Gracie here. Ben’s busy helping run the Eastern Oregon Film Festival, and he asked me to recap our Valentine’s Day cupcake venture (the VD reward as he likes to call it). This time last week I was knee-deep in powdered sugar, flour, and butter, cranking out twelve dozen cupcakes to deliver as part of our Kickstarter promotion. Why cupcakes? The middle portion of Kickstarters is historically sluggish, so I brainstormed ways to keep momentum going during a fundraising dead zone. Valentine’s Day—or any major holiday, really—is an enormous marketing opportunity any marketer would be foolish to pass over. Yeah, it’s a commercial holiday. But I don’t see the point of holding Valentine’s Day to any moral high ground. The romantic aspect of the holiday doesn’t matter one whit to me. For a marketer, however, it’s a goldmine. Since the main character of our film is an unemployed bike messenger, I thought it would be fitting to deliver something Valentine’s Day-related on bike to our supporters. We mulled over the possibilities—flowers, chocolate, doughnuts, and cookies were all contenders at one point. I ended up deciding on cupcakes because they’re a little sexier than cookies and they photograph well. But they sure don’t travel well. More on that later.
I had spent the day prior to Valentine’s Day trying to find the perfect recipes. I initially wanted to make five different recipes, but I quickly discovered that my ambition exceeded my ability. Armed with only one full-sized mixing bowl, a hand-mixer, and what may be the world’s tiniest oven, I pared five recipes down to two. Plus a dozen vegan, gluten-free cupcakes. My oven can only fit one cupcake tin, so I baked twelve dozen cupcakes, one dozen at a time. If you’ve ever doubted whether hell exists, I can assure you it does. It is 350 degrees Fahrenheit and smells like red velvet. When you want to sleep, an alarm will go off every eighteen minutes for eternity.
After I frosted all twelve dozen cupcakes, Zach Voss came over in the morning to help me assemble the boxes and box the cupcakes up. Ben and I had conspired to order brown recyclable cupcake boxes, which came with a little insert designed to secure the cupcakes. Spoiler alert: the inserts didn’t work. Our first delivery was out to the Trey McIntyre Project, about three miles from my house. The forecast alerted us to rain, so we geared up our bikes and wrapped up our cupcake boxes, which we nestled in our bike baskets. Though it was raining lightly, we both found the trip invigorating and enjoyable. We dropped off the box to our first happy recipient and pedaled back downtown. It wasn’t until our fourth stop that we discovered the cupcakes weren’t arriving in their original condition. The inserts, designed to stabilize cupcakes in normal vehicles, turned into little guillotines when traveling by bicycle. The jostled inserts decapitated the frosting, allowing the cupcakes to tumble about with free will. Even though overturned cupcakes were a little disheartening, especially as the day grew colder and wetter, all we could do was laugh. Most of our recipients were still happy despite the mangled cupcakes.
By the end of the day, we were soaked to the bone, exhausted, and hungry (all we’d had to eat that day was cupcakes), but deeply heartened by the entire experience. We’d managed to ride our bikes over thirty miles total, delivering a little bit of love to people that supported us. Smashed cupcakes aside, we’d done our best to show our supporters how much their contributions meant to us. Independent film requires plenty of support and backing from the community, and we’re all incredibly thankful for everybody that’s reached out on our behalf, whether it’s through a donation or simply spreading the word. We’re now two-thirds of the way to our Kickstarter goal, which is really two-thirds of a small but crucial step toward our end goal of making a film. Cupcakes provided us some great forward momentum, but now that my kitchen is finally clean and my blood sugar has returned to normal, it’s time to brainstorm our next move. We’re in La Grande this weekend for the Eastern Oregon Film Festival, so I’m hoping we’ll gain some inspiration from our fellow filmmakers. At the very least, I’m looking forward to watching plenty of great films without a cupcake in sight.
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