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Welcome to the Cosmos seeks a kickstart

An Australian sci-fi pilot has taken to 'crowd source funding' to try to get to the next stage in its development.

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An Australian sci-fi pilot has taken to ‘crowd source funding’ to try to get to the next stage in its development, and is seeking $50,000 in funds through online funding website Kickstarter.

Welcome to the Cosmos was filmed as a 13 minute pilot in 2009 by Nick Hallam & Vanessa Burt with a cast including Todd MacDonald, Damian Bodie, David Tredinnick and Carolyn Bock. With funding from Film Victoria and Screen Australia, it follows four strangers accidentally swept aboard a space craft involved in a botched mission over Earth.

Battlestar Galactica’s Michael Rymer has since assisted with script consultation and now the project hopes to proceed to a feature-length telemovie or a longer 8-part series.

Using the Kickstarter website the project is now seeking to raise $50,000 in around 50 days. Funds pledged by donors, which are donations only, are only triggered if the target is met.

Recent Sydney movie The Tunnel funded itself by selling $1 shares to investors.

Nick Hallam tells TV Tonight, “Ironically our project originated off the back of the success of a Star Wars fan-film I directed, Broken Allegiance, (Fan Films Quarterly magazine lists it as one of the 10 most pivotal moments in fan film history) so in a way it’s exciting to be able to participate in a innovative funding model designed for all types of artistic endeavours seeking support as part of the journey of securing traditional investment.”

13 Responses

  1. It has a good deal of potential.

    I agree with the comments on the theme. I find it quite corny. Although @vee, i quite liked farscapes theme (well the earlier ones, if i recall correctly they changed it and made it quite bad). But then lots of people hated Enterprise’s theme (not to mention the show), though i enjoyed both (took me a few weeks to like the theme). But this theme is just bad, it reminds me of the galaxy quest tv show in the movie theme, seems to parody the scifi themes it worked for galaxy quest as it was supposed to be like that.

  2. All TV ratings meters results are complete fiction.

    I just watched it and would certainly be interested in what happens next but can you say Hello Farscape

    Just a variant on that is all it appears to be.

    I do suggest changing the intro theme (nearly all sci-fi shows have good themes – sadly farscape’s sucked)

  3. Hmmm… Reptile/dinosaur-like extraterrestrial beings… Seem to be the latest craze for the Sci-fi genre. Can’t be any worse than the original V series. I’ll give it a watch when it comes onto the tv.

    One complaint though… they should have picked QLD to do the filming and not in Vic especially Melbourne.

  5. comes down to the same old issue – why aren’t we producing original content, instead of obviously ripped off copied a thousand times rubbish? If the americans are doing it with bigger budgets, why will anyone care about a cheap rip-off? need to be original for it to fly – Wilfred, Summer Heights perfect examples of cornering their own markets…

  6. Australian audiences don’t like science fiction. Well that’s what the free to air networks seem to think. The crowd numbers for events like supanova would seem to suggest otherwise. I would love to know how people get selected for tv ratings meters. Never known anyone who has. I wouldn’t be surprised if tv ratings are bogus anyway.

  9. Just watched, and while I liked it well enough – I have always felt that Aussie accents in Sci Fi productions end up making the whole thing sound a bit dodgy, especially in alien beings.

  11. having watched the pilot

    Its certainly interesting, cant help but feel you should have taken the dog as well.

    I have heard of crowd sourcing for books before, but never TV shows, still I guess there is no good reason that model shouldn’t work for TV as well.

    Im guessing this is where I have to tip my hat to peoples who job it is to commission shows, from pilots like this (and sometimes less) as whilst I enjoyed it, and it seems promising, I do feel I want to know more about the kind of universe the humans will encounter, it reminds me of Farscape in that respect.

  13. I was briefly and superficially involved with this production, and it turned out pretty well. I’d be happy to see it progress.

    PS: Does nobody know when to use “ironically” correctly? *sigh*

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