Fair question. Yes, we are fundraising again — but this is a different stage of the project.

The earlier sizzle reel campaign helped us create a short visual proof-of-concept for SHOCKWAVE that introduced the film’s tone, themes, and potential to funders, partners, collaborators, and the broader community.

The First Quarter Fund is about moving into production. In basketball terms, the game has officially started. This fund is designed to help cover the first major production block for the feature documentary — including crew, equipment, travel, locations, archival research, insurance, and other real costs required to begin filming the story at the level it deserves.

It also provides a clearer, more digestible way to approach the larger fundraising goal. Instead of asking people to wrap their heads around a $1 million documentary budget all at once, we are breaking the work into quarters. Each corresponds to a major step in making this film.

The First Quarter Fund will support the real, practical costs of independent documentary production. That includes, but is not limited to:

• Crew stipends and production labor

• Camera, lighting, and sound equipment

• Travel and lodging for production

• Location needs and production permits

• Insurance

• Archival research and early licensing work

• Hard drives, storage, and production supplies

• Craft services and meals for crew/interview days

• Post-production preparation

• Website, outreach, and fundraising costs tied to this phase

In plain language: this fund helps us pay a professional rate, show up prepared, capture high-quality interviews and footage, and build the foundation for the full film.

SHOCKWAVE is a passion project, a thesis project, and a community-centered story — but it is also a serious documentary. Making it well requires real resources.

Extremely fair. Also: understood.

The goal of the “quarter” model is to avoid emerging every few months with vague requests for money and create a transparent structure around a large, complicated production process. Documentary and film budgets can feel abstract from the outside, particularly when the final number is large. Breaking the process into quarters allows us to be clearer about what we are raising for, when we need it, and what each phase helps make possible.

As the project moves forward, we plan to keep supporters updated through the SHOCKWAVE website, email updates, social media, and behind-the-scenes progress reports. Those updates may include production milestones, fundraising progress, confirmed shoots, new collaborators, community events, and general notes from the road.

Accountability matters. If you support this project, you deserve to know that your gift is helping move the film forward — not disappearing into the ether. We want this process to feel less like a mysterious fundraising machine and more like a community helping build a film together, one quarter at a time.

You can keep up with the project at shockwavefilm.com, follow us on Instagram, share the sizzle reel, and join our mailing list for updates as the work continues.

July 1 is an important target, but not a hard “all-or-nothing” deadline.

We are using July 1 as a planning marker because principal photography is tentatively scheduled to begin in July. Funds raised by that date will directly shape what we can responsibly commit to in this first production block: how many shoot days we can schedule, how much crew support we can secure, what equipment we can access, and how much travel we can cover.

If we do not hit the full goal by July 1, the project does not disappear. It means we may have to adjust the production plan, scale certain elements, stagger shoots, or continue fundraising while moving carefully and responsibly.

The deadline gives the campaign urgency. The larger mission continues beyond it.

Financial support is deeply appreciated, but it is not the only way to help.

You can support SHOCKWAVE by sharing the project with people who care about Detroit, women’s basketball, sports history, documentary film, Black storytelling, or the WNBA’s return to the city. You can post the sizzle reel, send the website to a potential donor, introduce us to someone with archival materials, connect us to former players, coaches, fans, journalists, or community members, or simply help keep the conversation alive.

You can also help by following and engaging with SHOCKWAVE on social media. Comments, shares, saves, reposts, and word-of-mouth all matter — especially for an independent project trying to build momentum without a studio machine behind it.

This film is about community memory. Even if you cannot give financially right now, helping us reach the right people is still a meaningful contribution to the work.