SciFi Film-maker Shawna Baca Seeking $15,000 from SF Fans

Shawna Baca is an award-winning Latina film-maker whose professional credits include remarkable independent films and TV commercials. She approached the Xenite.Org / SF-Fandom network several weeks ago seeking help in promoting her latest project, “Ascended Masters”. “Ascended Masters” is intended to be the first in a series of short, independent films financed by science fiction fans. Several media and genre news sites picked up Shawna’s story in March.

We gladly promised to help spread the word and I was confident that as soon as I published an exclusive interview with Shawna that other fan sites (and some of my friends’ sites) would pick up the story and help spread the news. I had even given thought to promoting the interview through some other channels.

But our server had other plans for my time and I feel like I have really failed to keep a promise. Xenite.Org and SF-Fandom have been able to light a few candles through the years. We have helped promote independent movies, TV shows, actors’ careers, dance clubs, and we even helped get white cheese dip into major national distribution. My confidence in our ability to create visibility is rarely misplaced.

Here’s the deal: If “Ascended Masters” receives $20,000 in pledges by April 21, the movie will be made. As I write this barely $5,000 has been raised so far. I don’t know if we could have helped raise the other $15,000 in the time that has now slipped through our fingers, but I feel like I’ve let down both Shawna (and her team) and the science fiction fandom community. This project really should go forward.

I have been holding off on publishing the interview because I wanted to set up a new Feature Articles section in the SF-Fandom Vbulletin CMS. Unfortunately, it turns out that VBulletin doesn’t survive server changes very well. A lot of people have found out that when you just move a Vbulletin account (files and all) to a new server, things stop working. And I don’t have the time or the patience to figure that all out in the next 15 minutes (having spent many hours this past weekend on the problem).

So I’m going to compromise and publish the interview on this blog. It’s still SF-Fandom.

If you have a blog, a science fiction forum, a Twitter account, or a Facebook account, please do let your friends know about the interview but more importantly go check out the Ascended Masters project at Kickstarter.

And to Shawna, I really, truly, deeply apologize for letting this fall so far behind. If I can ever make it up to you in the future, please let me know.