Festivals & Screenings
- by 183:908031724
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- 25 May, 2022
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We're gonna need a bigger boat!
Hello all,
Thank you so much for all your support so far. We have some exciting updates. The screening on 18thMay was a real success. I was really quite afraid that no one but my Mum would turn up… I couldn’t have been more wrong. The room was packed with faces of friends and strangers who had turned up to give their support to us and the film. We ran out of space for adding chairs and had some of the audience standing at the back in order to see the film.
There was laughter and gasps in all the right places. Personal highlights for me were hearing a lady in the audience say out loud “Don’t go up the stairs” when our hero is drawn further into the house and later a man in the front row say out loud “What the fuck” when a certain character makes their entrance.
I have some footage from the screening (including said moments) that I will endeavour to upload to this site soon.
We sold plenty of merchandise all of which is directly funding film two (which we are deep in preproduction for a September shoot). We have several perks and merchandise available for sale on our crowd funding site which you can find on this link https://igg.me/at/brownsource/x/29232499#/
We have already raised our production budget for film 2… THANK YOU!
But please don’t stop your support there. We know we can make the next film look and sound even more professional if we invest in some (very expensive) equipment. It will take us to the next level. We know we have the ability to tell a good story, we know how to tell that story visually, we know we have the ability to shoot well, on time, on budget and work well with actors. We just need this kit!... and you are helping us to get it.
Plans have solidified to make the five shorts tie up into a feature film with five independent stories that link in together to form a cohesive whole with a narrative throughline. We still plan to shoot them one at a time in order to keep filming manageable and be able to raise a production budget each time.
We are currently considering forming a limited liability company, which will incorporate all the shoots for the feature film and inviting an investor to invest the capital we need to buy said equipment in return for shares of the company (or points in the feature to use ‘movie’ terms) and potentially see a financial return on their investment if we gain distribution for the feature. They would, in fact, become a producer on the feature (and in turn on each of the shorts as they are produced). If you are interested in becoming involved at that level, please email timbrown@brownsourcefilms.com or phone 07977531413 and I will set up a meeting with us all to discuss the detail.
In the meantime, please continue to show your support. Buy the movie https://vimeo.com/709046730
We would invite those who would like experience on a film shoot to contact us as we are happy to have helpful hands on the set in September. You will gain experience as well as a film making credit on imdb.
Thank again for all your support so far and we look forward to sharing our adventures in film making with you in the future.
T & J
The film is ‘in the can’, the venue is booked for the premiere. My lovely lady had built us this rather snazzy website and I have made efforts to start social media engagement (something utterly alien to me!) We have entered the film into a fair number of horror specialist film festivals, firstly because it offers us the opportunity to watch the film with a paying audience, secondly and more importantly it offers us the opportunity to meet other filmmaking peers who may want to become involved in our journey as we tentatively head into preproduction on our next film (current working titles flit between ‘The Lonely Body’ and ‘Dead lonely’). Another reason to spend out on entering the film festival circuit is that once the film is selected for programming then we can claim those all-important IMDb credits which are so important for our upcoming cast… it’s a little bit of repayment for all the hard work and effort they have to us during production and their patience in waiting for the cut as we have had to fit editing in around day job commitments.
The next steps are very exciting for us. The writing process is the unbridled part of production. The brain brings forth all the ideas without all the constraints financial and other difficulties that will later bring about the inevitable compromises during production. Jacob and I are using the beat board facility on (the screenwriting software) Final Draft to map out al the ideas coming forth before putting pen to paper on an actual script. Our writing process is pretty fast, ideas swapped band the stories mapped out over discussions in person or on zoom until we have a fair idea of where the story is going. Jacob usually then starts writing out different scenes in long hand (very long hand usually) and sends them over for me to start beating them into a script form shape. We then get back working together to refine the drafts into the script we want to shoot… during the lead up to the shoot of The Neighbours the draft kept changing right up to production, probably driving our cast a bit potty! At least we stuck to the script during shooting… mostly.
The thought of the business side of things is weighing on me a little. All our savings and a fair bit of credit card spanking went into the Neighbours. We’re looking into crowdfunding possibilities for the next shoot. I think we need five or six shorts of increasing sophistication before we start looking at professional funding going forward. Jacob is going to have a look at some of the filmmaking grants available from places such as the lottery fund, but I would assume we will need a bigger portfolio for that having not come out of a prestigious film school?
As we take The Neighbours through the festival circuit a large part of the networking effort will be to find a producing partner. Neither Jacob or I are naturals at the business areas of the filmmaking business, and I think finding a producing partner will be the figurative third leg of our stool.
Now The Neighbours edit is complete and while we go about writing the next one, we hope to have some time to organise and share some of the behind the scenes recording we made throughout production (often shot by my son Ben) so make sure to follow and keep checking on our Facebook and Instagram pages for those.
Stay tuned for further updates from both of us.
We hope that you have the chance to watch our short film ‘The Neighbours’. As lifelong film (especially horror) fans we decided it was long overdue that we start to tell the stories that we’ve been dreaming up over all these years.
Becoming a filmaker is NOT an easy task. It’s very easy to find reasons not to do something challenging, we decided it was time to ignore all those reasons, fiscal and otherwise, and start making movies. The Neighbours is the first narrative film we've made together.
We set ourselves the challenge to write the film in two weeks, cast in two weeks and gave ourselves a weekend to shoot. The time scale of the shoot was extremely ambitious, we ended up bringing our main actor back for an additional day and a half and even then it was a very time pressured shoot. Lesson learned for the future!
Post production has been done by stealing days in between working and family commitments over the past few months working on home computer equipment that is woefully underpowered for the job. I think that OUR Neighbours have probably learned a fewchoice swear words through the walls throughout the editing process?
Going forward we hope to make two short films a year until we have a small body of work with which our skills will have grown throughout the productions and then being work on a feature. We have a number of scripts in development and are in the process of location scouting for a shoot this September.
We are very excited to see our film, The Neighbours, play on the big screen with an audience. We hope, very much, that you enjoy our twisted little tale. The film may be very nasty but we are actually rather nice people! We hope to get the chance to meet you and share further movie making adventures with you in the future.
All the best
Tim & Jacob