The Rubber Keyed Wonder - 40 years of the ZX Spectrum
Created by Nicola Caulfield & Anthony Caulfield
A film exploring the significance of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and its role in video game history.
The Rubber Keyed Wonder will have a very limited replication run so order your Blu-ray or DVD copy today to avoid disappointment!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
NEW ITEMS NOW AVAILABLE
over 3 years ago
– Wed, Nov 10, 2021 at 11:35:32 PM
Hi all,
I know we start many of these updates with a thank you to everyone but it's hard not to with such an amazing campaign, wonderful support, wonderful (and very personal) stories being sent into us and of course steadily chipping away at those stretch goals! So once again THANK YOU!
New Perks!
We have had some really good suggestions coming in from you and two that keep coming up are handy desk items with our artwork on, specifically drinks coasters and Mouse Mats.
The Rubber-Keyed Wonder Hot and Cold Beverage Surface Protecting Raised Drink Platform (or Drinks Coaster for short!)
The Rubber-Keyed Wonder Hot and Cold Beverage Surface Protecting Raised Drink Platform (or Drinks Coaster for short!)
Now this title may be deemed too long and we're tempted to shorten it to 'Drinks Coaster', but the above title rolls off the tongue that much better don't you think? Maybe we'll call it drinks coaster for now then! Anyway this 'coaster' is very high quality and has full colour printing to both sides and features the main film artwork on one side and the alternate film artwork on the other. It is made of 100% eco friendly and recyclable plastics and costs £8. Now we've added this item into the add-ons section and we've set the postage to zero for the moment. All backers who have pledged for the £35 tiers and upwards will be getting physical items anyway so provided you select the coaster as an add-on we can just include it in there with free postage as postage has already been paid, however any digital customers who kindly add a coaster on, then before we ship we will need to collect some postage from you but we'll cover that in the survey at another time.
The John Harris - ZX Spectrum Manual Artwork MouseMat
John Harris ZX Spectrum Manual Artwork - Mouse Mat
Many people have told us how when they unboxed their ZX Spectrum in the early 1980's how they recall the amazing artwork from John Harris adorning the manual inside, this artwork for many encouraged (perhaps invited) them to open the manual and get started on their path of programming and getting to grips with this new, fantastic computer! Even if you just used the Speccie for playing games many of you will remember the amazing artwork on the manual! Therefore we now have the stunning John Harris ZX Spectrum Manual artwork in full colour on a Mouse Mat! These Mouse Mats are 100% eco friendly and recyclable and cost £12.
Remember with not only these two new perks but with all the perks and add-on items featured on this campaign they are there to help fund the film production and when you display them you can say you helped make this film happen, they are for only those who helped fund the film into existence making them unique!
How to add an add-on
We do get asked how to use the add-ons feature, to be honest it's one of those cases of once you know how, it's easy (supposedly!) So to do it you go to 'Manage My Pledge' but be careful as if you have already got add-ons selected you will notice that when you select the Coaster and / or Mouse Mat you will need to reselect the add-ons you already had selected as well as in some cases your original pledge tier.
Extra Funding for 3rd Party Archive
Extra funding is crucial to this project because as we may have mentioned before it is the 3rd party archive footage and photos that will make such a massive difference to this film. There is so much BBC (and many other broadcasters) amassed footage across the 1970's 80's and beyond that quite simply the more we can allocate to the archive budget the more this film will be loaded with the kind of nostalgic archive we were able to include in our earlier films. Therefore the primary purpose of the products (or perks) is to create something unique and collectible but also gets us that crucial extra funding which also drives us towards those stretch goals.
In Conclusion
At time of writing we have almost secured our 5th funding goal which is for another 30 mins of content! If just some of you grab some of these new perk items today we could well secure that very soon! We can see that many of you have been continuing to spread the word and gradually more and more ZX Spectrum fans (and of course fans of the many clones) are joining us from all over the world.
Please just take another moment to share the campaign link, if you are in Spectrum groups explain this is not just something that can be picked up on Amazon later, if there's Spectrum fans holding out for that they will be massively disappointed as we are making one production run for next year and that's it! We need the funding to make a better film, it's as simple as that because we are going to give this film our absolute all and we cannot wait to get on with it because you have made this all happen!
2 STRETCH GOALS SMASHED! SUBTITLES + 30MINS MORE CONTENT ACHIEVED!
over 3 years ago
– Sun, Nov 07, 2021 at 03:52:08 AM
Hi all,
Just a quick update to thank you all so much for helping this project smash through2 STRETCH GOALS and we are so very very close to breaking through a 3rd which will unlock a Director's commentary with Special guests for the DVD / Blu-ray version of this project. THANK YOU EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU!
