As others say, you better have the first ~3 minutes as the trailer. Afterwards perhaps have parts of the 2010 demo playing in the background while talking, as it is still impressive to this day.
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A date from @INovaeKeith!
Thanks for the update, can’t wait to see how any posts we’ll produce when you give us those rewards to argue about. 
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Thanks for the update!
I’m intrigued to see what you have in store for the rest of the ramp-up to the Kickstarter campaign!
I’m happy the video is going to be ~10 mins… Lots of time for lots of juicy information and time for you two to convey your enthusiasm and personalities.
A significant factor in my pledging to Elite was David Braben’s enthusiasm and personality. I liked that he got visibly excited and conveyed that this was a project he was passionate about, not just a means to pay the bills.
I hope we see that enthusiasm and real-ness from you guys.
People are commenting on the need to get viewers interested in the first 30 seconds but I have no doubt you guys have given this significant thought so I’m just going to present the flip side:.
It’s true a lot of people have short attention spans for online stuff, but once you’ve got them interested they want to make an informed decision about their online purchases. Giving them as much relevant information about you and your plan for Battlescape as possible enables them to do that.
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A couple more juicy infos:
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the video is split in two parts, first the in-game “cinematic” video, which is currently a bit on the long size ( 4 mins ), followed by 2-3 mins of interview with Keith & I ( not recorded yet so it’s only an estimation ). Add another minute of padding, splash screens, misc. stuff… personalliy I don’t think it’ll reach 10 mins total, 7-8’ is my own estimation, but we’ll see.
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the in-game cinematic video starts relatively slowly and ends crazy. We tried to establish a certain mood and to end it with an epic feeling. So no, there won’t be ships shooting at each other in the first 10 seconds. But the wait will definitely be worth it.
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the low-reward tiers ( less than 100$ ) have pretty much been figured out, but we’re still working on the higher reward tiers - preferably digital only - We have our own list of course, but if anybody has cool ideas for pledge levels > $100, feel free to mention it in this thread.
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Just remember, if you offer a desk model of a ship covered in little lights, people will be disappointed with it.
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How about some of the below:
- Unique skins otherwise not available (missiles / lasers / ships / …)
- Name (or pseudonym) in credits
- Unique logo in tchat
- Possibility to have a unique launch screen
- Will there be in-game fixed location names ? If yes, allow the big backers to (almost) freely name one of them.
- Name some of the future type ships ? Say the “centaurus bombarder” is the Hercules, while the “SFC bombarder” is the Sweeper. Though if I remember correctly from this thread, it should only be for big backers. Or maybe make a list of propositions and the backers get to vote. Though it might get incoherent with the lore … Tough choice ^^
- For next dev’s live twitch or interview, backers get priority for question(s ?) asked
This is a slightly hard exercise, even more if you want something uncommon, or not that much generic. Depends what the shipped content will be, also, i guess 
There was some good discussion about pledge tiers in this thread:
Yeah, we already have most of those. But here we’re talking of the upper tiers. From many hundred $$, to many thousand $$.
We can’t make a “meet the team + diner” thing since we have no physical office. Names, skins, etc… are for lower tiers. Remains custom ships ( “we’ll design a personalized ship with you” ), but the development cost of developping a ship from scratch ( concept, model, texturing etc… ) at pro quality is in the order of tens of thousands of $. So it’s a bit complicated.
I would be happy with naming a Ship or Station for 200-600$ + All Above(isch).
Maybe custom drone/missile design/texture?
Decal designs everyone cut put on the ships?
Company Logo/Name?
Fictiv Charater?
Have ones charakter be significant to the lore?
“We are trying to release [the Kickstarter] this year”
trying
trying
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- Skype conference call with the devs
- Limited run signed prints of art work (I know you said preferably digital)
- As Lomsor said, have a character/ship/something named after you (subject to artistic limitations)
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How about access to the engine for the higher tiers?
Some suggestions:
- Access to the MOD portion of the engine, with no support
- Access to the engine with no source at some point
- Immediate access to the engine and nightly builds
- Permission to build and release a game at any point without royalties using the engine
We can’t really release what we currently have to the public (IMO). And if we only receive the min funding, that likely won’t change. So to have that as a higher tier reward, there would be significant resources required to get the tools into an acceptable state for any type of public release. It’s something we’re still debating.
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- Pick a ship from old Infinity site to be made for Battlescape (but that could prove complicated but still)
That’s not a good reward IMO because it limits the number of people who may care about that. We need an ~order of magnitude more people pledging to the KS than regular site visitors. (new or old site)
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Oh yeah? Drop a Flamberge on them and let’s put that theory to the test. 
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This sounds like something that has been done before, but I offer it anyway.
Make a high-end tier or tiers such that the contributors become the fictional customers of a new ship design. It would be rather like being on the government board for a new ship because the design must match government specs (which are provided by I-Novae Studios of course), The contributors would have access to a discussion forum specific to their ship, and the artists can work with that group.
The input from the customer team would have to be limited. The basic style of the ships would be defined by INS, but where there is the ability to decide between multiple options, let the group have inputs - and let the designers actually listen.
The team would provide the name, get things like signed prints, perhaps a custom skin for being “plank holders”, put their names on the list of fictional designers for the ship, get a 3D printed copy, and so on.
The idea is to make the ship design into a meta game. The artists would be in the world of Infinity, roleplaying the design and construction of a new ship in their shipyard. It need not be hardcore roleplaying, just a light fiction to suggest the pattern. The fiction might even allow for delays and such, giving the artists a little leeway for pacing the process.
This could be done for multiple ship designs, and even at multiple levels. For example, if a ship needs roughly $40,000 to get from concept to playable, then tiers could be organized into 20 of $2,500, 10 of $4500, 5 of $8,000 and even a $40,000 tier where each person gets to go through this process individually. Larger ships may have larger budgets.
The first problem I can see with this would be the workload on the artists interactively dealing with customers. The second is dissatisfaction by a customer in a large group of 20 people (or even among 5), expecting to get their way and finding that the majority interest doesn’t match their own. It might be a good idea to ‘pool’ the interested parties and find out who agrees on what and wants to work together on given ships. Or the tiers would be so well defined that only people clearly interested in that sort of a design would contribute.
The same could be done for planets and other big-ticket content. In fact, planets might be a very good selling point, given that they are unique to your property.
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One thing people need to remember while presenting their ideas for higher tier rewards is, we have to be able to deliver on all the rewards even in the minimum funding scenario. If someone pledges $10,000 in a successful KS with a min funding goal of $250K, we may only have ~$60-70k art budget for the entire game. In this scenario we’re likely only talking a couple small player ships and maybe one NPC smallish cap ship/station etc. This $10,000 pledge reward would need to be something deliverable (and desirable) under very extreme resource limitations. The design your own ship ideas can quickly evolve into something we’d not be able to deliver.
Though, something you could sell later on …
getting ahead of everything … sorry.
So you dropped your minimum funding goal from $500k to $250k?