This project on MotionGallery, a Japan-based crowdfunding platform for creative and cultural projects, is an unusual long-term filmmaking endeavor: a single family's everyday life is filmed in short installments, one per year, for ten years, eventually to be woven into a full-length feature film. Rather than treating crowdfunding as a one-time funding event, the creators have made the ten-year timeline itself part of the work's structure.
The project is steadily advancing—its second-year short film was selected for SSFF (Short Shorts Film Festival), a notable Japanese short film festival, demonstrating real creative momentum. Instead of raising funds once, the team appears to be using crowdfunding repeatedly at key milestones, inviting supporters to follow the story's growth alongside them over the years.
Highlights
- Builds the project around a ten-year timeline, turning the duration itself into an ongoing narrative for supporters
- Shares visible yearly results, including a short film selected for a film festival, to build credibility over time
- Structures funding as recurring milestones rather than a single one-off campaign
Why this campaign attracts support
Editorial analysis based on publicly available information. It is not a confirmed account of why backers chose to give.
What makes this project compelling is that its very timeframe—ten years to completion—becomes part of its storytelling appeal, keeping supporters engaged far longer than a typical single-production film campaign. By releasing one short film each year, backers don't just wait for a finished product; they get to experience the project's evolution in real time. The selection of the second-year short at SSFF adds external validation of the project's quality, which helps build trust with new supporters. Long-term projects are usually difficult to fund, but by breaking the timeline into yearly milestones and delivering a tangible result (a short film) at each stage, the creators have found a way to sustain ongoing fundraising—an approach other long-term projects could learn from.
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A note from the editors
This is a slow-burning film project that commits to portraying one family over an entire decade. What stands out is how, instead of relying on a single crowdfunding push, the team has built in yearly checkpoints through short films, giving supporters a reason to stay engaged over the long haul. The festival selection also adds a layer of outside credibility that reinforces trust in the project. For anyone considering crowdfunding for a long-term initiative, this is a useful example of how to break up a timeline and make incremental progress visible to backers.