I know you’re all sick of hearing that Sudden Death! needs donations. Believe me, we’re sick of talking about it.

THE HELP! DRIVE

The bottom line for where we are at the moment, is that we simply can’t finish the film as it needs to be finished with the amount of money we’ve raised.

THE FACTS:

1. -We have raised $10,000 from our incredibly gracious donors, and we couldn’t be more thankful.
   

2. -At this point, we’ve put $25,000 of our own money into the film, through a combination of our savings and student loans.
   

3. -The initial budget for the film was to be more than $50,000... that dropped to less than $40,000 through some amazing kindness from vendors and crew who gave us enormous discounts or worked for free.
   

4. -Although we have raised enough for all of production (which is by far the most expensive part of making a film) and much of post-production, thus far, we haven’t raised enough (and we simply don’t have enough of our own), so we’re a few thousand short of what is actually needed to finish Sudden Death!
   

5. -For our composer to get the score and sound he really wants, he would need 60 musicians for 6 hours. Each musician costs $25 per hour. Add to that a minimum of $1000 for mixer and sound stage (all of this is at a heavy discount), and we’re talking about $10,000.
   

6. -We currently have $2500 at this moment for the score, and that’s coming entirely from our pockets (meaning, it’s money we’d be normally using for food and rent).
   

7. -Short of a unprecedented outpouring of donations, we’re not going to get close to that 60 piece orchestra. What we’re shooting for is a 24 piece orchestra, which comes out to $4600. Obviously, we’re short of that mark.
   

So, we really, really, really need your help! I know most of you probably thought that we needed all donations by December, but that’s simply not true. We really need them now, as post is expensive. I know many of you have already given, and many of you meant to give, etc... and I hate to keep asking, but we really need to finish this film!

HERE’S WHY

We’ve already gotten a ton of pre-buzz about this movie. We’re also poised to get this thing seen by a lot of the right people. I’m not going to get into details here, but the bottom line is, we’re in a potentially amazing position to break in with this film... even better than I thought we’d be. So, the right people are going to see it... so that’s even more reason that this thing has got to be as amazing as it can possibly be.

We’ve recently held a series of test screenings with a variety of people (most of whom we’d never met), and Sudden Death! scored remarkably well... seriously, like amazingly well, especially for a short film. And that was an unfinished version of the film with no color correction (the movie is going to look so much better than it does now...although it already looks great), no sound editing or design, no visual effects (there’s literally still green screens visible), and without an orchestral score. And yet, even without all of this, we scored very highly (8.5 out of 10 on average). We’ve already made several changes that will bring that score up a lot, and having a finished product that looks and sounds completely professional will bring that score up even more.

We’re so close to something amazing here, guys, that it would be such a shame to not quite make it because we were short a few thousand dollars. I hate to even ask, and we’re doing everything we can to get it short of selling ourselves, but the reality is that we just can’t do this without you.

So: here’s a bit of an incentive. The $1000 Executive producer credit is still there, and if you haven’t already done so, any donation of $25 dollars or more gets you a copy of the film on DVD when it’s finished. The new thing we’re adding to this drive, however, is a special link for anyone who donates from here on out... the first footage of the film to be released on the web or seen anywhere... our outtake reel. It’s a great sneak peek at our sets, actors, set design, etc... as well as some really funny outtakes. I know that’s not earth shattering, but it’s just our thank you for those that help us out when we need it the most. Once we receive your donation, we’ll send you a special link along with the password to view the outtakes.

We’ve also added Rehearsal Footage of both the dance sequences and the music recordings to the site today to whet your appetites a bit. No one’s seen this stuff except for Melanie and I.

PLEASE HELP! WE CAN’T DO THIS ALONE! DONATE!

WHAT’S HAPPENING NOW?

Ok, enough of the charity talk. What’s going on in the world of Sudden Death? As I said, we recently had a series of extremely helpful test screenings with some great feedback. Why do we do that, you ask? Well, the primary reason was to see where the laughs were coming and where they weren’t. Especially in comedy, you often run into important dialogue getting missed because people are laughing too loudly, so you have to time the edit as such. We definitely ran into that, more than once, and we’ve since corrected for it. The other thing is to see which scenes people are really liking, which characters, etc... so we handed out questionnaires after the film... and they’ve proved invaluable. It really shone a spotlight on which areas of the film still needed a bit of massaging and confirmed several things we had already thought, but wanted to be sure. So, again, we’ve gone back and since rectified all of that, and I think the result is a much better film.

PICTURE LOCK

We’re probably a week or two (and one more test screening) away from “picture locking.” What that means is that at that point we can’t change the timing or picture any more. We then hand the film off to the sound design team, our visual effects guy, our color guy and our composer, all of whom begin work on their aspects of the film... all of which I’ll of course be overseeing. The film seems to be working really well already, but this stuff takes the movie to another level... I’ve seen it time and again.

SUDDEN DEATH! THE FEATURE

On another front, I’ve been working for the last few months on a feature, or full length script for Sudden Death! For those of you that don’t know, Sudden Death! was a feature film idea that I’ve had for several years that I decided to make into a short film for my thesis. The idea being that the short film will serve as a calling card, not only for my skills as a director, but also for the feature. It just makes it a lot easier to see what we’re going for and that I can pull it off as a director. Well, the news on that front is that I finished the first draft of that script a few days ago, and while it naturally needs a lot of work (first drafts always do... the short went through 16 drafts), I’m really excited about it. I find myself wishing I’d been able to get parts of the feature into the short film, and I love the short.

THE MUSIC

Kenny and Kahle (who wrote the music and most of the lyrics for the short) are off working on the music for the feature version. Basically, I wrote the script and came up with the stories and ideas for the songs for the most part, then I handed it off to them, and they’ll come back (as always) with something more complete and better than what I’d asked for. Then, Kahle and I will get those lyrics exactly where I want them to be, then Kenny, Kahle and I will rework the music until it’s where all three of us are happy with it, then, it’ll all go into the script. This is basically the same process we went through in creating the short. The feature version will have a total of 14 songs.

FESTIVALS

Finally, we’re going to be touring the festival circuit for the next year, building buzz and hopefully winning a few festivals. The ultimate goal here being Sundance. We’ll see what happens. If you want to know more about what we’re doing with festivals, check out Melanie’s Blog on the subject. She’s the festival guru for the film.

Other than that, we’ve had some really exciting things happening around here, and we’ve met some really great, really important people recently. But I can’t get in to any of that yet. We’ve got to finish this thing first. So, not to drop any hints or anything, but DONATE!