The "F" Word

No, I’m not talking about everyone’s favorite F-bomb, I’m talking about a much more hideous word…. FAIL.

It’s a word that came to mean a lot to me a couple of weeks ago at the conclusion of my fundraising campaign. I felt like I'd failed.

Before the campaign launch I was working with two producers who advised me that I needed $75,000 to make this movie. Then that number changed to $150,000 for reasons I’m still not sure of.

 

This is a lot of money. And I questioned whether I could raise it. But they told me to stop being so skeptical.

I had a little money already put aside, but we still needed to raise a lot of money. So we set the fundraising goal at $75,000.

After the first few days of the campaign, we plateaued at around $3,000. I started to suspect that this was never gonna happen. I had entered this fundraising campaign without a good team in place, and without any rich friends.

Despite my best efforts; posting a bunch of promo videos and updates, emailing everyone I know, even buying a couple of facebook ads, I was way off my target. I made a total of $7936.00

The reaction from the two producers after the money didn’t appear out of thin air? They shrugged and suggested I enter the script into a screenplay competition. I went home from that meeting and cried, feeling like failure. The dream was over.

After I dragged myself out of the black hole I’d entered and upped my daily dose of Prozac, I realized wallowing was a huge waste of time. I still had a movie to make.

I parted ways with those two producers and then I got to work breaking down the script myself. Cutting locations, and minor characters – getting rid of everything that wasn’t 100% necessary to tell the story. At its core, this film is about human relationships. To tell that kind of story you don’t need bells & whistles. You just need a good script and good actors.

As I started re-gaining momentum I realized how ungrateful I was being about the money I had raised for my campaign. I raised almost $8000! That’s fucking awesome. 76 incredibly generous people donated their hard earned money into a movie that I want to make.

What’s even more amazing is how much the cast and crew started rallying together and supporting me; offering up their homes to use as locations, offering to bring snacks and cook food to have on set, finding crew that will help free of charge, offering their cars to pick up equipment. Even friends of mine who weren't already attached to the project started reaching out to offer help.

With the money that I already had saved, plus the campaign money, I’m gonna make this movie. It will take some more time and it will be a lot harder on such a tiny budget, but I’m determined. And I’m now spurred on by the fact that I truly believe storytelling doesn’t have to be insanely expensive. And that if we live in a world where only people who are wealthy and privileged are allowed to tell stories, we will all be missing out big time. Because although those people may be able to afford to make a movie that looks beautiful and slick – They often don’t have a whole lot to say.

This was the attitude that I started out with when I set out to make this film. And somehow I got lost along the way, letting money become more important than the movie itself. It took a little failure to get my attitude back on track.

My State Of Hopeless Desperation

What have I learned over the past 6 weeks?

Fundraising is hard as fuck and I hate it.

When I lived in Sydney I would see those fundraising workers outside the train stations wearing green T-shirts, or even worse a Koala suit. They would try desperately to trap commuters into a conversation that turns into a sales pitch. “Hi there! Can I ask you a question? Do you know the rainforest is dying?" They would subsequently be ignored. I'd always think, wow – that would be the worst job ever.

Well, this process has felt a little like that. I feel like a guy in a Koala suit. GET THIS THING OFF ME!!!

Part of the problem was that I was very optimistic going into the campaign. I thought, hey – if some dude just raised over $50,000 on Kickstarter to make potato salad, why shouldn’t this work for me and my film? I also listened to a couple of people that I shouldn’t have, who encouraged me to set a huge goal and convinced me that “the money will come”, that they would help me bring money in. Funnily enough, the day that the campaign was launched, they disappeared.

Despite all this, I have kept at it – knowing that every single dollar I can raise will help me get this film off the ground.

Even now with 5 days to go, I am still frantically brainstorming ways to bring in dollars.

Yesterday I decided I needed to add a $5 perk for the final week, to entice people on a budget who may still want to support the film. I came up with what I thought was a great, fun idea, that fitted in well with the theme of the movie; For $5 I would photoshop the contributor's face into a romantic photo with a celeb crush who they would have no chance of dating. I put together one of myself that I was going to use as an example. It took me 2 hours to make. Here it is:

Last night at dinner with some close friends, I showed them my masterpiece and explained my plan and waited for the positive feedback. The response was unanimous: 

“I just don’t think anyone will wanna buy that”.

“That took you 2 hours?”

“There’s something really sad about it”

“Yeah, you can’t put that on the campaign page.”

“It looks….. Um… What version of photoshop did you use?”

It was at this point I admitted I don’t even have photoshop. I had made that in Microsoft Word.

Hey, you can’t say I’m not trying. 

But you don't always see things clearly when you're wearing a Koala suit.

2 Birds With One Stone

This week I decided to do a Tiny Director Video Blog AND an episode of the little webseries I've been doing as part of my funding campaign ALL IN ONE!!! 

Career Advice From My Little Sister.

