There comes a time in every great human endeavor, where those who began the endeavor must reach out to others for aid, to add their efforts to the project so that it might break through to new levels of greatness. Granted, we ask you, our amazingly patient audience, for help all the time, so perhaps this metaphor won’t work. How about this: There comes a time in every persons life when they are invited, called in fact, to lend their resources to some great project. When those with whom they share passion, interest, and vision reach out to them for aid, and they must decide to step in or not to step in.
That works, right?
Lets cut to the chase: Cinepunx now has a Patreon page, and we want you to consider joining it so that we can become more sustainable, fairly compensate our contributors, and grow to greater heights.
Cinepunx has been going for 3 years, striving to provide quality content both in podcast and written form. We have grown from one show with two guys who barely understood how to make the recorder work, to 3 shows and over 30 regular writers who contribute to our blog section. We have covered hundreds of films, and had three live events at varying levels of success. We are also poised to bring you even more- new shows, video posts, new designs, new live events, and more crazy wackiness.
Unfortunately, all of these things cost money. When we first started, we had the cheapest recording set up (free), the cheapest hosting set up (free), and the cheapest site design (free…wait our current site design was also free, THANKS DOUG!!) Over time, though, in order to both meet our own ideas of the sort of project we wanted this to be, and to answer the input of our slowly growing audience, we had to change. We bought equipment, actual web hosting, released a ridiculous amount of t-shirts, and grew to include other folks input. In a sense we never planned for this to become what it did. Yet, in another way, we did from the beginning.
Our first idea was not a podcast, but a culture website. The name escapes me now, but Josh had an idea for something referencing tattoo culture, and some idea of authenticity. Our hope was simply to create a space where so many of our passions and yours could meet. Yes there are music sites, and film sites, and food/comic/clothing/whatever sites covering all manner of under ground cultures. It didn’t seem then, and still does not now, that there are many sites which seek to find the harmonies between so many disparate interests and communities. We wanted a place that felt like our friends hanging out: talking about Jodorowsky or TORCHES TO ROME or The Goon or that time someone almost got shot at BOY SETS FIRE. We wanted something that allowed us to jump from busting balls to post-colonial theory and we just fucking ASSUMED you, the audience, would come along for the ride. Many of you have, and we cannot be more grateful for that.
So that was our idea, a site of diverse people with weird interests, writing about everything they cared about. Then we realized we talked better than we wrote, and that for some reason no one before us had thought of combining “cinema” and “punk” so easily and CINEPUNX was born, a podcast for the ages.
Here we are again, growing and expanding and trying to include every awesome person we know and can find. The idea has changed. Originally, it was born from alienation. We felt out of step with our local film scene and with the national conversation around film and punk and so many other weirdo things. We wanted to create this space cause we felt weird in other spaces. As this thing has grown, it has become less and less about us. The more we can all come to this space and feel a little out of place because yet another new voice, who is even more different than we are, has joined the chorus? The better. In other words, this space is (I hope) becoming more and more about a diversity of people, not us.
Right now, Cinepunx is just a few of us. We make no money, we all contribute what we can work-wise, and we do the best we can with what we have. It is not always perfect, but we all think it is kind of beautiful. With your help, and by that we mean financial help, we can grow to be more. We can offer you, the amazing audience, more content. Even more, we can offer more people a platform to share with the small part of the world who is our audience. We are asking you to help with that.
- Join our Patreon, become a supporter of Cinepunx
- Tell your friends about the show, and specifically encourage them to become Patrons
- Continue to be the best audience we could hope for.
We love you all.
