From Bedrooms to Billions: The Amiga Years! Surpasses £50k Kickstarter Goal

By March 24, 2015 Press Releases

Anthony & Nicola Caulfield, the writers and directors of the successfully crowdfunded feature length documentary From Bedrooms to Billions, which charts the history of the British Video games Industry, have announced the Kickstarter campaign for the follow up film From Bedrooms to Billions: The Amiga Years! has surpassed its £50,000 goal.

TIGA, the network for game developers and digital publishers, is proudly supporting From Bedrooms to Billions: The Amiga Years! as another important work from Gracious Films that chronicles and celebrates the UK’s unique videogame heritage.  

From Bedrooms to Billions: The Amiga Years! will be a 90 minute feature documentary exploring the influence of the Commodore Amiga and how it took video game development, music and publishing to a whole new level and changed the video games industry forever!

The film, nowslated for release in early 2016, will start with the origins, design and release of the Commodore Amiga and the impact it had when first launched. From then it will look at where the worldwide games industry was just prior to the Amiga’s release in 1985 and then how, once released, the challenges developers faced creating for a 16-bit machine while still in many ways dealing with a thriving market for 8-bit machines. The film is also set to tackle questions such as; what happened as 8-bit development was surpassed? How did the development teams grow and why? Who were the standout developers and what were the key game releases? How did the business itself change for developers and publishers? And did the issue of piracy truly harm this era?

As with the original ‘From Bedrooms to Billions’ the filmmakers are set to balance the ‘The Amiga Years!’ with nostalgic archive footage, stills and music with newly shot interviews with some of the original Amiga design team as well as from some of the biggest names in video game development, publishing, music and journalism from across the last 30 years!

The Kickstarter campaign for ‘From Bedrooms to Billions: The Amiga Years! is still live as the team pursue the campaign’s stretch goals, which can be viewed here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1195082866/from-bedrooms-to-billions-the-amiga-years

 

Jason Kingsley OBE, TIGA Chairman and CEO & Creative Director, Rebellion, comments:

“TIGA is proud to support From Bedrooms To Billions: The Amiga Years! and we are delighted the project achieved its Kickstarter target so quickly.

“It is hugely encouraging to see such continued demand for high quality reportage of our industry’s cultural heritage. Videogames are increasingly deeply interwoven with the UKs creative identity, and it is important to understand and celebrate the progress we have made as we continue that journey.

The Amiga Years! promises to be another enthralling film that covers what can genuinely be called a paradigm shift in how games were made, and how technological progress began to transform a bedroom hobby into a complex global artform.”

Chris Kingsley, Co-founder and CTO, Rebellion, added:

The Amiga Years! will be a fascinating film covering a remarkable era for our industry. The jump in processing power from 8-bit to 16-bit CPUs and the huge leap in memory allowed the age of mass-market 3D videogames to truly begin.

“The lessons learned from how the industry handled the transition to what was literally a new dimension of gaming, will prove useful for today’s developers too – from budget inflation to the opportunities and challenges presented by new, more powerful technology.

“As we continue to see more interest in the heritage and culture of our industry, the next instalment of the Bedrooms to Billions series will be a welcome addition that captures more of the experiences and insights of the people that helped us all get to where we are today.”

Producer & Co-Director Nicola Caulfield said:

“We found Kickstarter such a wonderful way to really engage our audience and enjoyed making our backers feel part of our project. We are thrilled that so many people came onboard so quickly to support us. The Amiga era was a part of our previous film that for running time reasons we could not explore as deeply as we wanted to, and always felt that it would work as a standalone feature documentary. Therefore now we’ve hit our funding goal to greenlight the film itself and are into extra content stretch goals we intend to film a whole new set of interviews to add to our already extensive list to create a standalone, immersive and highly nostalgic film that really explores why the release of the Commodore Amiga and the era that soon followed was a key period in the evolution of video games.”

Producer & Co-Director Anthony Caulfield said:

“The Commodore Amiga reset the previous boundaries, the very exploration of what was possible in itself led to an incredibly important and pioneering era for the games industry where skilled developers from across the world were able to strive for new innovations, set free by this incredible technology. We intend to explore what these innovations were and the people behind them.

“We used Kickstarter to fund From Bedrooms to Billions and have turned to it again now in the 30th anniversary year of the release of the Commodore Amiga to find funding to produce a film that not only celebrates this fantastic machine, but importantly what it did for the video games industry and development in general due to the many ground breaking and exclusive games that appeared on it. So Nicola and I are delighted that so many others wanted to see such a film happen!”.

