The above is my latest film Fragility, nominated for the Canadian Cinema Editors Student Merit Award. This next film is much bigger and more ambitious.
The Film
The Library of Babble is a surrealist 17 page script that I wrote using the premise from Luis Buñuel's The Exterminating Angel where a group of people finds themselves inexplicably unable to leave a library. A scene from my script won the Original Screenplay, Raindance on Campus Competition at the University of Toronto where I met most of my cast and crew. We hope for our location to be the beautiful Hart House Library in the University of Toronto.
This will be a tense and exciting film that keeps you guessing. The audience will see the clashing characters learning to cope with the madness of their situation and each other. Their disconnect with the outside world and distress will begin to affect their dreams (and nightmares), relationships with each other and ideologies. As events get progressively stranger the characters lose their humanity and self control. Principal themes of the story will be man's search for meaning where it may not exist, how people react and perceive collective experiences differently, and what we become capable of when estranged from the "real world".
Ultimately we hope to be able to make this film right and submit it to major film festivals around the world including the Toronto International Film Festival, Locarno International Film Festival, Venice International Film Festival, and Sundance. This is not only a passion project for us, but also a chance to showcase our talent at an unprecedented level.
Following the screenwriting competition we filmed the scene for Raindance. This was shot one afternoon with zero budget and a then potential cast and crew. We could not finish the scene because the batteries on both DSLRs died and we don't own spares (this is why we need you). All of the lighting is either natural or the room's. The cast of this rough shoot will not be the same as the final production due to our actors' availability.
https://goo.gl/OFm0xL - Winning Scene Script pdf.
The Team
Production
https://vimeo.com/dylanjames
www.youtube.com/shaqhosein
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH5nqMNhBrWgkHZf3Sfqhww - The Varsity
Post Production
Marko Cvijetinovic is our headless Actor and Visual Effects Artist. Some of the strongest scenes in the film will require some basic special effects mixed with optical ones to bring the surrealist elements to life. Marko is a self taught artist who has working knowledge of 3D CGI, but whose strength is as a compositor. He is currently working for MARZ, a software for use company that is linked to the Intelligent Creatures VFX studio in Toronto. He hopes to break into the VFX industry in the near future.
Combined we are well rounded in our understanding of video media and pull expertise from different branches of the medium. It is our common ground as young driven UofT students and shared objective to be working creatives that make us work well together with understanding and determination.
What We Need
We mostly need the money to get equipment that U of T does not have. Luckily they are giving us all production equipment free of charge; boom poles, C-stands, clapper, gels, apple boxes and sandbags.
We are a cast and crew of eight, but none of us own a car so we will pay someone to pickup and drop off the equipment from the rental houses.
Part of the budget will go towards a warm lunch, snacks and refreshments whilst shooting.
Props will mostly consist of our own possessions (we are students ourselves) anything else will be paid for with the extra money which will also cover Indiegogo's 4% cut and the mailing of DVDs & photos.
Festival application fees will be paid for on my own.
A Big Thank You For Reading
I wish to thank you personally for taking the interest to look at this campaign (for being on Indiegogo alone). It is really a wonderful thing when the internet can help young individuals receive funding to fulfil their projects with a budget much harder to gather on their own.
Even if you cannot contribute financially it would be a great help to share this page with others. The more exposure we receive the more likely we are to make this short film the way we want to.