing for 30k, 150%. I am confident we can do this. But it will take a lot of people sharing the project. I implore everyone, please tweet the link, facebook message it, and email your friends and colleagues. We can do it!
Irene and I will be seeing Henry Cen today, the owner of the Net Level arcade in Brooklyn so we may have the Kickstarter party date set by the end of today. Very excited! I also got an email from J Smith The Suit, a member of the 3rd Strike crew. I am really excited because I have been wanting to film the 3rd Strike guys. They invited me to their annual 3rd Strike battle in Queens. It will be epic.
I feel so lucky right now. To have the opportunity to make this movie and now that I have funding, I can make it the way it should be made.
Thanks everyone!
-K
p.s. photo is of the Chinatown Fair/NYC 3rd Strike Crew. Courtesy of Anthony Cali aka Helgen. Check his new site here.
5/25/2011 - Notes From A Kickstarter Project
We have 6 days left until our Kickstarter deadline at 11:59 PM on May 31st. Some good interviews I did last week should be posted on the net this week. Hopefully the project will get a few more boosts from the press and we will eclipse 30k.
I just finished my submission to IFP’s Documentary Showcase for this fall. If we are selected we get to share the movie with a ton of really cool people in the film industry during a week long event at Lincoln Center. Film festival directors, distributors, tv networks, etc. Some of my favorite documentary films have gone through the festival. My fingers are crossed.
Last week Irene and I had the pleasure of meeting Matt Hunter and Steve Haske, two of the hosts of the excellent podcast, A Jumps B Shoots. They were in town from Portland, Oregon to cover Blip Fest 2011 and record some podcasts. I was honored to geek out with them. It was a lot of fun talking with them. I think the podcast should hit itunes next week.
Irene and I also met Jamin Warren, the founder of the magazine/blog KILL SCREEN. It was great meeting him after having communicated via email for the past few months. He was one of the earliest supporters of the movie and has some ideas of how we can work together in the coming months! Very cool ideas.
I was also interviewed by Ben Gilbert, Joystiq’s writer in NYC. It was great to sit down with him. I think I learned more from him than the other way around! He is currently writing a feature piece about the movie that will be posted this week.
We rocked out at Blip Fest on Thursday night. My two highlights were TALK TO ANIMALS from Baltimore and NYC’s own ANAMANAGUCHI. I have listened to “Airbrushed” at least 200 times since the show. I was moshing and dancing so hard during their set that I got a cramp and had to ease up. Looking forward to hearing recorded versions of their new songs that they played at the show.
I’ll be posting some more tomorrow.
-K
Anthony Cali, the traveller
I saw one of my favorite documentary filmmakers speak once. An audience member asked if he had ever become friends with subjects in his films. His reply, in short, was that he was not there to make friends. He was there to make movies. I get what he was saying, yet my experience thus far has been so different. Not necessarily by choice. It’s just a product of who I am. You can’t prevent forming friendships when a real connection between two people is made. And why would you want to?
I met Anthony Cali Jr. while I was filming at the arcade. Right away we hit it off and next thing I knew he began to help Irene and I with the movie. Anthony grew up in the Lower East Side and was a longtime CF regular. His pops, Anthony Sr., first took him there as a 7 year old. His roots run deep under Manhattan. Anthony’s photographs of the arcade can be seen on our Kickstarter page. He is a big camera nerd, and I have yet to hang with him, without hearing about some new lens or obscure Japanese digital SLR model. Anthony is a real wise guy. It’s in his blood.
Anthony left NYC this week to visit Japan.
Two nights before his flight to Japan, Anthony told me that when he saw me with my camera at Chinatown Fair he could tell right away I wasn’t from NYC, but instead of passing judgement he decided to see what I was about. He saw in my eyes that I was genuine and truly excited to be filming at CF. So he introduced himself. I remember the exact moment we met. I was filming the crew playing 3rd Strike. I was drawn to the 3rd Strike cabinet. There was lots of trash talking, beer drinking, and a real sense of camaraderie. Moments after meeting I began filming Anthony. That’s when I captured the clip of Anthony that’s in the trailer. He says, “This place should be a landmark if anything, its so fucked up. You got so many different types of people coming here. This is the only place you can really be yourself in.” Anthony is about as eloquent and introspective as they come. His musings have already had a big effect on the direction of the documentary.
I knew he would become an integral part of the movie after that night. What I didn’t realize was that he would become a friend.