Subtitles
This project has now successfully funded subtitles for the Main Feature in ENGLISH HoH, PORTUGUESE, SPANISH, ITALIAN, POLISH and RUSSIAN!
A Worldwide Backer Audience!
We would like to thank the people from those countries who reached out and worked with us to make the subtitles happen THANK YOU and also to welcome so many people from ACROSS THE WORLD into this campaign it's amazing!
We would also like to thank the ZX Load Museum in Portugal (https://loadzx.com) who have been incredible in their support to help this campaign reach ZX Spectrum fans quite literally worldwide! We would also like to thank El Mundo Del Spectrum (https://www.elmundodelspectrum.com) in Spain, Henrique Olifiers from Brazil (as well as the Spectrum Next of course!) Paolo Santagostin in Italy and our dear friends in Poland and Russia, welcome everyone to our journey!
Send in the Clones
We have learned so much more about the various Spectrum clones across the world and those mentioned above and many others have taken the time to write to us sharing more story elements we were not aware of. With backers taking the time to write to us with so many stories is going to be vital in us telling a more detailed and complete story of this fantastic computer and all that it achieved. We think when this film is finished a great deal of Commodore 64 fans are going to be shocked by just how worldwide the ZX Spectrum (clones or not) really was! It is critical to the story that it is properly covered!
More Content & More Subtitles!
Today represents the midpoint of this campaign and with your help this weekend we can break through the next stretch goal giving us the remaining days of the campaign to fund filling out the disc / download. There's a lot more content and featurettes we want to add to this project and we of course want to include as many gaming making ofs as possible as this is the perfect home for them but we really need your help to try and unlock them and subtitles so everyone can enjoy and understand them!
How Can You Help?
Share our campaign link!
There are two ways you can help this campaign hit all its goals, firstly please take the below link and simply share it on all your social channels, you are now part of this project and it may just take that one link you share that makes that one difference at the end, so we really ask that you just take a moment this weekend to share it out! We need your help finding ZX Spectrum fans worldwide, we know they are there and we need to find them so please use this link and lets bring as many others into this campaign and join our journey; http://bit.ly/ZXSpectrumMovie
The second way you can help is take another look over the add-ons options in Manage My Pledge' the Slipcase, Posters, Postcards and other eye-catching, wonderful perks for this campaign are exclusive to it, they are not going to be repeated. Many people write to us once campaigns are over and shipped asking to buy slip cases and other Kickstarter exclusives and we just don't sell them afterwards!
Digital backers please consider upping your pledge to get a physical version of this project as you still get a digital download with it anyway, and physical backers please consider grabbing an Exclusive double sided Oliver Frey slipcase featuring CRASH Magazine artwork making it highly rare and collectible!
The Oliver Frey Double-Sided Collectable Slipcase - Exclusive to this campaign!
Also please remember if this project hits the £67K stretch goal all physical backers will get a wonderful reversible John Harris ZX Spectrum Manual / film artwork cover, another reason for digital backers to upgrade to a collectable physical copy now!
£67k Stretch Goal - The Reversible John Harris ZX Spectrum Manual Artwork Cover!
Also if you were always planning to grab a poster or two then please have a look and grab it now as the higher the total gets the more people that will be attracted to this campaign as they won't want to miss out!
There are so many expensive elements we want to include in this film and every penny we can raise during this process will determine exactly what we can do so please do what you can!
Our primary concern is the 3rd party archive footage we want to license in from across the world, the more we can raise the more vital archive footage and photos we can add to make this film as good as it can possibly be!
Thank you all once again, a remarkable couple of weeks and we are now building a good head of steam going into the final straight of this campaign! We are also looking still on what we have left from our original films and WILL come back soon on that!
We Did It - THANK YOU! Time for the STRETCH GOALS!
over 3 years ago
– Wed, Nov 03, 2021 at 02:13:40 AM
Welcome one and Welcome all!
Welcome to the very first update for The Rubber-Keyed Wonder: 40 Years of The Sinclair ZX Spectrum! Nicola and I would like to thank each and every one of you for believing in this project and helping it reach its initial funding goal in just 1 WEEK, so THANK YOU! We knew there were plenty of ZX Spectrum fans out there and we just hoped to find enough of you, so thank you again!
