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Updates:
1. Due to concerns from the LGBT and feminist communities, and also because of budgetary constraints and creative reasons, I've decided to drop the LGBT and feminist elements from We Put the World to Sleep's concept. Since the three main characters in the movie embark on a mission to bring everything to an end, we would have to be extremely careful to not portray the gays and the feminists as destructive, which would paralyse the creative process and wouldn't allow us to go fully psycho and do a really dangerous movie. So the best solution is to remove the LGBT and feminist elements from the concept to not risk harming those communities, and focus on the apocalyptic goal with no restraints. Adrian Țofei
2. You can now invest in We Put the World to Sleep, with a contract, and receive profit from the movie’s revenues, plus associate or executive producer credits, plus join the team at all the international film festivals! Check out the investment page for more info: weputtheworldtosleep.com/invest
3. Our Indiegogo campaign is over. Thanks a lot to all of you who supported it! We raised 1% of the movie's minimum $100,000 budget. We already have $10,000 from two investors, so we need $89,000 more to make the movie. And for that, Adrian Țofei decided to accept new investments. Let us know if you're interested in investing!
4. We're far from the minimum $100,000 goal, but we'll make the movie no matter what, by finding alternative ways of financing. Your contributions won't be lost! Every extra dollar matters and brings us closer to starting the production!
5. We'll do the movie in a way so that it cannot be used by the far-right to accuse the LGBTQ or the black community of being violent. The characters are idealistic and non-violent, their goal is positive, venturing on a metaphysical quest for ending world's pain.
6. Adrian Țofei is determined to not portray any lesbian stereotypes. Two women fall in love the same way two men fall in love the same way a woman and a man fall in love. He's also determined to not give the characters aggressive, war-oriented attributes. On the contrary - sensitivity, affection, care, vulnerability - the things that make us all wonderful.
7. We didn't do a pitch video because we cannot be all together in it (Erisse lives in the US, Duru & Adrian live in Europe), and we do not have the time and the resources for a video that would reflect the movie's ambitions (we prefer using them for the actual film).
8. We've recently added cheaper perks and hidden the old ones that have been claimed, that's why most of them have zero claims now. Hidden claims: 1x$500, 1x$150, 2x$75, 3x$35, 1x$15. We add the IMDb credits in one to three days from being claimed.
What We Aim to Achieve
This movie has to shake the world. A world that is too comfortable in accepting the status-quo of discrimination, inequality, intolerance, speciesism, nationalism, pain, suffering, violence, abuse, irrational thinking, hypocrisy, corruption, greed, ignorance and so many other problems. The list never ends. And most likely it never will, since us as a species evolved via conflict/natural selection. We have it on our DNA. The capitalistic system is based on it. We cannot even enjoy a movie or a story that has no conflict.
So we put together two women as the leads (the world loves male superiority), with different skin colors (the world loves white supremacy), different nationalities (the world loves nationalism), we make their characters lovers (the world loves heterosexuality only), we give them principles and ideals (the world loves messy thinking), and we make them save the world from its miserable existence by bringing everything to an end! (the world loves fighting for survival - the survival of the fittest and the crushing of the vulnerable)
We Put the World to Sleep has to premiere in one of the world's top film festivals (Cannes, Sundance, TIFF, Venice, Berlin, Telluride, SXSW, Tribeca), secure a top distributor, travel the festival circuit and enter movie theaters around the world. That's the only way it can make a difference. But it requires a relatively big budget, and no production company would invest money and let us do this dangerous movie the way we want, the way it should be done!
For authenticity, Adrian Țofei plans to do it based on controlled improvisation, just like he did his first feature, the award-winning and critically-acclaimed Be My Cat: A Film for Anne. Because no writer can 100% imagine how an event or discussion evolves in real life, without putting himself in that situation. And also the actors would know in advance what will happen and what they have to say, they won't discover everything during filming, limiting the naturalness. And we don't want just good acting, we want audiences to be blown away by the authenticity, to say "wow, are you sure this is just a movie? it looks so real!". All this makes it very hard for us to do it with a production company. They want scripts. This and the movie's dangerous anti-system concept are the main reasons why we need and ask for your support! Join us in putting the world to sleep!
