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THE FILM:
When Harper visits her mother June after a few years of little contact, she discovers her mother has been living with early onset Alzheimer's when June keeps confusing her with someone named Elizabeth. As Harper attempts to find out more of what June is keeping from her, she uncovers a past full of secrets she never could have anticipated as well as an ability to travel through time alongside her mother.
LIKENESS takes place within two eras, alternating between June's life as a twenty-something in the 1970's and present day.
HOW THIS ALL STARTED:
We (Emily, Jamie, and Laura) all met 5 years ago when we worked together on Emily's first narrative film The Water's Fine. That experience filming in Canada's cottage country felt like summer camp, quickly bonded film school pals and the newbie (Laura) together in lasting friendship. It was only a matter of time before the idea to collaborate again came up, so we decided to make it happen in a bigger way. For Likeness, our creative meetings began as group Skype calls across different time zones with Emily in London, Jamie in Toronto, and Laura in Los Angeles. Emily and Jamie eventually flew to Los Angeles for a week so that we could finally have a proper writer's room in Laura's kitchen. When we got together, the story seemed to pour out of us. Our days were spent trading creative ideas and goals, sharing stories about each other's lives, and staying properly fed by Emily's delicious cooking.
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The specific topic of Alzheimer's strikes a chord, as each of us has had family members pass away from complications of the disease and believe that it is an issue demanding more understanding and research. Emily's Nana, for instance, was vibrant and alive when we filmed The Water's Fine and unfortunately passed away due to the illness not long after. According to The Alzheimer's Association, two thirds of individuals diagnosed with Alzheimer's are women and two thirds of Alzheimer's caretakers are women, often being close family members. This means that at some point in a woman's life she will be affected by this disease in one way or another, so all generations must join the conversation and efforts to help raise awareness.
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Our story attempts to understand the state of mind of the person living with the disease and approaches the issue with hope rather than despair. We also wanted to explore the rich dynamic of what it feels like to be a mother, a daughter, and how much can be learned when one truly considers the other's perspective.
US:
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Laura Spencer is an American actress most known for her roles on the hit television series The Big Bang Theory and Bones. She enjoyed her experience working with Emily and Jamie on The Water’s Fine so much that she wanted to collaborate with them again, stretching her involvement this time into writing as well as acting.
Jamie Miller is a Canadian producer and documentary filmmaker living in Toronto. She is currently in production directing her BravoFACTUAL funded documentary, Prince’s Tale. Jamie has worked in creative partnership with Emily on many projects and is excited to bring Laura into the fold as co-creator on Likeness.
Emily Diana Ruth is a Canadian director and video-blogger. She recently created and directed the 10 episode digital series COLD for Verizon’s go90 platform with New Form Digital. Emily is thrilled to be working with Laura and Jamie who first worked as a team on her first narrative short film, The Water's Fine.
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BUDGET:
Where does all that money go?
Your donations will go toward being able to pay our professional cast and crew for their efforts and travel costs, as well as help this film look its absolute best. We want to be able to move between eras of time seamlessly, so our sets will require top notch production design and our actors to have the very best wardrobe, hair, and makeup.
WHY INDIEGOGO?
We are a small team with large goals and have been encouraged by our community to continue to create no matter what. This is a chance to invite our supporters to be more personally involved in our next endeavour. LIKENESS has the potential to be made into a longer, more complex story that could reach a much larger audience. It is our intention to use this film and campaign as a way to showcase our abilities as creators so that we are able to keep our story going beyond the short film. Being able to make this project ourselves also allows us to stay 100% creatively involved and keep the jobs we wish to perform within this ambitious endeavour.
OTHER WAYS TO HELP:
Luckily there are ways to help us that are totally free!
- Share the campaign. This will help to spread the news but will also (hopefully) help us to get featured on the homepage of Indiegogo!
- Donate a perk. Have something you think might be valuable to stimulate donations if it was in this campaign? Send us an e-mail...
- Send us well wishes. Doing all of this is a hard thing to do, so every small pat on the back from you helps us to press on!
- Donate something else. Do you have Tim Horton's gift cards going unused? Do you have access to a house in Toronto full of character? A piece of equipment you'd let us use for free? Some killer 1970's clothing? If you have something you could give or lend us, there's a good chance there's a way we could use it to make our project better.
GET TO THE GOOD STUFF - WHAT ARE THE PERKS?
The full list of available perks can be found in the column to the right, but here are a few of our favourites:
HIGHER GROUND - $10.00
VIP status. Reach that next-level-higher-ground place that Stevie Wonder sings about with access to our private LIKENESS fan club. You'll get exclusive behind the scenes photos, videos, and updates through our top secret and oh so private Instagram account. Must have Instagram account for this perk!For now we're sharing lots of photos that we're drawing inspiration from but we'll be including more behind-the-scenes as they come! This is your best bet for following the project closely as it gets made!
CHERRY BOMB - $50.00
Temporary Tattoos! Nothing says ROCK like a temporary tattoo. Or...wait. Truthfully, no one will ever be cooler than The Runaways but we think this perk (plus access to the exclusive fan club and digital film download) is pretty cool. Hello Daddy, hello mom...I got a stack of temporary LIKENESS tattoos as my perk, I'm your ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb.
Here's how our prototypes are looking so far:
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And my good friend T was very kind to model some for us :)
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FASHION! - $100.00
Make sure you're keeping up with the latest fashions by getting yourself into one of our limited edition Likeness T-Shirts! Designed for you by us, this simple but chic tee captures the vibe of Likeness into one handy piece of clothing! With this perk you'll also receive entry into the Exclusive Fan Club and a Digital Download of the Film! Fashion!
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Above is a mock-up of the shirts! We haven't chosen a t-shirt brand yet, but we will do a white tee with a black print!