STRETCH GOALS
Now that we have hit the initial target we know we are at the very least making a film, however we want to push on and keep finding ZX Spectrum fans out there to push our funding higher so we can secure more items to greater benefit this project, such as expensive 3rd party archive footage (Sir Clive Sinclair and Rick Dickinson can sadly only appear in this film through those means) but also just as importantly we want to fill the disc / download with fantastic extra content to make this an unbeatable collectors piece for the ZX Spectrum's 40th anniversary next year!
Plese see below a map for our stretch goals and below are some notes on them;
Subtitles
We have had a number of messages from backers from Spain, Portugal, and Italy who feel strongly that if we included these subtitle languages as soon as possible it will help to invite support from those countries where the ZX Spectrum (whether the actual unit or a clone) is greatly supported.
Subtitles are expensive, especially when applying to DVD and Blu-ray and because of the expense (around £1k+ per language) we have to be really careful to apply the most popular languages (in terms of the audience for the film) while desperately hoping to not offend others. We have added Spanish, Italian and PortugueseSubtitles as the first stretch goal as that will fund those languages for the main feature. Depending on how well the campaign does over the next few weeks will determine whether we consider adding further languages.
More Content
We want to really fill out this disc / download with loads more stunning content so we have stretch goals that mean you get a lot more included to hopefully fill up the disc / download with all sorts of ZX Spectrum content.
JOHN HARRIS -ZXSPECTRUM MANUAL ARTWORK REVERSIBLE COVER for Blu-ray / DVD
Please also notice that on the stretch goals that if we hit the £67k mark (meaning we have filled one disc / download to capacity to 3 hours!) then the John Harris ZX Spectrum Manual cover is provided to all physical backers as a reversible cover with the current film cover artwork on one side and John's art on the other. This will be for both the DVD and Blu-ray versions of the film all tiers featuring the physical copy.
John Harris Reversible Cover unlocked at £67k
NEW PERKS NOW AVAILABLE
The artist John Harris has kindly provided us with his legendary ZX 81, ZX Spectrum Manual and ZX Spectrum Microdrive Manual artwork for this campaign and we have now added these stunning pieces as high quality A2 posters to the add-ons section accessible through the 'Manage My Pledge' option. We are hoping to interview John for this film and are currently trying to make this happen with his agent so more on that in future updates, however it is wonderful that we have his incredible artwork for this campaign. The Posters are priced individually at £15 each but if you look at the add-ons section in your 'Manage My Pledge' you will see you can buy all 3 x JohnHarrisA2 posters at a discounted price of £35!
Oliver Frey Collectable Slipcase
We have had several questions from backers asking us about the Oliver Frey doubled sided collectable Slipcase for DVD and Blu-ray, and yes they are available in the add-ons at £20. These will never be repeated again so if you wish to bag a piece of nostalgic double-sided CRASH MAGAZINE artwork for your physical copy please use 'Manage my Pledge' and select the Slip-case add on to your perk. Please don't forget that all the other items are available in the add ons too such as T-Shirts, A2Posters and Postcards etc, anything extra you can grab will push our film budget up!
Physical Copies ofthe From Bedrooms to Billions Trilogy
If there is one thing we hear a lot after a campaign ends is regret from people who didn't snag a physical copy (Blu-ray or DVD) of our films when the campaign was originally running. We never repeat our first run of Dvd's and Blu-rays and after that it is down to a distributor and a different cover, which is the case with The From Bedrooms to Billions Trilogy. There have been a number of backers requesting the option to buy copies from our previous Kickstarted From Bedrooms to Billions trilogy to help with this campaign, which is really kind of course. The problem is we can only use what tiny stock we have left of the original films, which means they have the Oliver Frey artwork etc and we won't produce more out of respect to those original backers (though tempting when you see the prices they go for on Ebay!), not to mention the current agreement with our distributor. Therefore we are currently having a look at what we have left from our Kickstarter stock which should be posters, some films, postcards and even the highly sought after and ridiculously (and amusingly) over hyped 'Floppy Disk Beer Mat...(any Amiga Years Backers reading this still using them for your hot coffee please do say haha!) and then we will come back with what we have left before the end of the campaign for those that are still interested, but your requests were heard!
In Conclusion
It is 5 years since our last Kickstarter and we were nervous about coming back as...well...you never know if people still want to see these films get made. The response from you all in the last 7 days has been nothing short of incredible and it means a great deal to us that you funded us so fast. As filmmakers we just want to make the film as good as it can be so we hope you will understand that we will use these last 3 weeks as an opportunity to try to pack out the disc/downloads with incredible content that a wide audience of many languages can enjoy!
Please share and plug this campaignwherever you can, let them know what we're trying to do and how much were striving to make this film as memorable as possible!