Box Set Send Off
Tuesday, August 27, 2013 at 10:56AM 
Hey Everyone,
We just wanted to post an update and let you know that all copies of the limited print of the Special Edition Box Set of IGTM have been signed, assembled, packed & sent to the shipper!
SHIPPING: We just got word that all of our Special Edition orders are official in the post (yay!). An initial wave of Special Edition box sets had been sent out earlier, and was followed very shortly by the second & final wave. Suprisingly, some people in the U.S. have already received their copy - which is great. Though most others should be receiving their copy in about 2-6 weeks, depending where in the world you live.
LIMITED QUANTITIES: Just a quick note: These box sets are a limited edition. There are some sets still remaining. As of this posting, we still have some Blu-Ray Box Sets and DVD Box Sets in stock. If you are interested in picking one up, you can do so here.
LOOKIN' GOOD: Though they are not in your hands just yet, we are happy to report that the boxes themselves look great! The outside embossing turned out fantastic, giving off a rather nice stately vibe.
Removing the sleeve reveal’s Edmund’s joyous, wonderfully busy interpretation of 260+ individual indie game characters. The six panel inside package plays out like a indie game Where’s Waldo.
We really love it and hope you do, too.
WAREHOUSE/LIVING ROOM: As promised, all 6,000 copies have been personally signed, and actually packed by us, Lisanne and James. For those of you that have been following our blog and our story on self-distribution, we thought it might be helpful to share how much time this can take and what you might be able to expect if doing something similar.
The Process:
Each S.E. box set consisted of five distinct items that needed to be assembled into one:
• A 6 panel/3 disc case (The discs were already inserted)
• An embossed outercase - signed and numbered by us.
• A folded double sided poster.
• A laptop sticker
• A notebook
To get a S.E. Box Set ready to ship eight individual steps needed to be performed in the following order
- Each sleeve was sequentially numbered (1 to 3,000 - twice)
- Each sleeve was signed by both James & Lisanne
- A poster was placed within the internal DVD case.
- The sleeve was placed over the internal DVD case.
- Each notebook had a laptop sticker placed within it
- A notebook was then slipped within the sleeve.
- The entire package (sleeved DVD case, poster, sticker) was then placed in a bubble mailer.
- Bubble mailers were packed in boxes and taken to the shipper.
Time Requirements:
A lot of time went into the design, production, sourcing and management of the Special Edition Limited Edition Box Set, and we may go into that in a future post. But in terms of the amount of time with actual hands-on-product, getting it ready to ship, here’s the breakdown of performing those eight tasks above for 6,000 packages.
Signing: 36 man-hours. Two people writing 12,000 signatures and writing 6,000 four digit numbers.
Assembly & Packaging: 192 man-hours. This was us (James & Lisanne) and a motley revolving collection of friends, cousins, sibling and the odd parent pitching in over the course of a week or so.
Total amount of time required: 228 hours.
Looking back, that’s a good amount of sweat equity. We knew that the process would take a lot of time. But even with our napkin-based forecasts, we were still a bit surprised at how long it took to tackle the mountain of micro-tasks.
Did You Need to Do This Yourself? For obvious reasons, the signing-time was unavoidable. We did look into having the assembly done by a company. And it’s something that we likely would have done. Unfortunately, the company could not promise the work would be done in an acceptable time-frame.
So, we had no choice but to hunker down and do it ourselves. Plus, we thought: ‘how bad could it be? We’ll make a party out of it’. Friends, music, monotonous tasks, sounds kind of fun. And indeed it was...for the first 2-3 days :)
It did get a bit taxing as the days went by. Though, ultimately, you can’t really complain about it too much. We were prepping sets for a very supportive, excited bunch of people. It’s a pretty fortunate burden, and well worth the effort and hand cramps. Especially when you start seeing tweets like this, this and this.
VIDEO FUN: We did a timelapse that shows a fraction of the activity. We wish we captured more, but you’d be surprised at how quickly the camera takes a back seat once you get past package number 1,000 :)
Reader Comments (7)
Woohoo!!! Are we supposed to receive any kind of email once shipped or should we just wait for it to arrive? Thanks for your great work!