Who We Are
Adrian Țofei | Actor & Filmmaker | Official Site | IMDb | Facebook | Twitter
We Put the World to Sleep: Director / Producer / Writer (concept) / Supporting Actor
Adrian Țofei was born on July 20, 1987 in Rădăuți, Romania. His mother, Dorina Țofei, supported him watching movies from an early age, and later, in adolescence, Adrian started spending hours each day researching film history as a hobby. He also took acting lessons, performed in high school plays and in 2007 went on to study Ion Cojar‘s acting method at Lower Danube University of Galați, then continued in 2010 with a master’s degree in acting at Spiru Haret University of Bucharest. During 2008-2010, Adrian also directed, produced, wrote and performed in various plays, most notably The Monster, a one-man-show which was selected to numerous theatre festivals.
At the end of 2012, inspired by the success of his one-man-show and a connection he made between Cojar’s method and the found footage concept, Adrian Țofei plunged into filmmaking and film acting as the director, producer, writer (concept) and star of Romania’s first found footage horror feature film, Be My Cat: A Film for Anne. The movie premiered at the 2015 Fantasporto International Film Festival and went on to win numerous awards and critical acclaim, including Best Film at the 2015 A Night of Horror International Film Festival in Sydney and Best Actor for Adrian at the 2016 Nashville Film Festival. I was called "terrifying" and "a modern Peeping Tom" by Austin Chronicle, "potentially revolutionary and dangerous" by Dread Central, a “disturbing found footage masterpiece" by 28DLA and “the most revolutionary found footage film since Blair Witch Project” by ANOH. It was also included in Dread Central's Top 5 Best Horror Movies of 2016, Blumhouse's Top 5 New Intelligent Found Footage Films You Need to See and Audiences Everywhere's Top 50 Best Horror Movies of the 2000s. Artsploitation said that Adrian did "the most believable movie psychopath since Normal Bates". Adrian Țofei is currently developing We Put the World to Sleep and he's also set to direct the upcoming female antihero thriller drama Good Girl.
Erisse Peterson | Actress & Musician | IMDb | Facebook | Twitter
We Put the World to Sleep: Lead Actress (playing Erika) (improvised audition below)
Erisse Peterson was born on March 7th, 1993 in Stone Mountain, Georgia, USA. She got her start in acting at an early age, after her family relocated to Los Angeles, California in 1996. As a child actor, Erisse was represented by Bob Feldman (father of actor Corey Feldman) and studied ballet, tap and jazz dance.
Later, Erisse Peterson attended Mississippi School of the Arts, the state’s only residential arts high school. She intensively studied theatre arts under her instructors, Dr. Robert Brooks and Tammy Stanford, and performed in numerous stage plays. She also developed a passion for all aspects of film, including directing and film scoring. During 2011-2013, Erisse attended Mississippi State University, where she studied Philosophy & Religion. Erisse Peterson joined We Put the World to Sleep in 2015, when the project was called I Put the World to Sleep, after winning the international casting call (check out her powerful improvised audition above). She recently ventured into music as well, releasing her first EP, Somethingmissing, under the stage name Planes.
Duru Yücel Țofei | Actress & Screenwriter | IMDb | Facebook | Twitter
We Put the World to Sleep: Lead Actress (playing Deniz)
Duru Yücel Țofei was born on July 16th, 1986 in Izmir, Turkey. A very expressive child, she always had a playful existence which later proved itself when she sang in front of the whole class in primary school and staged impressions of all her teachers during secondary school. She studied theatre for a year when she was 10, which led to her playing two different characters in the play that was staged at the end of the year. From that moment on, she came to know very clearly the fact that she wanted to be an actress.
