tGUS is an animated feature film created in Central America. It's a psychedelic trip reminiscent of the films from the 70's and 80's. A small treasure you would expect to find at 3 AM on your old tube, but with a current Latin American backdrop, reflecting on contemporary society.
The onyrical city of tGUS is a pit of jolly anarchists where everyone looks only after themselves.
Its citizens are cynical and follow no rules. In any corner you will see every sort of mischief met with jest and laughter, drunken birds driving cars, rodent cops chasing bribes, mindless gals twerking buns. An ordinary day in tGUS would include car chases, bizarre parallel boozer dimensions, giant robots, military raids with helicopters, Mayan gods, conspiring bird syndicates, ex-guerrilla left-wing professors and urban superheroes. Everyone to their one happy dismay.
HELLMUT, the mischievous regent of the Underworld, and his brother SKYPUPPY, the benevolent ruler of Heaven, are the overseers of the bleak tGUS. SKYPUP insists that despite all their troubles the people of tGUS are noble souls. Hellmut is hellbent that the people of tGUS are weak and spoiled, and wants to prove his brother wrong, wagerering over the true kindness of their hearts.
Hellmut will use every trick under his belt to tempt the meek of tGUS with promises of sloth and pleasure. He will soon find out that under what he thought at first was a coarse exterior lies a softer core, where friendship proves stronger and more solidary.
Hellmutt will find more reliable allies in a group of corrupt politicians to set his plan in motion and invoke the ancestral fury of the dormant Mayan God of destruction -MAYHEM-.
The people of tGUS will bring the best and the worst to the table and raise the stakes of this holy bet.
tGUS is the child of a small team of dedicated artists, writers, musicians, designers, and animators from Central America. The film is now completed after 3 years of hard work, but it´s now that the true battle begins.
As many know, half of the work of the filmmaker starts after you´re done with the film, the other half is marketing and distribution.
Most people who launch a crowd-sourcing campaign do it to get their projects started. We wanted to come here with a finished product, and to take our time to really make the best we could and not rush into the perils of disappointing our audience. We took our time and silently made a F*Ⓒking kick-ass movie that everyone will love and worship!! We are certain that this production will become a cult classic! That is how confident we are about this film.
Our film runs 85mins long and is currently in Spanish, but we have been lucky to find the support of some well known American celebrities and voice-over artists to lend their talent for the English version of our film. This is unprecedented for a film production in our region.
Dustin Neil Diamond is an American actor, musician, director, and stand-up comedian best known for his role as Samuel "Screech" Powers in the television show Saved by the Bell. A celebrity icon of the 90’s.
Jareb Dauplaise is an American actor, he played Wayne in The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, and has starred in numerous high profile Hollywood productions such as: The Prankster, Meet the Spartans, Epic Movie, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, as well as MTV's hit series The Hard Times of RJ Berger.
Palencia was born in Oklahoma but lived in Honduras until she was four years old. She is an actress, ADR director, and singer primarily known for her work for Funimation Entertainment/OkraTron 5000. She has provided numerous voices for Japanese anime series and video games such as: Dragon Ball Z Kai, Fullmetal Alchemist, One Piece, Borderlands & Borderlands 2, Duke Nukem Forever, Street Fighter IV, and World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria.
Non Plus Ultra
Media company founded in 2010 with the purpose of starting a multidisciplinary art movement in Central America, using film as a medium where writers, musicians, designers and performers could work together and have a chance to be something other than spectators and consumers in a world that is slowly centralizing all creative output to the masses.
tGUS is the project to which our forces have been channeled and this is our time of reckoning. Join us! Be part of a revolution!
Terio Xontm
Designer, ex-diplomat for the Honduran foreign service in Great Britain. Writer & Director of tGUS the movie.
Marvin Valladares
Performing arts professor for the Honduran National Ballet. Lead animator and animation director for our movie.
Akherra
Architect, prodigious musician, multi-instrumentalist, and composer. Wrote and executed next to 100 tracks of music for our production.
Shirley Rodríguez
Professional actress and model. Voice actress for all female characters of our Spanish version.
Zabdi Castellón
Bachelor in arts, lead designer for our movie. The man who puts one thousand under paid Chinese workers to shame.