That was an amazing snippet. You two rock! Now I feel terrible for contacting Lisanne on the status of these. >.< My bad... I cannot wit to get my hands on this. Bravo! Hopefully, they will feature my game, Averix on future projects. (fingers crossed)
https://www.facebook.com/averixgame
How many Box Sets are still available?
I got mine a week or so ago and love it. Great set, worth every penny. All your hard work is much appreciated.
My copy was there. Just waiting for it. Thank you for all your hard work guys. <3
received my special edition blu-ray set today (#1393) and everything looks great. awesome work! I can only imagine how much work and time this took. Personally it is worth every penny! now to dig into these 3 blu-rays later tonight.
thanks again for all the hard work in getting us this fantastic package. and if anyone hasn't ordered one yet, get them before they're gone, you won't regret it.
I normally don't post comments and such (mostly because I don't have anything constructive to say, or the proper vocabulary necessary to say it)) but this is something else. IG:TM on its own is a work of art. It's beautiful, honest, and inspiring, and will always be special to me - more on that later.
One day I get an email from you guys - There's gonna be a special editon of the film that I could buy, and its gonna have this, and this, and THIS, and oh theres also this - honestly, after reading it my first thought was that there was something wrong, like, me. Whichever part of my brain that's responsible for (whatever this is) was like "Nope. Cool. But… nah. Not way. Really? There are pictures of t... how? No. No thats absolutely impossible. It can't be all of that. I need to sleep. Can't be. I'm going to order it right now."
Oh - the bit about me not posting comments? It just occurred to me that yet another reason has to do with the fact that I frequently go off on a tangent and find myself talking about pancakes or something. I must admit I'm somewhat envious of those who can take what I have to say and condense it down to a perfect sentence. See? Pancakes.
So I receive an email. My order has been shipped. Awesome, I can't wait! And there's a link here too, detailing what went into making this edition exist. Click.
Remember the time before pancakes, when I said how the film is special to me and there was more to that later? It's now I later. Ok. Seriously, the reason is that I could relate to the people and what they were doing. I'm not a game designer and I'm not a hardcore gamer - which is to say, there are many games I enjoy (a specific exception would be first person shooters - you know - the ones where it's kinda the same thing - in multiplayer mode. Because I suck at them.). I'm a musician and sound engineer. I've never thought of being anything else. This has the effect of people questioning my sanity because its difficult, and apparently being relentlesly passionate about is crazy. There's also the fact that someone recently said that I'm wasting my time doing all this stuff; what's with the packaging and design and extras etc - just put it out on mp3 or something. But I love what I do, I work hard, and I never take the people who support me for granted.
I'm not gonna turn this into an advertisement; we're putting out an album and EP soon. 500 copies will be special editions which include the album on CD and vinyl - Aside from that, everything else will be made by hand by myself + 8 people. Something like this I imagine would take 50 at least. Compared to what you guys are doing, our project looks like macaroni glued onto plates. Or placed onto a breed of dog with a particularly long snout. Seriously though, that's why I didn't, couldn't believe that this was going to be a real thing at first.
Yes, believe me i know. I'll try to get to the point.
The fact that you guys put so much effort into making something truly creative, the fact that you go this far when you don't have to, that its not just bits of paper in a fancy box - and the way put this together - I have the utmost respect and admiration for each and very one of you. In any case - look, I'm nobody special etc. But again, I can relate!
I think what you're reading kinda proves that writing something like this isn't something I do too well. I hope this doesn't all come out as pretentious or weird etc (huh). - and I hope that you'll understand that in this context, these 2 words are not a formality but mean exactly what they mean: Thank You.
…oh yeah - like so many others, I can't wait for my copy to arrive! Seeing as I'm literally halfway around the planet, I have a feeling it'll take longer but as long as the local post doesn't mess things, I can be patient.
That was a lie. I can't wait. :)