1st goal met!! Thank you so much, we're all beaming. The short can now officially happen -- and any additional funds will help us make it the best it can be. Our next goal is to hit $15,000 so we can afford a 4th shoot day! Thanks again everyone!!

Mel is on a road trip, collecting spells -- runic symbols imbued with magical properties. 

Some of these properties are quaint, others can alter the fabric of reality.

While some spells are hoarded by unhinged people in various states of affluence or disrepair, other spells lay dormant in the attics and basements of unwitting inheritors... scrawled on old cookbooks and teapots, carved beneath floorboards.

But most spells are passed down like old money, keeping industrious families and unseemly empires in power; violently or otherwise.

Mel has experienced firsthand what happens when these spells are kept hidden from the people who really need them. Walking a blurry line between vengeance and altruism, Mel is going to compile and release the world's first spellbook. To everyone.

Our short film finds the scrappy artist Mel deep in her journey, her diary-turned-spellbook filling up with some useful but otherwise inconsequential magic. We join her on a fast-paced heist that turns into a fast-paced fight, as a search inside a famous actor's LA home becomes a clumsy magical scuffle.

(Approximate runtime - 6 minutes.)

The Team

About Dom Fera (Writer/Director)...

• Dom is a writer, director, musician, and actor from New Jersey, living in Los Angeles. He graduated from NYU Tisch for Film & Television in 2014. He's had an audience for his self-produced short films, music, and animations on YouTube since 2006. Having just left a years-long position as Head of Video for the bands Pomplamoose & Scary Pockets, he's looking forward to making another short! 
• A Message from Dom: This short is very much my "shut up and make the kind of movie you keep saying you want to make" movie. I've always loved this stuff, and Spellbook is a streamlined mix of several ideas I've been unable to make over the last ten years. I want this short to confidently allude to a larger story, and serve as a proof of concept for a feature film or series -- because there's a lot more of Spellbook's world left to explore, and the best parts of Mel's story left to tell.

About Michael Kiaunis (Producer)...

• Born and raised in West Haven, Connecticut, Michael is a short film and music video producer and AD. He received a Film & Television Production degree from Emerson College in 2018. Having recently worked on various productions including Beauty and the Beast: Live, The Academy Awards, and many other live TV productions, he's looking forward to returning to produce another short with Dom. 

About Shannon Lee Barry ("Mel")...

• Shannon Lee Barry is an actor and poet, a graduate from the University of Texas at Austin now living in Los Angeles. With a captivating online presence that has garnered hundreds of thousands of followers and millions of views across TikTok and Instagram (@barry_happy), Shannon is celebrated for her expressiveness as a performer, as well as her emotive and soul-stirring poetry that can be found in her successful collection, “In the Event This Doesn't Fall Apart.” Having previously starred in Fera’s "See Through" and "Save This Thing", Shannon has proven to be a creative asset capable of delivering the charming and grounded performances needed for these heightened worlds and stories. 

About Chris Smith ("Arthur")...

• Chris W. Smith is a writer/director/performer with a love of sci-fi and comedy. He’s best known for his work as a Blue Man in Blue Man Group and as one half of the sketch comedy duo “Chris & Jack." Recently Chris co-starred in the Indie feature “Me, Myself, and the Void” alongside Jack De Sena and Kelly Marie Tran. He’s also an accomplished juggler having performed around the world and at numerous Lakers, Clippers, and UCLA halftime shows. (Also he was a ghost the whole time you were reading this. Supernatural twist!)

​What Your Money Will Do...

We're a small group of creatives that like to make big-feeling movies. That, unfortunately, requires money. We've budgeted that the best version of this short is going to cost around $15,000. We set our Indiegogo goal lower than this, as we have come up with some creative ways to cut some costs without impacting the overall story. That being said, if we were to exceed this goal, we would happily add that content back into the film.

Let's take a look at where the money from this campaign will go:

Here are some of the more costly aspects of this project:

• The Crew: As you can see, while some of the money goes locations, gear, and feeding the crew, most of your contributions will go to paying for people's time. Because that is really important! There are the on-set folks, but also the post-production team who will make the movie feel crisp and put on the last layer of polish and finishing touches.
• Location: The short takes place in one location - a rich actor's house. That means we'll be renting out a killer spot to shoot in for a couple days.
• Special Effects: We really want to honor the scuffed up and raw nature of Spellbook's particular brand of “magic-with-limits” -- meeting all of the short's special effects with as much of a practical approach as possible. Easily 90% of the gags are in-camera, physical tricks, hidden cuts, or altered props and costumes. 
  • Your donations will allow us enough shoot days to really dig in on each of these moments, and to even capture the non-magical stuff in the most interesting (time-consuming) ways.

Thank You.

We believe this is a story and a world that's worth visiting. And if you think you might agree, any little bit helps. Thanks so much for your time.

-The Spellbook Production Team