Thank you for lending a moment of your time to check out the project!

My name is Parker Salenfriend, I'm the writer/director of a film in post-production with the [working] title of Exhaustion Lines.

By contributing, you'll help us to finish and put out a project that has been the result of a lot of hours spent between a lot of creative and motivated young filmmakers.

Exhaustion Lines is a fever dream comedy chronicling the urgent travels of our "commuter," as he drives down dark roads and empty highways towards an unclear destination.

He carries all of his material possessions in the backseat of his car. It's working well enough for him until he almost falls asleep behind the wheel and very nearly crashes.

Sleep deprived, cranky, and unreasonable, he reassesses the situation, opting to pull off the interstate and maintain focus on a singular goal: sleep just long enough to be able to keep on driving.

What follows his attempts at shuteye is an outrageous series of absurd setbacks and obstacles, ranging from minor inconveniences to major moments of hostility from people and scenarios that have little in common besides keeping him awake.

Set in contemporary Los Angeles, Exhaustion Lines seeks to turn a city with a lot of character into a strange, seedy, dimly lit, and otherworldly backdrop. The story takes place over a single night, and the subjective otherworldliness only increases the later it gets.

The city may seem dire, but we want to capture the absurdity in ordinary things like impossible to interpret parking signs, security guards who seem to take pleasure in your misfortune, and most importantly, how Jay handles all of it.

The characters of Exhaustion Lines are all just as frustrated as he is, for their own reasons.

Some are superficial, while others are incredibly consequential and probably ripple outward from multifaceted societal issues. Everyone here has their own reason for not being able to sleep.

We shot Exhaustion Lines in late 2022 and came back to the project in early 2023. It's been a labor of love (and occasionally a tepid shrug of acceptance) for a lot of talented people. 

In order to finish it at the standard that we feel would best do it justice, and recoup some of the lingering production costs, we've determined launching this Seed & Spark is the best course of action. So, our remaining costs are as follows. In post production, we still have:

Sound mixing, sound re-recording, & foleying

Sound is incredibly important to making the experience of a good movie all the more fulfilling (unless it's a silent film, but we're making a talkie!) We need to mix and master our field recordings, sound effects, music, background sound, and more, as well as re-record some audio that we didn't get. We also need to foley a variety of different sounds, everything from a slamming car door to the sound of a phone hitting the pavement (spoiler alert) is on the table.

Color correction & grading

Exhaustion Lines has a good variety of set-pieces and visual intrigue, and a good color grade really breathes a lot of life into the images we all worked so hard on bringing to life the first time.

VFX to address the elephant in the room

License plates! Company logos! Random shit we don't know if we can include in the film! These are lingering annoyances that would be lovely to fix.

Then, we aim to submit the project to festivals. 

Film festival submissions are costly, but the only restriction to making our way through a festival circuit is a lack of capital. We want to maximize our chances of the project doing well.

We need to hit 80% of our goal to get anything. And to effectively see the project through the finish line, we're asking for a total of $4750, because while our initial campaign didn't hit its goal, we still made the movie. And that decision has its consequences (I kid, I kid).

Here's a breakdown of our expenses:

Remaining production expenses: $2750

• Equipment rentals
• Insurance
• Production design
• Catering (meals for people over 12-13 core nights, 10-15 people per night)
• Transportation costs

Initial post production: $2000

• Sound mixing
• Sound re-recording
• Foleying
• Color correction
• Final color grade and film emulation
• Various VFX

The more money we raise, the more that can be allocated towards paying off the initial production tab, and consequently, additional resources that'll really bring this project to life.

Don't sweat it if you can't contribute!

Every penny helps, but so does sharing the project and engaging with us. Tell us what you think about the project, venture over to the "team" section of the page, and let us know that your friend or family member worked on it.

Also, please consider following the campaign! If we gain at least 250 followers on Seed & Spark, we'll have access to certain filmmaker perks that the site offers.

Thank you for checking us out, we’ll be showing you Exhaustion Lines as soon as we possibly can.

Follow us on Instagram: @exhaustionlines