Having inherited her mother’s talent in languages, Duru also developed a similar interest and chose to study English-Turkish Interpretation and Translation in college. But her biggest passion never stopped haunting her, and following the university years, in order to have an acting training and bigger opportunities, she moved from Izmir to Istanbul and enrolled at The Studio Players, where she received three years of acting and art education under Şahika Tekand and Esat Tekand. In 2014, she performed multiple times in the play named Becoming A Rhinoceros 2.014 with The Studio Players. During 2012-2017, Duru also acted in various TV series, commercials, and a short movie which traveled to Cannes. She also likes singing, especially jazz, and has a demo she handed out just to her family and friends. Duru Yucel Țofei is currently preparing for her role in We Put the World to Sleep and also co-writing the script for the upcoming feature film Good Girl.
Associate Producers:
Jay Sorensen | Producer & Foreign Service Officer | IMDb | Facebook
Danha Yunes | Actress & Producer | IMDb | Facebook
What We Need & What You Get
We need an ideal budget of $300,000 and a minimum budget of $100,000 to do the movie the right way. All the funds will be spent on pre-production (preparation), production (filming), post-production (editing) and film festivals. Here are some of the major expenses: cast & crew payments, filming & editing equipment, international traveling to shoot in various locations around the world, production design, rentals, explosions and/or big fires, accommodation and other basic necessities during filming, special/visual effects, preparing & submitting the movie to film festivals, attending the festivals and promoting the screenings.
Check out all the perks we offer! Depending on your contribution, you get social media shout-outs, links to stream and download the movie, official thanks, special thanks and very special thanks credits, signed DVDs, custom t-shirts (pictured above), Skype video conferences with the main team (Adrian, Erisse & Duru), and even official producer credits, with you joining us at the world premiere and all the film festivals, where you can be a star on the red carper and interact with the world's top filmmakers & actors! Of course, you can also contribute anonymously and/or without claiming any perk by clicking "Back It". If you'd like to have the items in a perk that includes Skyping, but you have social anxiety and cannot connect with video, just let us know and we'll connect via live texting or email.
What Are the Risks
In case we don't reach the $300,000 goal, we'll find ways to do the movie with less money, such as changing the concept, removing expensive scenes, using cheaper equipment, reducing the shooting locations, the special/visual effects and the cast & crew payments. But we cannot do it with less than $100,000. That's the absolute minimum required for this type of production. And just in case we don't even reach the minimum, have no worries, your contribution is not lost, we're gonna launch another campaign and/or find alternative ways of financing and make the movie no matter what!
Adrian Țofei did his first movie, Be My Cat: A Film for Anne, on a $10,000 budget, and the entire experience was traumatizing for everyone involved, despite all the awards and festivals and critical acclaim. Nobody was paid, they barely had money for food during filming, couldn't afford better equipment and visual effects, Adrian got anxiety because of doing everything by himself, couldn't submit the movie to more festivals, get a big distributor and reach a bigger audience, so it's definitely a situation we don't want to see repeating.
Update 1: We received a message from someone worried that the neo-conservatives might use the movie to point fingers at the LGBTQ community and accuse them of being violent. Creator Adrian Țofei was aware of this danger and that's why the film's characters are idealistic and non-violent, and their goal is positive. They won't go on a rampage. It will be a metaphysical quest for ending world's pain. If anyone will blame the left or the libertarians or the black community or the women or the LGBT community of being violent because of this movie, they will only expose their own stupidity.
Update 2: We've also received a concern about the way a male director might portray lesbians. Adrian Țofei is determined to not portray any stereotypes. Two women fall in love the same way two men fall in love the same way a woman and a man fall in love. He's also determined to not give the characters aggressive, war-oriented attributes. On the contrary - sensitivity, affection, care, vulnerability - the things that make us all wonderful.
What Else You Can Do to Help
If you cannot contribute financially, or simply want to do more, please share the campaign on your social media or via email (use the sharing tools provided by Indiegogo), talk to your friends and family, write on your blog/website, talk about it on your YouTube/TV show, or do anything else comes to your mind that would help us put the world to sleep!