Hot Summer Daze
Chicago, Illinois | Series
LGBTQ, Teen
Hot Summer Daze is a sex positive dramedy web series that follows three teens within the limbo of the summer after high school graduation as their journeys to self-discovery intertwine through scandals, hookups, and heartbreaks.
Hot Summer Daze
Chicago, Illinois | Series
LGBTQ, Teen
1 Campaigns | California, United States
Green Light
This campaign raised $24,002 for production. Follow the filmmaker to receive future updates on this project.
40 supporters | followers
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Hot Summer Daze is a sex positive dramedy web series that follows three teens within the limbo of the summer after high school graduation as their journeys to self-discovery intertwine through scandals, hookups, and heartbreaks.
About The Project
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
Mission Statement
The Story
Hot Summer Daze follows Alex, Paige and Riley, three seniors graduating from Catholic High School in the suburbs of Chicago. After forming an unlikely bond Freshman year and becoming inseparable, they now face their greatest challenges yet - a masturbation video scandal, identity crises, sexual exploration, and the complex bond of female friendship all the while their impending separation looms overhead.
Wild Honey Pictures, co-founded by Jenna Larson and Mitchy McGhan, focuses on spotlighting stories of women and minorities with an authentic and relatable voice. We strongly believe in the power of filmmaking as a vehicle to further our understanding of today’s culture. By focusing on those who are underrepresented and frequently overlooked by mainstream media, we are able to create a dialogue, foster growth, and spark change within specific communities as well as within society as a whole. From development through distribution, Wild Honey Pictures works with collaborators to create sophisticated, diverse, and high quality content fit for a wide audience. Their most recent short film Her First Time created in collaboration with Adam & Eve has ammassed over 13 million views and their short film Prom Night was an Official Selection at the Palm Springs Cinema Diverse LGBTQ Film Festival as well as Reeling: Chicago LGBTQ Film Festival. They've also worked with Sony Music on a collaboration with The Weeknd ft. Gesaffelstein.
Founded in 2010 by Nelly Castillo and Joan Pla, Vendetta Entertainment is a full-service creative production company based in Los Angeles, California with global reach.
Our ethos is to be an advocate for talent, equality and diversity. We are proudly pledging to support female directors and crew. Creativity and work ethics should define anyone’s career regardless of their color, origin, ethnicity, gender or age. We are members of Women In Film, National Association of Latino Producers (NALIP) and Free the Bid.
Vendetta boasts an extensive portfolio of projects including but not limited to – commercials, narrative, digital content, music videos and photography. We have worked with brands and companies such as Sony Music, Universal Music, El Rey Networks, Netflix, Hola! US, Elle Magazine, Cosmopolitan and eyewear brand Hawkers Co. The list of prominent personalities we have worked with include Eva Longoria, Zoe Saldaña, Rita Moreno, Gisele Bundchen, Paula Echevarria, David Bisbal, Bunbury, Carlos Rivera, Camila, the cast of Netflix’s One Day at a Time and others.
In our experience, the key to any successful production is a balance between effective communication and acquired creative-resources, which allow us to achieve the highest quality visual products.
We are excited to be partnering with Erika Lust, an indie adult filmmaker who has become world-renowned for helping re-invent the genre of of pornography with her project XConfessions. In an industry that mostly refuses to offer a true representation of sex, Erika's focus on female pleasure, cinematic values, diversity, and ethics within the production process, have changed how pornography is consumed.
We believe we are the best team to tell this story about young women discovering themselves because, simply put, we are those women. In a world where the vast majority of shows about young women are created by straight middle aged men, we want to break barriers and create authentic characters that will resonate with the current generation of women facing similar universal struggles.
Often times, young girls learn to belittle and degrade fellow females with the idea that sex is taboo and your sexuality is something to be ashamed of. We are working with Erika Lust, an indie feminist adult cinema company, in order to offer a space for women to watch complex female characters that feel genuine, and relatable. Our goal is not to only tell an effective and emotional story, but also to spotlight underrepresented communities.
