Louis,

Seriously, thank you for all your help. We weren’t expecting to see a response so quickly. We’ll definitely be getting hold of Ronn to see what advice he’ll be able to offer as well.

Here’s the skinny:

The production is essentially a studio quality spec short that we’re putting together to gain furtrher financing for a feature film. As of right now, we’re on an extremely independent platform but the intention would be to take the short into the studio world in hopes of making some deals.

Our projected budget is about $30k for the short. While not all is secured, we’ve been advised that a good portion will be in pocket once we have concepts off the ground. So our working plan is to get our script finalized, some concept art developed, and then we plan on storyboarding an animatic to present to some individual financiers to get the rest of the budget thrown together.

At the moment, the only people really lined up are some conceptual and storyboard artists. Adrian, being a graduate of The Ameican Academy of Dramatic Arts in Hollywood, has worked on a lot of productions in LA both in front of the camera, and behind. Though, he’s never assisted with any special effects that exceded some low level comp work. So, we’re attempting to put together some more people who’ve pretty much done this thing before.

We plan on shooting in South Bend, Indiana. Yeah, what? We know. The 411 is pretty much that this is “hometown” to both of us, we have some connections to a local video/film group in the area (who just landed IRS non-profit status) which means that we’re already in the process of convincing the city to lend us an old warehouse on the outskirts of downtown in which to establish sound stages. The group was already planning to take on such a mission to generate cash from productions in
Chicago (we’re 90 minutes away) who needed cheap hookups, and we’ve kind of taken the reigns.

As far as the story of the short, we’re trying to keep as much of a tight lid on it as possible. But we’ll give you this for right now – Most of our visual effects and matte backgrounds are going to be based in cavernous locales, in low light, and walking that fine line between being forgiven because of detail loss in the dark, and the opportunity to look outstanding.

So, in an ideal world, what we’re looking for right now is: a visual effects super to come on board to guide us through some of this mess, and some general info of what 2D and 3D mattes are going to run to work into our budget planning. The problem is convincing someone on the value of our production enough to work for cheap, and deal with snow.

We’d like to keep this correspondence going if you might spare the time. Feel free to e-mail us with any questions or thoughts.

Again with great thanks,

Patrick & Adrian
Co-directors, “Project Passage”