Update:
Our campaign is over but we're still going strong. We're entering "Six Letter Word" in festivals and Lisanne is writing the feature version of the "Six Letter Word."
Thanks!!
UPDATE:
Thanks to everyone who put us $3,176 OVER our goal. We're grateful to your outpouring of support and look forward to sharing SIX LETTER WORD with you once it's done.
THANK YOU again for your support!
ABOUT THIS PROJECT:
My name is Lisanne Sartor and I’m honored to be one of eight women chosen to make a short film for AFI’s Directing Workshop for Women, a program that’s designed to create more opportunities for skilled women to direct narrative films. Though the AFI DWW program provides participants with fantastic training and a great production equipment package, we raise the film funding ourselves. I’ve started this fundraising campaign to ask for your help to reach my ultimate fundraising goal of $25,900. Generous donors already have me on my way but I still need to raise $12,000. Every donated penny will go towards making this film, paying for things like: location fees, costumes, catering, props, set dressing, equipment, post production costs, and much more. No donation is too small. I can’t stress that fact enough. Ten dollars will cover a meal for one crewmember. Fifty dollars will rent an LED light for the shoot. One hundred dollars can be put toward a location fee.
I’m particularly passionate about my project, “Six Letter Word”, which I’m shooting this summer in LA, because it’s about a boy who has autism, a neurological disorder that my eleven-year-old son has. Your contribution will help bring my passion project to the screen and help raise autism awareness.
THE LOGLINE
“Six Letter Word” is about down-on-her-luck, devoted single mom, Zoe who writes off her young son Jax’s crossword puzzle obsession to genius until an unexpected encounter makes her realize that Jax has autism and needs much more than she alone can give him.
THE INSPIRATION
When I first started writing “Six Letter Word,” it was about the day four years ago when my son was diagnosed with high functioning autism. I couldn’t get the images and sounds from that day out of my head. I see his doctor nod after I ask her verdict. I hear my son's voice ask, “You okay, Mommy?” I see the freeway on our drive home as he chatters behind me while I cry silently. As I wrote, I remembered a couple I’d met in an autism parenting class. At first, they seemed more likely to be perps on “Cops” than class participants. They turned out to be the best parents in the room. They loved their kid to exhaustion and instinctively knew what she needed; they were blunt about their shortcomings and dubious about their ability to handle all that life threw at them. Yet their humor, warmth and love for their child rose above their doubts and challenges. When I wrote my protagonist Zoe to embody this couple, I found my true story. “Six Letter Word” isn’t just about autism, me, or even a mom grappling to accept her child’s challenges, though those elements remain. It’s about self-doubt, the discovery of inner strength through surprising sources and the fact that the people who are best at parenting often come in surprising and very human packages. Most of all, it’s about the multi-faceted ties that bind parent to child.
THANKS!
To show our appreciation for your support, we’ve chosen rewards for each donation level. They’re listed in the right hand column of this page. You can also support this film by spreading the word to your friends and family, by posting this link on Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, you name it and by liking our Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/sixletterwordthefilm) and visiting our website (http://www.sixletterword.org). The more you spread the word, the more potential donors the campaign reaches, which means I’m that much closer to hitting my ultimate fundraising goal of $25,900 and making “Six Letter Word.” My team and I are truly grateful for any support you can give, monetary or otherwise. Thanks.
SPECIAL THANKS TO:
Derrick Pete, Frances DeLoach, Peter Fenty and FDL Entertainment for making the Indiegogo fundraising video for this page.
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