Hot Summer Daze will live on Jenna Larson’s YouTube channel, which has a combined total of 45 million views and over 300,000 subscribers. Her film Prom Night was an official selection at the Palm Springs Cinema Diverse LGBTQ Film Festival and Reeling Chicago LGBTQ Film Festival with over 2.6 million views on YouTube and her most recent short film, Her First Time, has 12 million views.
Women
Hot Summer Daze is written and directed by female filmmakers who, like the characters, have been through the ups and downs of teenage angst, identity crises, and self discovery. We’ve created relatable female friends who have flaws, sexual desires, and complex relationships with themselves and others.
LGBTQIA
The LGBTQIA community will be drawn to the web series as a source of authentic representation created by a queer filmmaker. Our goal is to normalize queer culture in hopes of creating a more inclusive perception of the LGBTQIA community.
Millennials
As creators, we are a part of the generation that we are creating for, which is outside of the norm in mainstream media. Our generation’s voice isn’t portrayed authentically and we are changing that!
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
Wages for feminist filmmakers
Costs $12,000
We don't believe people should work for free which is why we need to pay our crew!
Location, Location, Location
Costs $1,500
Venue & Location rental.
Feed & Nourish Crew
Costs $1,500
Hard working crew needs to eat!
Movie Magic!
Costs $10,500
Production Design, Camera & GE Equipment, Sound Recording, Hard Drives... etc
Post Production
Costs $2,500
Post production sound, post editing, post color, etc
Insurance!
Costs $2,000
Insurance! Let's keep crew & equipment insured and safe!
Cash Pledge
Costs $0
Direct link:
Share this update!
About This Team
Jenna Larson is a writer and director based in sunny Los Angeles. A graduate of the Cinema Art + Science program at Columbia College Chicago, Jenna has written and directed projects that have amassed a combined 45 million views on her YouTube channel that has over 310,000 subscribers to date. She believes in creating relatable and authentic content for women and the LGBTQIA community.
Her directing style is naturalistic and personal. She focuses on narratives about human connection, belonging, and growing up as well as stories based in the LGBT community. Her first feature film as a writer is currently in Development and is projected to go into production in late 2020. Jenna’s experience as an actress allows her to connect with actors on a much deeper level as a director.
Mitchy McGhan is a Los Angeles based producer. She is a graduate from Columbia College Chicago and received her bachelor's of arts in Cinema Art + Science in 2017. As a producer, Mitchy wants to tell unique stories that resonate with audiences and believes that the representation of ethnic minorities and those who are a part of the LGBTQ community need to be portrayed on screen. Her most recent projects include: Her First Time, Prom Night, Sparked and Jeong as well as a music video collaboration with Sony Music and The Weeknd.
Mitchy & Jenna's film Prom Night was an Official Selection at the Palm Springs LGBTQ Film Festival as well as the Reeling: Cinema Diverse Chicago LGBTQ Film Festival. Their most recent film, Her First Time was a collaboration with Adamandeve.com and has ammassed over 13 million views.
Born in Veracruz, Mexico and based in Los Angeles, California; Nelly Castillo is multi-hyphenated creative and founder of VENDETTA ENTERTAINMENT. Nelly excels at bringing projects and visions to fruition. Some of her credits include producing music videos for EDM artists Tritonal, high-profile celebrity photoshoots and creating a full comedy sketch show titled ‘Jump The Wall’ which led to writing original comedy content for John Leguizamo’s Facebook Watch Channel (EOP Comedy) with over 1 million views! As a producer she has also worked with artists such as Eva Longoria, Zoe Saldana, Rita Moreno, Roselyn Sanchez, Giselle Bundchen, Amber Valetta, Chef Aaron Sanchez, Gloria Calderon- Kellet and others. She has managed teams of over 50 people and cultivated prominent clients such as Sony Music, Netflix, Hola USA magazine, Hawkers Co, Elle Spain, Cosmopolitan Spain.
As an actor, Nelly has worked with known names like Mel Gibson in Apocalypto and with Director David Ayer performing with Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña in the feature film End Of Watch. She also has extensive experience as a Host for both Spanish and English markets and contributed a s a panelist for FOX 11 and CNN en Español.