Charlie Noé Benítez
Young enthusiastic actor, was chosen in a massive public casting for his uncanny comical timing to portray a gamut of characters and personalities for the Spanish version of our film.
Ana Veronica Pineda
Medicine student, media enthusiast. Production assistant and media manager for our company.
Marvin Canales
Bachelor in arts, designer and animator. A true stoic to our cause.
Existential Crisis is an animated feature film created by our director, Terio Xontm, in 2004. Its the first animated feature made in Central America (Duration 58min). Its important to set the environment where this is coming from, Central America is a region with very little film production, due to several limitations, and back when Crisis was made it was severally more difficult.
Even more so, there are just a hand full of animated feature films in the world made entirely by one person. (Not counting the voice actors.) This is one of them.
The premise is simple. Marionettes in limbo talk about the meaning of life.
The film was never released. Terio decided It's subject was not adept to our society's sensibility. It has been shown clandestinely by friends of our director in bars and cafes in different parts of the world, it leads a noble life as a bohemian film. Crisis is a testament to our compromise and how long we have been fighting for all of this. We had to include a little something about it in this campaign, just to let everyone know where we are coming from.
When we finished our film about eight months ago, we traveled to Los Angeles to test the waters. We got in touch with several agencies and production companies. We were offered to sell the distribution rights for our movie by three different production companies, but we knew we wanted to go through a different route.
We did however close one deal while we were there!
The awesome guys from Machinima got a look at our film and hired our company to make a web series based on the characters of our movie and celebrity characters of different video games like Super Mario, Dovahkiin from Skyrim, Sackzilla from Little Big Planet, Pyramid Man from Silent Hill & Thumper from Bambi, just for kicks.
The guys from Machinima saw something different in our style and wanted to do something to shake their audience.
You have a different approach to animation, it's so bombastic! We love it! -they said- At the beginning of the internet, we were all using it as a tool of discovery, where stuff we had never heard of before was popping up. Now we use the internet as a filter of the things we want to see. We want to bring some of that back! -they remarked-.
That romantic perception of the world resonated with us. We are the kind that loves to dig for the unusual.
Let's do a series! -they said- Let's mix English and Spanish and let the audience figure out what´s going on. It will be a sociological experiment.
Sh*t! -We thought- These guys are soul mates, we too are scientists of a sort! Andy Kaufman would have been proud of all the people in that meeting. That is how "Con Carne" was born.
Why help our production?
We are independent in the broadest possible form. We are so independent that where we live there is no industry, or school, or antecedent for what we are doing. We are doing this out of pure courage and love!
"Why bring this movie to theaters? Why not straight to DVD or Netflix? Why go through all the trouble of putting this in theaters?"
Theaters are the first window of distribution. They are the first place where movies are shown. The other windows of distribution, in a sense, become easier to handle long-term after that. If we get the first window right, the others will follow.
"What makes you think your movie is worth people's time in a theater?"
You wait 6 months for a blockbuster that has been sold to you like the cure for cancer, you go to your theater, two hours later you have eaten 2000 calories in soda and popcorn but leave empty and don't remember anything about the movie you just saw. It's all mundane. The VFX's were excellent, but for some reason you yawned. The actor was handsome, but you just don't care for that, The actress had a rocking body, but you've got a girl.
Our movie will not leave you empty! You will laugh, you will love our naive and homegrown style. Our movie is freaking fast! It's smart and rare. We do not want to appeal to anyone's sense of charity. Support this campaign because the movie has a promise and a future, and it´s made by people who will never quit!
We will certainly make other films, each one greater than the last. Unleash our force into the world, and be of the first to have noticed us!
"Why do you need that amount of money? Why not put the movie on theaters and see who wants to come along?"
Every single movie needs marketing, in a perfect world the movies that you love will magically land at your feet and our only job would be to make kick-ass films like this one. Piece of cake! Reality is we have to fight for our audience's attention just like anyone, maybe even harder since this is our first project.
Okay! I get it, marketing! ..But why should I care?
You enjoy the typical Hollywood Blockbuster, just like everyone, you watch European, Asian, or Latin american films now and then, when they are not too bad. You have a melancholic feeling towards what you think films, music and literature should be all about. You are not getting enough of it from anywhere.