Anthony has a blog documenting his NYC adventures, The New York Blues, and he is going to keep it going with a new site documenting his adventure across the sea. I’ll post the new blog up when I got the URL.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Clams Casino
—Motivation [Lil B]
Clams Casino - Motivation (Lil B) Instrumental
This is the second song you hear in the trailer. Jam on it.
Terminator photo by Vivienne Gucwa
Kickstarter sends out a weekly email showcasing projects they love. I have been receiving the email ever since my friend Paul Vogeler launched a successful Kickstarter to fund his journey to show his art in Berlin (btw, Paul is still on that journey and producing some incredible art!). I was surprised to see our project included in this weeks’s email!! Kickstarter has some incredible writers on staff, because the way the described the film is incredible! Read Below:
“As video game culture made the move from bustling arcades to private living rooms, Chinatown Fair remained an institution of New York’s gaming community. After over 50 years of continuous operation, the arcade has finally been forced to shutter its doors. Filmmaker Kurt Vincentcaptures its last moments, chronicling the lives of those who grew up in this beloved community spot as they make way for a new era.”
Wow, spot on!!! We are receiving an overwhelming amount of support since the email was sent out! This movie is happening!
-Kurt
Interview on Play The Past
photo by Vivienne Gucwa
In the past two weeks I have discovered an entire world of online commentary focused on the various aspects of gaming culture. I have had the pleasure of having dialogs with a few of them. Over the weekend I had a lot of fun answering questions posed by Trevor Owens, a contributor to Play the Past (a website “dedicated to thoughtfully exploring and discussing the intersection of cultural heritage (very broadly defined) and games/meaningful play (equally broadly defined)). Trevor is a digital archivist at the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) in the Office of Strategic Initiatives at the Library of Congress and a doctoral student at GMU. I think I need to interview him, I’m pretty curious about his line of work and studies.
The interview forced me to put into words a lot of things I have been thinking about.
The Last Night At Chinatown Fair Arcade: Interview with Director Kurt Vincent.
I am excited to meet up with Ben Gilbert, a Brooklyn based writer for Joystiq, to do an interview this week. He actually lives in the same area as Irene and I. You can read a post that he made on the movie here.
If you guys haven’t linked up with us on Facebook please do!!
5.10.2011 - Notes From A Kickstarter Project
A few days into the Arcade project launching on Kickstarter I was going over how many donations we needed to hit everyday if we were going to pass our goal. I was actually obsessed. I was constantly checking to see if we had any new backers and when we did I felt a jolt of satisfaction and when we didn’t I felt a sense of failure. This was no way to spend the next month.
After talking to my dad about our daily goals and these mathemetical projections I was coming up with, he interjected a piece of advice that has changed my approach to Kickstarter: Concentrate on what you can control. It sounds obvious, but in the midst of a Kickstarter project that had to raise $20,000 in a short period of time it was revelatory and resulted in a subtle, yet vital change in attitude.
I realized that Irene and I have no control over how much and how many people decide to back our project. There is no sense in judging our success solely by the percentage of our project that is funded, rather we should judge judge it on a number of factors that are directly related to our day-to-day efforts. That way at the end of the day I knew we had done all we could do. Even if we didn’t see a large increase in backers we knew that we put in a good days work and that eventually all the effort will pay off.
What we have been concentrating on is getting the word about our movie and it’s Kickstarter project by talking with people. Emailing, tweeting, posting on Facebook, talking to the lady next to me in line at the movies. If someone writes me I try to write them back immediately. We have been spreading the word about our project in every way we can. It is really beginning to show positive results. Passion is contagious and if you show how strongly you feel about your project others will feel it and want to help. And when they do offer help, it’s an amazing feeling, much better than neurotically checking my email looking for that new backer.
-Kurt
p.s. Thanks Korey, for the design help! Anyone need a graphics design edge, please look at http://www.bureaunyc.com/ and tell them Kurt sent ya ;-)
I just came across a blog post that made me smile.
“Every ounce of my being wants this movie to be made. I fell in love with it the moment I read the title and from what I can see from the short video this has the potential to be a real gem. Some of the best memories I have of being a teenager are of all my friends piling into my girlfriends car and spending the 90 dollars I made a week at KFC on arcade games. The Last Night At Chinatown Fair feels like a labor of love and a unique chance to see and share that moment we all have felt when something we love is lost. I know my $10 wont put much of a dent in their $20,000 pledge but its all I got man.”
from http://backstrokeofthewest.blogspot.com/
Thank you, MrsBonBon. You just reminded me why we are making this movie. Your $10 is more important than you realize. Thanks.