Nelly Castillo holds Bachelor Degree in Communications from the prestigious UNAM and embodies the Mexican-American character. She is a fierce advocate for gender and diversity equality in the industry. She’s an active member of Women in Film and NALIP.
A former Metal Band leader and guitarist from Barcelona, Spain; Joan Pla transitioned to music production working on artist- development, composing music for film and producing his own artists music videos. Based in Los Angeles, Joan Pla has amassed over 10 years of experience in visual production. Joan and his wife (Nelly Castillo) own and operate Vendetta Entertainment, a creative production boutique that supports equality and diversity in the industry. With 7 out of 9 directors in their roster being women and with the intent to consistently have a 50/50 female/ male crew on set, Vendetta Entertainment is taking steps to change the industry. Joan also works as a bidder / producer at Landia, the top commercial production company for the Hispanic Market with over 300 awards in advertising.
Joan Pla has extensive experience budgeting projects ranging from $10K up to over $1.5M both union and non union. His work includes commercials for brand such as Coca Cola, Corona, Toyota, Honda, Sprint, Pantene and Purina, just to name a few.
On the creative side, he’s one of the creators of Jump The Wall, a sketch comedy show along the lines of SNL and In Living Color. With the JTW team, he also produced and co-created a series of original comedic sketches for EOP Comedy Show on Facebook Watch a channel part of John Leguizamo’s company - NGL Media. The videos grabbed a lot of attention and hit over 1 Million views combined.
In film Joan has worked mostly as a line producer in several short films and a Netflix’s feature film titled ‘People You May Know'.
Erika is Swedish and is currently working and living in Barcelona. She studied political sciences, feminism and gender studies. Her debut film The Good Girl from 2004 was a manifesto against chauvinistic mainstream porn. Since then, she directed multi-award winning erotic films, wrote several books, and created XConfessions, the first crowdsourced erotic film series in the history of adult cinema. In 2015, Erika gave her essential TEDx talk It’s Time for Porn to Change.
Erika's revolutionary cinema reflects her views on sex as a healthy, natural part of life worth celebrating. With more than 150 short films, Erika also produces and finances female guest directors, supporting burgeoning talent across the globe. She defends the importance of having women behind the camera in all key positions.
Olivia Aquilina is a cinematographer who grew up in California and London. Based in Chicago, IL, she attended Columbia College Chicago where she received her BA in Cinematography in 2017. Since then, Olivia has been working on many projects including multiple commercials with Nike, music videos for notable Chicago artists, and lots of narratives and web series projects. She recently shot a short film titled, Mulatto, that debuted at Cucalorus Film Festival.
Additionally, she has worked in camera department on Lifetime features, documentaries and many other projects featuring Chance the Rapper, Hannibal Buress, Serena Williams and more. Olivia’s passion to create images, merged with her love of storytelling, drives her to generate stunning, fantastic films.
Current Team
Incentives
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
Mission Statement
The Story
Hot Summer Daze follows Alex, Paige and Riley, three seniors graduating from Catholic High School in the suburbs of Chicago. After forming an unlikely bond Freshman year and becoming inseparable, they now face their greatest challenges yet - a masturbation video scandal, identity crises, sexual exploration, and the complex bond of female friendship all the while their impending separation looms overhead.
Wild Honey Pictures, co-founded by Jenna Larson and Mitchy McGhan, focuses on spotlighting stories of women and minorities with an authentic and relatable voice. We strongly believe in the power of filmmaking as a vehicle to further our understanding of today’s culture. By focusing on those who are underrepresented and frequently overlooked by mainstream media, we are able to create a dialogue, foster growth, and spark change within specific communities as well as within society as a whole. From development through distribution, Wild Honey Pictures works with collaborators to create sophisticated, diverse, and high quality content fit for a wide audience. Their most recent short film Her First Time created in collaboration with Adam & Eve has ammassed over 13 million views and their short film Prom Night was an Official Selection at the Palm Springs Cinema Diverse LGBTQ Film Festival as well as Reeling: Chicago LGBTQ Film Festival. They've also worked with Sony Music on a collaboration with The Weeknd ft. Gesaffelstein.