 

 

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The Production

Unable to fund the original ‘From Bedrooms to Billions’ through traditional means as was the case with their debut feature film ‘Burlesque Undressed’, the British filmmakers, Anthony & Nicola Caulfield turned to the increasingly popular crowd funding method, where the concept was displayed on a crowd funding website and individuals were invited to ‘back’ the project via donations in exchange for ‘perks’. These ‘perks’ ranged from something as simple as pre-paying around £20 to receive a copy of the film once completed on Blu-ray, DVD or digital download, right through to more elaborate (and expensive) items such as signed computers, games, music and artwork donated by some of the stars of the film.

Using the crowd funding websites Kickstarter and Indiegogo ‘From Bedrooms to Billions’ raised more than £100,000 which allowed the production to go ahead.

Kickstarter Link:https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1195082866/from-bedrooms-to-billions-the-amiga-years

Film Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu_wD_0xzvA

Film Website: www.frombedroomstobillions.com

Press Contact: Anthony Caulfield – b2b@graciousfilms.com

Facebook page:http://www.facebook.com/pages/From-Bedrooms-to-Billions-History-of-UK-Video-Games-Industry-Movie/136306856397331

Twitter  @FromBedrooms

Gracious Film’s website: www.graciousfilms.com

Ends

MEDIA CONTACT

Anthony Caulfield

Gracious Films

Mobile: 00 44 7956 556 751

Email: anthonyc@graciousfilms.com

About the filmmakers

Nicola Caulfield & Anthony Caulfield

Nicola and Anthony began their careers by making film shorts, ‘The Majestic Side’ and ‘Night of your Life’ which won high praise at the 1997 BAFTA Short Film Competition, before going on to make the comedy sketch show ‘Hals Hangover’ in 1999.

They were commissioned by the government of Macau to produce a film on the East Asian Games and have also worked with the rock group ‘Pink Floyd’ to produce a theatrical version of ‘Pink Floyd’s – Pulse’ and a TV version of ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ which were both distributed worldwide.

Nicola and Anthony have also written, produced and directed various acclaimed documentaries for both broadcast and commercial release, including ‘The Story of The Young Ones’, ‘Alternative Rebellion: The beginning of Britain’s Alternative Comedy Scene’, ‘Doctor Who – Stripped for Action’ for the BBC, as well as ‘George Michael – FAITH’ and ‘Jeff’s Wayne’s The War of the Worlds’ for Sony Music. They have made two documentaries on gypsy punk group ‘Gogol Bordello’ for Channel 4 and produced the celebrated HD world music TV series ‘Soundcheck at Momo’s’

2010 saw the release of their first feature film, ‘Immodesty Blaize – Burlesque Undressed’, which had a worldwide theatrical release and then later on DVD and terrestrial broadcast worldwide.

In addition to this work they have always had a real passion to produce films that document the video games industry. Some of their work has included short films such as ‘The Newsfield Years’ which looks at 1980’s CRASH & ZZAP!64 video game magazine publishers Newsfield Publications and a making of on ‘Ant Attack’ featuring creator Sandy White. In addition they have been commissioned to document worldwide franchises such as an official 10th anniversary film on Virtua Tennis (Virtua Tennis – 10 Years Gone), as well as the official Sonic the Hedgehog 20th Anniversary documentary titled ‘Sonic – The Birth of an Icon’ which was broadcast worldwide.

2012 saw the release of their films ‘Hitman – Burning Hope’ an in-depth ‘fly’ on the wall documentary account of the production of ‘Hitman Absolution’ and ‘Jet Set Radio – A Rude Awakening’ a retrospective look back at the iconic game with the original creators and graffiti legend Eric Haze.

2014 after two years in the making saw the release of their eagerly anticipated ‘From Bedrooms to Billions’, a film that covers the incredible story of the British Video Games Industry from 1979 to the present day. The film was very highly received by the many thousands of backers who funded it into existence as well as touring at selected cinemas across the UK and Europe.

About TIGA

TIGA is 90% funded by independent UK businesses. 80% of our board members are developers and/or from UK owned businesses, and 50% of our board are UK business owners themselves. Since 2010, TIGA has won 17 business awards.

TIGA focuses on three sets of activities:

  • Political representation
  • Media representation
  • Business services

This enhances the competitiveness of our members by providing benefits that make a material difference to their businesses, including a reduction in costs and improved commercial opportunities. It also means our members’ voices are heard in the corridors of power and positively represented in national, broadcast and UK video game trade media.

Get in touch:

 Tel: 0845 468 2330

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