[Canadian Turtle]

In response to some of your criticisms and concerns regarding the outcome of both the first documentary and the potential outcome of the second, I would like to take a moment to hopefully address some of these and other points that have been made over the years.

First and foremost as filmmakers we know that it is impossible to make everyone happy, no matter what, no matter how hard you try someone will always be disappointed.

I have stated on this forum and many times on other mediums that making these films is not cheap, it is very expensive in both time and money, and I will say it again, this was our own money that we invested. Over the years I excitedly promoted our film on these threads and spoke of many things we captured along our journeys, I am sorry that in my naïveté I may have over promised the release of all that material potentially at once. I think we always knew that these films would need to appeal to a mass audience. Filmmaking is a business and as a business you need to recoup losses and hopefully make some money to live on. Filmmaking is also an art form, and as too many people who work in the creative industries know, we are often asked to deliver that art form for free or very little pay. Believe me I have worked professionally as a freelance cinematographer for over 10 years, I could buy a mansion and six cars for how much work I have done for free. One doesn't ask their plumber to replace their toilet because it will look good on his or her resume. Well at least I will go to my grave with an awesome resume.

I don't mean to complain, I love what I do and I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world, I am just trying to make a few points and hopefully continue a respectful and constructive dialogue. The points that many of you have raised are perfectly valid, and I would say for the most part delivered respectfully. Even if I do not agree with some of what people are saying I hope we can meet in the middle and see eye to eye on a few points. I will address a few of them specifically here.

The length of these films is often the first thing that the elite fans complain about, they want more than what is there. In a way I will take this as a compliment, as it is always better to leave people wanting more of a good thing. Many of these fans specifically reference long format documentaries such as the ones exploring some of the 80s horror franchises that many of us love. While I do not know any specifics of those productions, and I do agree that TMNT could sustain a long format film or film series, it is a simple game of economics and distribution opportunities. There are simply not enough fans to support a long format release as a stand alone product. There will always need to be a film that as one might say "will be sold in Walmart to random people". The massive costs to produce this content would result in a price tag that I am sure many of you would not be able to pay if we made these films only for the elite fans. When we started these documentaries there were something like 3,000 fans on this forum, even with the 12,000 that are here now, and even if all of those fans bought the film (which will never be the case, it will always be a percentage) it still wouldn't come close to covering the cost of actually making the film.

Part of the problem in this regard is that, as some of you may or may not know the rights for the various turtle medias are spread around between many different parties, most notably the 1990 movie. I can't even tell you what that was like or how expensive it was to even be able include a few seconds of clips and to show you the one deleted scene that we were able to include in the documentary. Another example would be the original cartoon theme song. If you listen carefully, and some of you may have caught it, the version of that song in the documentary is not the original track. For many legal reasons we were told at the very last second after the film had already been delivered that we were not allowed to use that original song. We all felt however that it would be a disservice to the fans to use (as they were suggesting) a completely random and unrelated track in its place. With 10 hours to turn it around we paid a substantial fee to the rights holders for the clearance to re-record the song ourselves, which we did and if you listen carefully that is me singing on the chorus and yelling all the turtle lines like "Give me a break!"

Some people were concerned when I brought up the idea of a crowd funding campaign to support the release of the second film and in doing so would provide an opportunity for any of you to attain the bonus materials that were left out of the first documentary. I think that people felt cheated somehow in that we had promised the release of that material for many years and that it should have been included in the product they already purchased. Where I agree it would have been awesome for it to show up there, the simple reason for it not doing so was time and money. To produce and legally clear the bonus material is still an expensive process that has not been completed yet, so if there wasn't a way to sell that content via a Kickstarter campaign or otherwise, it would't make financial sense to do so. I hope that makes sense.

I am sorry to single you out, but to say that the audience was missed with this film is not accurate. The people that actually paid for this documentary were many hundreds of thousands all around the world who were more than likely casual fans on the street, or people who saw it on Netflix or Hulu, or iTunes or on demand. This is the only way we feel that content like this can exist at a high quality level, and to take years to research and dig for stuff that in many cases non of you have ever seen, no matter how much of a fan you are. I can say with confidence that there was content you could have not known about and could never have seen in that film. I know fandom is a funny thing, believe me, I am also a super fan, so often I hear people say what a movie or a comic book is not or what they want it to be, without saying what it has or it is. While I encourage and even ask you to make suggestions and criticisms, which you have, just remember we can only do our best and sometimes we might not get it right.

Ultimately I think you will find what you are looking for in the extended versions and bonus materials we have ready to polish and release. The "Ultimate Fan Edition" type product would have always been something we would have sold separately from a "more commercial" release of the film. We very much intend on delivering that content in some way and we hope that we would have your support on a crowd funding campaign or something similar when releasing it. There is an awesome story to be shared here, with a ton of rich content that expands and explore the ideas that we started to explore in the first film, bonus materials will do that. Lets work together to get it out there for everyone to enjoy!

Thank you all for your kind help and support over the years, we literally couldn't have done it without you.