The Man in the Woods takes its influence from films like Children of Men (2006), and The Survivalist (2015). A mysterious virus spreads throughout the globe after the return of the first unmanned shuttle to Saturn. The world's people fall into a panic as the virus seems to have no cure, and world leaders have decided to ultimately ended up bombing and destroying ourselves in the chaos. Now, years later, nature has taken the planet back over and only a small percentage of the population survived the event. Those who were infected now have become something much worse then death and lie within the darkness of night.
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The film shows us a day to day in the lives of three survivors who reside in overgrown woods where they call home now. Eric Windsler (The main protagonist) is a survivor that is haunted by the events of his wife and child's death in the chaos of the world crumbling. He blames himself for there deaths and slowly starts to lose faith in trying to survive in the new world. Struggling to survive, and fearful of what lurks in the woods at night, the other two survivors that where saved by Eric, Kyle and Jen start to question Eric's trust as they go about there routines while searching out into the wasteland.
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The film not only expertly weaves horror elements with the thrilling dramatics of human survival and conflict - but would also appeal to many audiences including fans of horror/suspense films and at the same time, fans of dramatic cinema. The idea is to create a unique vision by combining old school film-making with cutting edge digital techniques. “We want this campaign to really engage the fans, giving them as much access to the process as possible". All of this, presented through a mainstream and completely accessible cinematic experience that will hopefully keep audiences on the edge of their seats, and keep their hearts pounding up until the very end.
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The Man in the Woods has been an incredibly ambitious project and a grassroots experiment that has relied heavily on favors and individuals donating their time. $7,000 may seem like a lot of money but it is nothing in the world of film making. We worked out our budget and came to the conclusion that this is the absolute minimum of what is needed to make this film happen. The backing from Indiegogo will help expedite the work needed to help finish this film. Being that one of our biggest goals is to make this film as realistic and detailed as possible, we came up with a complete list of things we will need to create this film to the best of its ability's. Your money will go towards equipment, sets, post-production expenses, props, wardrobe, make-up, and other production expenses. Here is a short description of the things that your contribution will go toward.
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July Production - A large portion of the money we raise here will go towards covering the costs of re-assembling our cast and crew for a few days of filming in July as well as the cost for craft services, props, the expensive camera equipment we are renting, and location costs. We are choosing to shoot this film in 4K on the Red Dragon because we feel that the RED brand of cameras would be the best and most efficient way to shoot this film in the style and format we are shooting for.
VFX - We need more blood! We need some special effects to enhance several key sequences in the film - spraying blood, car crashes, set extensions, and the main Antagonist - you know, all those awesome elements to any good genre film. Some effects we can do ourselves but some things we just cant do without a little help. We plan on hiring the amazing VFX team at PlayFight to help with key scenes in the film, Check out some of there VFX reels here!
Original Score - Film music is an important part of the film, to us its like the cherry on top that binds the film together. Our good friend and talent music composer Dayton Eisentrager is going to be scoring the film. He is an amazing music creator who has worked on several projects with us, and we know his talent is going to be key in the production of the film. You can check out some of his music below.
Our official "In the Night" Poster! Wanna see some of our awesome rewards you can get? Check them out below or in our gallery!
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We believe in the power of a creative community. We want to connect with folks who support independent filmmaking and fans of post-apocalyptic films. This campaign is a chance for us to find each other and band together to not only make a great film, but to make sure that THE MAN IN THE WOODS can find it's way in the world. We chose the post-apocalyptic genre for this film because it is one of the best and most artistic avenues to show about society and the themes/difficult questions we face every single day.
As creative collaborators and friends we want to make movies together for the rest of our lives. With your help, we’ll be able to finish crafting an amazing and intense tale of survival, fear, and redemption.
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Rest assured
WE'VE DONE THIS BEFORE! We know exactly how much this film will cost to make, we already have our entire creative team on board, we've been through the stress of crazy on-set emergencies and last-minute tweaks in editing, and we've gotten very good at this. We shot a short film in January with a post-apocalyptic setting called
SELF that we spent about a month total with whole production and no budget, and it ended up getting around 12,000 views since we released it. So you can rest assured your money's going to a project that will get finished
on time,
under budget, and at a
high quality, far outstripping most indie films. To that end, our production team includes a core group of incredibly
talented and professional volunteers, generously donating their time, talents, and energies and allowing us to put more of our resources towards what really matters: making the film look and sound awesome and scary as hell.
If all goes to plan, we aim to have the film completed and ready for festival submissions by late February 2018. We will have a Red carpet event hosted here in Iowa around the middle of December- early January but after that the next step will be to submit the film to all the major film festivals in 2018 and 2019 as well as sending it to smaller festivals in order to reach as many people as possible. Finally the film will be published on YouTube and Vimeo in early 2019 so that everyone can enjoy this wonderful tale of survival.
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One of our biggest challenges is coordinating schedules. We only have a week to shoot and most of our cast members have additional obligations. We’re going to do our best to coordinate everyone’s availability, and we think we’ve figured out timing that works for most of the cast. Some risks include delay in production caused by; weather, illness or other reasons out of our control.
What I've learned over the years is that things always come up during production. Getting past those challenges and continue to move forward is what makes our production team successful! We'll do our best to get it done no matter what obstacles may get in our way. The Man in the Woods will get completed, just how long it takes depends on funds. While others may let some things get them down, that's when we, as a film team, become closer and move forward to our final goal.
Important Information About Rewards
· Some rewards may require additional paperwork (to protect us and you)
· Distribution schedule not finalized, but we’ll keep you posted.
Thank you for taking the time to visit our page. We have some cool incentives if you decide to pledge!
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If you can't find the spare cash to contribute, that doesn't mean you can’t help. Here's how:
- Contact us if you want to create something for the film such as art or music.
- If you're local in Iowa perhaps you can donate your time or equipment and get involved with the production.
- Follow us on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Google!
- Share on Facebook, Twitter, Google+. etc.
- Share the link with your friends and family.
