Short Summary
The Dead End tells the story of Marie, a grieving young woman who upon returning to her Grandmother's house one last time comes across a final gift left just for her, a treasure hunt.
As Marie falls deeper and deeper into the treasure hunt she finds herself reading stories from her Grandmother's life and begins to see a thread emerge that seems to tie all the pieces together - the appearance of The Grim Reaper, Death.
This short presents the fives stages of grief in a very literal way and looks to showcase each section of the story in it's own visually distinct way through a number of styles including digital animation, puppetry, stop motion and traditional hand-drawn animation.
What We Need & What You Get
Going to this project as students with very little available resources we wanted to launch this campaign as a way to fund different aspects of this project:
- Costuming: As such a big part of this short is the character of The Grim Reaper we really want to make their presence felt in the film and to really create a costume that is synonymous with what that character looks like in your heads and has been presented as for centuries at this point
- Equipment: A large part of this film is it's animated component, the script features 4 separate styles of animation that all require their own individual equipment and materials so we're hoping to be able to fund those aspects of production and make them look as good as they possible can.
- Production Design: to better create locations and give the film a more authentic look we wanted to be able to by props and furniture to help create the world of the short.
The Impact
If you choose to support this film it means you're supporting a story that aims to start a conversation on grief and the way it changes us all. Death is something that never arrives with warning and can leave a scar that while not visible can rest behind your eyes forever. This film aims to shine a light on those hard to swallow feelings, break them down in an informal way and more than anything just serves to let the viewer know that they aren't alone, be that in a physically in their life or in a more cognitive way.
Risks & Challenges
As I'm sure is no surprise to anyone reading this in early 2021 the most major risk facing this production is the current pandemic, as we have a pretty small crew running this ship it means we are being super vigilant to maintain our social distancing measures and enforcing a tight structure for the production as all parts are entirely necessary here and the film isn't made if we are even one set of hands short.
To better remedy this risk and air on side of precaution we're testing the cast & crew before the shoot and have set up a back up string of filming dates.
in addition to having back up dates for filming we have also set up the animation process in such a way that can be worked on from the safety of each crew members own property free of any risk of contamination.
Other Ways You Can Help
I know that these aren't exactly the best of times to ask for some money towards my short film project what with the world as we know it all cooped up at home or worse, so if you are unable to contribute towards this I would ask that you just spread the word to your friends and family - share this page on social media and help us get the word out.
Thank You - Jordan Mittoo