Short Summary
My name is Julian Cepeda and I am the Writer, Director, Producer, & Editor of HomeTown Hero and as a filmmaker this will be my first feature length film, but not my first time telling a story that's compelling and powerful. I've been storytelling for 20+ years and watched some of the greatest storytellers in my life move people in ways that create action, change, and power. This film is important to me and the many people who've worked on the short film because we all know the message that comes behind the film. We all believe that this story will give our Pacific Islanders more representation on camera, but also give a glimpse of the trials and tribulations that locals in Hawai'i and worldwide are faced with. This campaign is a representation of all the kids growing up in someone else's shadow and not feeling good enough. This campaign is a representation of a story that needs to be told, and with your help we can do it! With your contributions it'll help get our feature film to a place where we can pay for food, locations, pay our crew, our cast, and get us funding to assist in renting/purchasing equipment to tell our story. Your contribution will allow our film to be made, edited, colored, and bring life to the story in production and post production.
What We Need & What You Get
We're crowd funding to raise $30,000 to create a micro-budget film as we're looking to pay our crew, cast, location sites, food, equipment, post-production (music, audio, colorist), and overall the cost of film-making is the most expensive form of entertainment so this money will help us give you the best body of work that we can possible give. With this funding, any contributions made will give you exclusive behind the scene photos, videos, and trailer content for the feature film as well as footage from the already completed short film. With your funding, we'll be able to reach our goal, but without it the funds made will go to our overall goal as we'll be crowd funding until we come to our goal or close to it. We believe in this project and we all want it to come to life as we know that this film can change someone's life positively, so we won't give up and we hope you don't either.
The Impact
Your contributions to our film will help us bring awareness to mental health concerns within our community along with other issues impacting our community including drug addiction, suicide, challenges of leaving Hawai'i, while shining a light on the beauty of local culture, Samoan culture, Pidgin, and the beauty in the struggle of brotherhood, friendship, family, and giving our audience a glimpse of traditional values within Samoan household. We're very proud to have completed the short film for HomeTown Hero which will be released in June 2021. Please enjoy the trailer, video testimonies (Friday's on IG), and our poster for the film. We believe that if we can do a short film with a small budget, with your funding for the feature film the possibilities are endless.
Risks & Challenges
We believe that no goal can be accomplished without risk. There's nothing in this world that has value or worth that comes easy or for free. We understand that. What we do know is that we have an unwavering team of Producers, Actors, Artist, & Crew that come together weekly to discuss the hurdles, challenges, and risk of putting this project together. We know that making the short film was difficult and doing the feature will be damn near impossible, but this isn't the first film that'll be made with a micro-budget and it won't be the last, so I say all this to say that we are working diligently to secure locations, secure other crew/cast members, create resources through your contributions, work through COVID-19 challenges/policies to keep members safe, and put together a body of work that we can all be proud of. We're hoping to reach our goal of $30,000 by May 9th 2021 and get right into production for the feature film by December 2021. It'll be challenging and difficult, but with your help we can do it!
Other Ways You Can Help
Some people just can't contribute, but that doesn't mean they can't help. If you're unable to provide any contribution, that's okay! All that we ask from you who believe in this project and its potential to spread the word and help us make some noise on our film HomeTown Hero. If you saw the short film, share this campaign with your friends and family. Let them know how dope the film was, your belief in it, and inform them that the short film will be available for everyone June 2021. Any contribution through money or spreading the word are acceptable and appreciated. We thank you for reading this, and send you love to you & your family!