Anxiety & Underpants

My Secret Life

They say “fake it til you make it”. And there are many aspects of this film making process that require me to do just that. In order to get certain people on board, I have to present my project in a certain light. Sometimes I get quite caught up in it all. Like when I have talent agents calling me asking soooo nicely if they can get their client an audition for the film. Or random weirdos adding me on facebook because they heard about the project. It’s easy to feel a bit powerful when these things happen. But the reality is, I have something to bring me back to earth. My day job.

For many artists, having a survival job is essential – unless you come from a rich family who can pay all your bills while you “follow your dreams”. My current day job is babysitting. I babysit about 4 days a week for a few different families. And as far as survival jobs go, it’s not too bad. I really like the kids and it also allows for me to multitask, so that I can give people the illusion that I’m a full time artist. Which can sometimes backfire:

Real Life Example One -  

I’m on the phone to a potential investor, pitching the movie, pretending I’m calling from my office when our conversation is interrupted with a loud 4 year old yelling from the bathroom “SOPHIE – CAN YOU PLEASE WIPE MY BUTT?”

"Hey, can I call you back?"

Real Life Example Two - 

I pick up one of the kids I sit for from school. He’s eight. We drive past a huge billboard on Sunset Blvd. It’s for a new sci-fi thriller TV show and has a large picture of an eyeball with a worm coming out of it. The following conversation transpires:

KID: That eyeball poster gives me nightmares.

ME: Me too. It’s gross. Don’t look at it.

KID: Are you gonna have big posters like that up for your movie when it comes out?

ME: Probably not. They are very expensive.

KID: Well then how will anyone know about the movie?

ME: Well, we are trying to build our audience online with social media and stuff. Like.... I’ve started blogging.

KID: What’s blogging?

ME: It’s where I write about my experiences and then post them on the internet for people to read.

KID: Why would people wanna read that?

Silence.

Giving Birth

Isn't That What's His Name?

I recently had a difference of opinion with my producer. After hiring a casting director to help fill a lead role in the film, she found a name actor very interested in the project.

He had been a lead in a several popular teen movies, and had recently been on a hit tv show. He has a big following and would have definitely given us a much better chance of raising extra financing and getting distribution for the movie once it's made.

But it didn’t feel right. For starters this actor has a reputation for being a buff heart-throb. The character in my film is a nerdy insecure guy who never gets laid.  I was told; “We can put glasses on him and dress him down”. But I wasn’t buying it.

Casting is something that is VERY important to me. Sure, I have my typical celeb idols such as Meryl Streep, actors that will make me want to watch a movie even if it's not my cup of tea. But mostly, I love watching movies with unknown actors. I feel like celebs come with a certain amount of baggage. They are either super stars and the movie becomes more of a showcase for them than the story. Or the more likely situation for indies that can’t afford a huge star; You recognize the actor but don’t remember from where. So you spend a good part of the movie wondering what you have seen them in (or you pull out your smart phone to try to track them down on IMDB)

Either way, the audience is being distracted from the story.

I much more enjoy a film with excellent unknowns. There is no baggage. So I can focus on the story. A part of me also feels like I am being let in on an awesome secret. I wanna be the one to tell my friends; “You need to see this movie, and there’s this amazing actor."

In the end I cast an incredibly talented unknown actor who was right for the role, and I couldn’t be happier. But I know by doing this, it makes my producers job harder than it could have been. And I do feel a little bad about that.

How It Feels To Look Like Shit

It’s a Sunday afternoon and I’m walking down Hollywood Blvd holding a large pizza box. I’m on my way home. I plan to get home, eat this pizza and then lay in bed. I’m coming back from the Arclight where I went to see the new indie rom-com “Obvious Child” with my producers and cinematographer (we wanted to check out our competition). They have all gone out for dinner after the film, but I’m exhausted and I just need to be alone with my pizza. It’s been a tough week.

As I walk past a tacky souvenir shop, two Armenian guys (who I assume are the shopkeepers – because I’m racist) look me up and down. One says, “Hey baby. Why you so sad?”

I stop to reply. “I’m not sad. I’m actually really happy. I just look like shit.”

Neither of them correct me. I continue walking.

When I decided to take on this film project, I knew it would be stressful and I was prepared for that. Honestly, I thrive on stress. As I mentioned before, I’m a workaholic. What I didn’t take into account was the fact that my physical appearance might begin to show signs of this stress.

For example, I have apparently been scratching at my own face in my sleep, which has created several scratch marks. I also have a nervous twitch sometimes of rubbing my nose, so the skin around my nose has started peeling away. The combined result of both these habits is that I now look kind of like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer after a crash landing into a field of thorn bushes.

I also have a tendency to get acne breakouts during periods of stress and got a very large one in between my eyes, which I then decided to puncture with a needle in front of my bathroom mirror. The result of this? Well, my face is currently sporting a sizable stab wound.

I’ve also bitten all the skin around my finger nails, have gained a few pounds from eating junk food on the go and have bags under my eyes. But who gives a shit. I’m making a fucking movie.