2014 was a big year for the Beyond Off Grid project. We went from laboring on film production in relative obscurity to growing a large and active audience.
We started the year having recently entered post-production on the film, and just a few months into our webinar series.
Our Webinar Series
In the spring, we gained a large new following through our webinar series, hosting webinars on topics such as garden planning and seed starting, how to build a greenhouse, beekeeping, traditional food preservation, and how to build additional income for your family, just to name a few.
By the fall, we had grown our list of followers to over 10,000, hosting webinars on subjects like the threat of EMPs, how to treat water in emergencies, how to transition to homesteading and farming, how to preserve food through canning, fall garden planning and how to shelter in place in the event of emergencies like an Ebola outbreak (which we did a separate webinar on).
The combination of the interesting stories of men like Michael Bunker and Cody of Wranglerstar, and informative and actionable training on important topics from experts like Jim Cobb, Dr. Bones, and Scott Hunt has made our webinar series a huge success and a major reason that our audience and support base has grown this year.
If you’re not already a supporter with access to our webinar archive, you can check our our supporter rewards and sign up as a supporter to unlock access to our 25 webinars (so far).
Spreading the Word at Events
We were fortunate to have the opportunity to attend or speak at several events this year:
- April – Preppers Festival in New Castle, VA – y’all should come to the next one April 18th, 2015!
- September – Food Freedom Fest in Staunton, VA – I was blessed to talk with both Joel Salatin and Rep Thomas Massie (a true freedom fighter in the Congress)
- September – Prepper Camp in Saluda, NC – I was fortunate to be able to speak three times at this inaugural event hosted by our friend Rick Austin
- September – Self Reliance in the Valley in Shenandoah Valley, VA – I was able to speak at this first-year event that should grow considerably in the future
We look forward to attending many more events in 2015 to spread the word about the film and the project. See the end of this email about an event we’re planning for 2015 you’ll be sure to want to attend.
Documentary Film Post-Production
Post-production work – primarily consisting of interview footage review and script writing – continued through the summer, when we made the decision to update the script to write me (Jason) in as an additional commentator and part-narrator, to provide another voice and preclude having too much voice over narration.
We filmed my interview sessions for the first part of the film in the late summer, and were able to refine and edit the intro to the film so we could release it to our Premium level supporters a few weeks ago.
If you’re a supporter at or above the Premium Member level and didn’t watch it yet, go to the Film Intro Advanced Screening page to watch it. Please note that you’ll have to login in order to watch it, so if you haven’t logged into the support site yet, make sure you do that first. Please share your feedback in the comments on that page.
While Sean is currently hard at work continuing to edit Section 1 of the film on History and Perspective, our funds have reached a point that we can no longer afford to pay for an additional editor to help expedite the edit of the film.
We will not be able to complete the film in an expeditious manner unless we are able to hire additional editor support, and when combined with the necessary technical work needed on sound and coloration, we conservatively need at least $20,000 (and it could be $40-50K) to be able to finish production of the film by this spring.
So here’s where I’d like to ask for your help:
- Would you consider supporting our project (or adding to your support) to help us get the film completed more quickly? See supporter reward levels here and existing supporters can Upgrade your Support here.
- Can you tell your friends and ask them to consider supporting the project? The supporter rewards alone are well worth the investment.
More to Come…
Your encouragement and support has meant the world to us. This project has been a labor of love and has been funded along the way by hard work and you coming along side us to support us and have the resources to afford the necessary expenses that an independent film and media project like this entails.
To close, I wanted to give you a little “heads up” teaser preview of something we’re planning for this spring. I can’t give many details now until we solidify some things so we can announce it officially, but here’s the scoop.
Where the film has been designed to help wake people up for a necessary change in perspective and lifestyle to meet the challenges of our day, the webinar series has helped provide specific instruction on how some of that can be accomplished.
But on many topics, it’s hard to teach how to “return to the old paths” unless you can see it with your own eyes and practice certain skills yourself.
So what we’re working on planning is a very unique event (tentatively in mid-May) that will provide a VERY hands-on, experiential learning event for you to learn in depth about a lot of the topics that we’ve only even scratched the surface of in our webinar series.
Topics like:
- Homestead planning – how to choose land, planning water, energy, and land usage
- Permaculture design – site planning, water conservation, planting perennials, etc.
- Natural building techniques – timber framing, building with earth, straw bales, and more
- Old Path technologies and skills – old tools, blacksmithing, draft powered farming, etc.
- Alternative energy technology – solar, wind, microhydro, and more
- And much more…
To make it more accessible, this event will be a hybrid event with at least a couple of months of online teaching before the live event, to provide the necessary background and foundation for the hands-on instruction that the live event will cover.
And we’re going to professionally record it so that even if you can’t make it to the live event, you can still watch all the training after we publish those videos to our event member access area.
If this is something that’s interesting to you, please take a minute to fill out this brief survey to let us know about your interests.
We’re looking forward to making 2015 a year of firsts:
- First screening of the documentary film
- First time this kind of training event has ever been done
- First time you take a big step to make a significant lifestyle change to reduce your dependence on the grid?
Thanks again for your support!
And have a Happy New Year!