Why you should help!
Who would have ever thought that Joe and ShaunPaul would find themselves in an an
Empire Records (1985) scenario?! But it's true the boys are trying to save their camera from going corporate.
That's right, we are very artist friendly when it comes to renting out our
RED SCARLET working on a project by project basis for pricing.
When we bought the camera our intentions were to help out emerging artists by giving the independent artist scene a cheap alternative to high end film production for their projects.
Since we have made this Indiegogo, an individual has stepped forward, saying they would like to come on as an equal partner and fund the entire project!
Sounds wonderful, right?
Well, it's not! As gracious as this person is for wanting to do this (which we are so grateful for) this amazing person wants us to stop helping the artists and to treat this camera as a piece of rental gear, just to be used to make money. They want to match the prices of all the other rental houses and to stop giving deals and discounts to artists and to stop donating the camera to charities.
We don't want to go corporate but we don't want to become obsolete either.
So now our dilemma has changed and we need to raise the money to keep our camera solely for the artists!
Damn the man! Help us keep full control of what projects we work on and what we charge for our rentals.
We're asking everyone to donate even if it's just a dollar! The more donations we receive the more attention we get from the indiegogo site and the better our chances are of reaching our goal.
So share and donate! We can't keep helping other artists if we don't get your help now!
The short of it.
Joe Gariffo and ShaunPaul Costello are freelance filmmakers/actors from Philadelphia. They are in a pickle and down on their luck. A little over a year ago they took out a loan and used all of their savings to buy themselves a movie camera. More precisely a RED Scarlet and about two weeks ago RED (The company that manufactures the camera) sent all of it's camera owners an email saying they need to purchase an upgrade from the Mysterium X sensor to the Dragon sensor. They NEED to raise $19000.00 to upgrade their Red Scarlet (Mysterium X) to a Red Epic (Dragon) before June or their camera will become obsolete. The duo have spent the last two weeks frantically searching for ways to come up with the money to no avail. Now they're turning to their family/friends/and fellow artists looking for help.
The Email from RED
Who are these guys?
Joe Gariffo and Shaunpaul Costello met on a student film at Temple University and quickly became good friends. Soon after graduation the two got their start making feature films on the award winning comedy "Swooped", which the two co-wrote and starred in. The duo has since gone on and produced three other features "Close-up" starring Costello, Gariffo, Alan Ruck (Ferris Bueller's Day Off), Ryan Dunn (Jackass) and James Cagney (white Heat) and the film "Booted" starring Gariffo, Brian Anthony Wilson (The Wire), Marc Summers (unwrapped), Colin Quinn (Saturday Night Live), Tony Luke Jr. (Joey Nardone: The story of the Nail) and directed by ShaunPaul. The duo is teaming up again for their upcoming ice hockey dramedy "The Independents" Joe and ShaunPaul have made appearances in many television commercials for such companies as Comcast, A.D. Moyer, and Ford Cars to name a few. Behind the camera the duo has produced and directed several shorts and music videos of note.
Joe's IMDB
Shaunpaul's IMDb
What we need to buy
Links to projects we worked on:
Specifications for the Dragon
What we have:
What we need:
***see more projects in the video gallery
Real world rental prices: