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Working on the Newgrounds Documentary!

littlbox — 2 weeks ago

art by @PKettles; title graphic by @Hibachi

So, this is what I've been working on for the last year. :]

I figured it'd be good to make a personal post coinciding with the announcement to give a bit more context around my personal involvement with the project and the site in general, particularly for peeps who have no clue who I am, so here we go!

Backstory

(scroll down for the tl;dr version)

In October 2023, I finally submitted my first feature-length documentary, Your Friend Logan, to SxSW. The project was a dream since I was 13, born from a deep love and connection to Logan Whitehurst and his creative output, and I had been actively working on it since 2019, so to finally see it to completion was a dream come true. (Spoiler Alert: It did not get in, and I learned a very hard lesson on festivals and distribution that will come in handy down the road)

With that project no longer my main focus, I was left with a large hole of what to work on next, and with graduation from film school approaching, I was forced to think deeply about my future. I wanted to work on something that I cared about passionately, could see me through the next few years, and would be an appropriate level up from the Logan documentary, creatively and challenge-wise.

Newgrounds checked all of those boxes for me.

Personal History with Site

I first recognized Newgrounds existed when I was about 12 years old, and was thoroughly obsessed with Robert Benfer's Klay World series. As I went on, I recognized just how much of what I loved online originated from Newgrounds, and I wanted to be a part of it.

My tenth anniversary with an account was actually about a week ago. I originally registered on the site as @plasticapple on December 30th, 2014, and made a bunch of silly stickfigure animations with the Mac equivalent of Pivot. As time went on, I switched over from stickfigures to lip heads, and changed my name to littlbox. It was during this time that I found a community on the site, and made some of the best friends in my life.

So ye, Newgrounds is important to me. And I feel it deserves a proper-ass documentary.

Organizing

Around Thanksgiving 2023, I reached out to Tom to see if he was alright with me pursuing this project. We talked a bit more about it, and I sent him a link to my prior documentary as an example of what I could pull off. Finally, shortly after the New Year 2024, I got the go-ahead.

The first half of the year was spent entirely doing research. Playing important Flashes, collecting forum posts, and putting together a comprehensive timeline and list of important players throughout the site's history. Knowing how deep the rabbit holes were on the site, I tried to stay relatively on-course and determined the best narrative through-line for the documentary.

The last half of the year was spent reaching out to potential participants. I've reached out to about 60 people, and gotten positive responses from about four dozen of them. I pre-interviewed each of them to get a better sense of their perspective and deepened my knowledge of certain events on the site. This past November, I took a flight out with my cinematographer to LA, and we conducted seven interviews in-person.

Now, here we are, a little over a year after starting, and I'm finally able to talk about the documentary. I'm so excited to be pursuing this, and I hope that with your help, we can have production happen in time to celebrate the site's 30th anniversary!

tl;dr: Made a documentary + love Newgrounds = making Newgrounds documentary.

We'll reveal more about the project in the coming weeks, topping it off with the Kickstarter on the 18th. If you haven't already, save the link to the pre-launch page and get notified when the Kickstarter goes live!