Help build a queer gunbuilders YouTube channel
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My name's Fin. I'm a queer creative, an autistic lefty gun nut, and I'm trying to make a channel to help arm minority groups. I've worked at Bose and HBO and a bunch of other places as everything from a creative consultant to a one person video post production/reprocessing team. I've been an EMT, a rescue operator, and a medic. At the moment, I'm trying to get back into making the kind of creative content I can be proud of, and I want to do something that radically improves the world around me.
I've started a YouTube channel to help minority groups arm themselves. Part of the focus is going to be on videos like this video here arguing why people on the left absolutely shouldn't want gun control, and part of it is going to be in the videos that are upcoming around DIY projects building your own firearms as well as videos on safe use and tactics.
I feel like this channel is INCREDIBLY important. Guns and gun rights are misunderstood by lots of people and there's a lot of well meaning but horribly misinformed people who aren't going to be educated by the parts of the gun community they see as too far to the right or, in some cases, being fine with problematic behavior. I want to make this funny and accessible and something that lots of people would look at and think is something they'd want to support. And I want this to be accessible and non-problematic.
I want this channel to help cross the divide and stop making gun control a left/right issue. But, well, I'm broke. Part of me is hesitant to go into all of the why, but I'm asking for your money so I feel like it's worth going over at least. I started my own company making games in 2015 as I was getting divorced. I poured everything I had into the business and was desperate to get it off the ground. Despite developing a few games, we didn't have the numbers in sales to be able to keep open and I ended up putting most of the losses onto my credit card. I shifted back into contracting as a designer and solo video production team while trying to keep the business alive. And that was when I made the two dumbest decisions of my life, one after the other. I started dating somebody right as my family was firmly cutting me off and, not thinking right, I put up my entire production rig for pawn in order to cover their back rent. They promised to get it out of pawn before the 30 days but that never materialized. My camera, my microphones, my editing computer, everything was lost. After we broke up I worked as a creative consultant for a while but I had none of my usual tools for digital production and was definitively returning worse work then I had been. I kept trying to work on game development stuff. I found a partner who wanted to make games with me and we went to work. We made three games together, including a paper RPG and a phone app around a kid fighting monsters away from a campfire, and we were genuinely jelling, until they decided they weren't interested in working anymore. The business tanked when the bank said they weren't interested in continuing a line of credit for a business with one person. I moved in with my partner at the time. Three weeks later they bounced me around the apartment after stealing every cent I'd had saved up. I called the cops but despite arresting them and saving my ass physically I was now broke, in tons of debt, and homeless. I've rebuilt from there and I'm starting this channel because it's needed now more than ever but I'm using the bits of equipment that are left over and it's felt a bit like putting a rig together after a bomb's gone off.
I'm currently shooting on an old iPhone, with zero budgets for stuff like backdrops and lighting. I've had our one single piece of new equipment, a microphone, donated through someone who connected me to a content producer on Twitter (thanks to the incredible Deviant Ollam, go check out his YouTube channel if you want to learn about InfoSec or just awesome red team/lockpicking/bypassing locks stuff and neat tricks for generally feeling like a badass around corporate security.)
I know the goal is high, I know it's a reach but I'd like to think that there might be someone who sees the idea and wants to see a channel built up properly. Every cent I get from this will go into making the channel something awesome. The big asks I'm trying to get together are a backdrop/set, a camera that is ... well, not a phone, an editing rig that would let me actually chew on bigger projects and 3D renders. Anything else we get will go into projects to put on the channel.
I've started a YouTube channel to help minority groups arm themselves. Part of the focus is going to be on videos like this video here arguing why people on the left absolutely shouldn't want gun control, and part of it is going to be in the videos that are upcoming around DIY projects building your own firearms as well as videos on safe use and tactics.
I feel like this channel is INCREDIBLY important. Guns and gun rights are misunderstood by lots of people and there's a lot of well meaning but horribly misinformed people who aren't going to be educated by the parts of the gun community they see as too far to the right or, in some cases, being fine with problematic behavior. I want to make this funny and accessible and something that lots of people would look at and think is something they'd want to support. And I want this to be accessible and non-problematic.
I want this channel to help cross the divide and stop making gun control a left/right issue. But, well, I'm broke. Part of me is hesitant to go into all of the why, but I'm asking for your money so I feel like it's worth going over at least. I started my own company making games in 2015 as I was getting divorced. I poured everything I had into the business and was desperate to get it off the ground. Despite developing a few games, we didn't have the numbers in sales to be able to keep open and I ended up putting most of the losses onto my credit card. I shifted back into contracting as a designer and solo video production team while trying to keep the business alive. And that was when I made the two dumbest decisions of my life, one after the other. I started dating somebody right as my family was firmly cutting me off and, not thinking right, I put up my entire production rig for pawn in order to cover their back rent. They promised to get it out of pawn before the 30 days but that never materialized. My camera, my microphones, my editing computer, everything was lost. After we broke up I worked as a creative consultant for a while but I had none of my usual tools for digital production and was definitively returning worse work then I had been. I kept trying to work on game development stuff. I found a partner who wanted to make games with me and we went to work. We made three games together, including a paper RPG and a phone app around a kid fighting monsters away from a campfire, and we were genuinely jelling, until they decided they weren't interested in working anymore. The business tanked when the bank said they weren't interested in continuing a line of credit for a business with one person. I moved in with my partner at the time. Three weeks later they bounced me around the apartment after stealing every cent I'd had saved up. I called the cops but despite arresting them and saving my ass physically I was now broke, in tons of debt, and homeless. I've rebuilt from there and I'm starting this channel because it's needed now more than ever but I'm using the bits of equipment that are left over and it's felt a bit like putting a rig together after a bomb's gone off.
I'm currently shooting on an old iPhone, with zero budgets for stuff like backdrops and lighting. I've had our one single piece of new equipment, a microphone, donated through someone who connected me to a content producer on Twitter (thanks to the incredible Deviant Ollam, go check out his YouTube channel if you want to learn about InfoSec or just awesome red team/lockpicking/bypassing locks stuff and neat tricks for generally feeling like a badass around corporate security.)
I know the goal is high, I know it's a reach but I'd like to think that there might be someone who sees the idea and wants to see a channel built up properly. Every cent I get from this will go into making the channel something awesome. The big asks I'm trying to get together are a backdrop/set, a camera that is ... well, not a phone, an editing rig that would let me actually chew on bigger projects and 3D renders. Anything else we get will go into projects to put on the channel.
Organizer
Finley Amelia Smith
Organizer
Manchester, NH