That's what independent productions do, they don't respond to investors or grants. Projects like this one respond only to awesomeness. We made this movie aggressive, fun and smart. We care for this, do you?
What We Need & What You Get
Our film has been reviewed by executives of the major Cinemas in Central America and we are ready to pull the trigger. Our marketing campaign starts right now! Indiegogo being the epicenter.
We need to raise enough funds to build a successful awareness campaign for our movie. Even in our local environment we have to fight against the giants of the world to get noticed, and our budget for advertisement is actually very frugal since we are being very creative with our campaign.
Our media campaign will consist of:
Our independent distribution budget for Central America in this campaign is actually very low, but we will try to make magic out of it. We will basically tour this movie like a Rock band!!
Our mosaics are hand made in Honduras by a talented group of artists and craftsmen. Each one is a unique work of art. We are using four different characters from our movie, chose the one you love the best and we will carefully pack it and send it to it's new home in the world. (Tones may vary from those in the picture, and background color will be chosen randomly.) (Our mosaics will include an authenticity certificate emited by us.)
As part of our campaign, we are using our mosaics as urban art, our plan is to have one mosaic of each character in every mayor city of the world. Its ambitious, but it will be a fun mission to accomplish, no matter how long it takes!! :D
Commemorative t-shirts
One day you will look into your closet 10 years from now and remember that moment of excellence when you were deciding to help out some random dudes with a great project. You will remember all the good times you had wearing that shirt, all the times you scored for being such a philanthropist. How you met the love of your life wearing a matching tGUS t-shirt.
Or you might just sell it on ebay because you heard they are reaching 500 bucks from our new horde of followers.
Either way pick your color, size, gender, character, and be prepare to love these shirts!
For every t-shirt sold we will donate one to an unprivileged person and add his/her name to the credits of the movie.
Our t-shirts will be donated through an agreement with The Bridge of Peace Foundation in Honduras.
If we are fortunate enough to exceed our goal we will be able to take this film further, while continuing to reward you for your support!
Our most basic campaign. We will do wonders!!
Help us get louder! We will make this movie the greatest Box Office success in Central America.
America here we come! Brace yourselves for the unbelievable!
We will add more USA territories and Canada. We will make you all so proud!
Risks and Challenges
This is our first project as a company and we have gotten very far for ourselves. The situation in Latin America is precarious and we are trying to contribute with something brave and unique to our society.
Our movie is finished and it´s nothing short of excellent! The major challenges of our project have already been tackled. We have great people on board our team and with the right budget we will make this a success story.
For the marketing and distribution in the USA & Canada we will join forces with a Distribution Company for a "Service Deal". We will keep control of where the movie will be shown, and listen closely to you, our audience for feedback.
We will fight with nail and teeth for this!
On the side of the perks we are promising in this campaign, we are only promising what we already have and own. The production and distribution of the mosaics, t-shirts and DVDs is being controlled directly by us.
We will ship all our perks using EMS LATIN AMERICA with USPS tracking numbers for shipping outside Central America.
The Impact
Many people around us thought we were crazy for doing something like this. Many people in our culture grow up with the idea that only North Americans or the Japanese have the skills or the merit to bring projects like this to the world.
We are fighting against great forces: Economical, Cultural, and even the Status Quo.
We are breaking through!
We are shredding limiting beliefs in others.
We are planting a seed of hope, the possibility of a dream.
We are doing all this with a movie, and you are doing it with us.
Other Ways You Can Help
Help us get noticed by the people who will become our audience!
We will be giving away free Digital Combos that include:
VOD & Digital download of tGUS the movie, Soundtrack, and wallpapers of the movie.
1.Facebook: Follow us on Facebook by giving a "like" to our fan page and post our page on your wall. (Winner will be chosen randomly)
2.Twitter: Follow us on Twitter and and retweet our campaign. (Winner will be chosen randomly)
3.Indiegogo referrals: Share this campaign on any forum, website, blog or social network and the person who has posted the most daily will automatically win.
We will give away one Bundle a day on Facebook, Twitter, and Indiegogo's referrals. Three free Bundles daily for 45 days. All you have to do is share.
We will give out Boxsets with Mosaics, DVDs, posters and more with free shipping worldwide to the people who contribute the most sharing our campaign with the world.
