Well, today I'm launching a campaign to raise funds for the production of a short film, Note to Self. I need to raise $6,000, and every little bit helps. To read about the project, go to the website: notetoselfmovie.com. There are some fun incentives for donating to the effort, as detailed on the site.
But one thing you won't find on the site is that this short film is a stepping stone to prepare me for a documentary I'll be working on here in Houston. The details of the documentary are hush-hush for now, but suffice it to say that it'll be in keeping with my academic interests.
Anyway, Note to Self is a short I wrote about seven years ago. I figured now was the time to pick it up, dust it off, and see it to fruition. The film will star my brother Jim, who has been a professional theatre actor and director going on thirty years now; he's also a tenured theatre professor and the founder of a theatre company in southern Indiana.
It won't take long to shoot, once I have the equipment and scout the locations, which I hope to do next month. It all depends on how this fundraiser goes, so please, give a little, or give a lot. But most importantly, share this with all your friends, encourage others to donate. I have over 600 Facebook friends. If each one gave $10, I'd have my budget instantly. Of course, not all of my Facebook "friends" are going to give me $10 (at least half of them have probably blocked my feed anyway), so maybe yours will! And of course, as detailed on the project website, the more you give, the more stuff you get in return.
I opted not to use a fundraising site like Kickstarter because with those, if you don't reach your goal, you don't get any of the pledged money. This way, I'll still be able to make the film, even if the budget isn't ideal. Long story short, this campaign will depend entirely on word of mouth, so please, start yapping.
To make a donation, you can go to the project website and click on "Contribute," or you can just login to your Paypal account send your donation to notetoselfmovie@gmail.com. If you do make a donation and notice that the progress bar on the website doesn't update immediately, that's because I'll update it manually every time donations total another 5% of the goal (i.e., every $300).
Thanks in advance for your support! Hopefully we'll all get to watch the flick together soon. Oh, and don't forget to "like" the project's Facebook page, and follow Self's Twitter page.