Founded in 2010 by Nelly Castillo and Joan Pla, Vendetta Entertainment is a full-service creative production company based in Los Angeles, California with global reach.
Our ethos is to be an advocate for talent, equality and diversity. We are proudly pledging to support female directors and crew. Creativity and work ethics should define anyone’s career regardless of their color, origin, ethnicity, gender or age. We are members of Women In Film, National Association of Latino Producers (NALIP) and Free the Bid.
Vendetta boasts an extensive portfolio of projects including but not limited to – commercials, narrative, digital content, music videos and photography. We have worked with brands and companies such as Sony Music, Universal Music, El Rey Networks, Netflix, Hola! US, Elle Magazine, Cosmopolitan and eyewear brand Hawkers Co. The list of prominent personalities we have worked with include Eva Longoria, Zoe Saldaña, Rita Moreno, Gisele Bundchen, Paula Echevarria, David Bisbal, Bunbury, Carlos Rivera, Camila, the cast of Netflix’s One Day at a Time and others.
In our experience, the key to any successful production is a balance between effective communication and acquired creative-resources, which allow us to achieve the highest quality visual products.
We are excited to be partnering with Erika Lust, an indie adult filmmaker who has become world-renowned for helping re-invent the genre of of pornography with her project XConfessions. In an industry that mostly refuses to offer a true representation of sex, Erika's focus on female pleasure, cinematic values, diversity, and ethics within the production process, have changed how pornography is consumed.
We believe we are the best team to tell this story about young women discovering themselves because, simply put, we are those women. In a world where the vast majority of shows about young women are created by straight middle aged men, we want to break barriers and create authentic characters that will resonate with the current generation of women facing similar universal struggles.
Often times, young girls learn to belittle and degrade fellow females with the idea that sex is taboo and your sexuality is something to be ashamed of. We are working with Erika Lust, an indie feminist adult cinema company, in order to offer a space for women to watch complex female characters that feel genuine, and relatable. Our goal is not to only tell an effective and emotional story, but also to spotlight underrepresented communities.
Hot Summer Daze will live on Jenna Larson’s YouTube channel, which has a combined total of 45 million views and over 300,000 subscribers. Her film Prom Night was an official selection at the Palm Springs Cinema Diverse LGBTQ Film Festival and Reeling Chicago LGBTQ Film Festival with over 2.6 million views on YouTube and her most recent short film, Her First Time, has 12 million views.
Women
Hot Summer Daze is written and directed by female filmmakers who, like the characters, have been through the ups and downs of teenage angst, identity crises, and self discovery. We’ve created relatable female friends who have flaws, sexual desires, and complex relationships with themselves and others.
LGBTQIA
The LGBTQIA community will be drawn to the web series as a source of authentic representation created by a queer filmmaker. Our goal is to normalize queer culture in hopes of creating a more inclusive perception of the LGBTQIA community.
Millennials
As creators, we are a part of the generation that we are creating for, which is outside of the norm in mainstream media. Our generation’s voice isn’t portrayed authentically and we are changing that!
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
Wages for feminist filmmakers
Costs $12,000
We don't believe people should work for free which is why we need to pay our crew!
Location, Location, Location
Costs $1,500
Venue & Location rental.
Feed & Nourish Crew
Costs $1,500
Hard working crew needs to eat!
Movie Magic!
Costs $10,500
Production Design, Camera & GE Equipment, Sound Recording, Hard Drives... etc
Post Production
Costs $2,500
Post production sound, post editing, post color, etc
Insurance!
Costs $2,000
Insurance! Let's keep crew & equipment insured and safe!
Cash Pledge
Costs $0
Direct link:
Share this update!
About This Team
Jenna Larson is a writer and director based in sunny Los Angeles. A graduate of the Cinema Art + Science program at Columbia College Chicago, Jenna has written and directed projects that have amassed a combined 45 million views on her YouTube channel that has over 310,000 subscribers to date. She believes in creating relatable and authentic content for women and the LGBTQIA community.
Her directing style is naturalistic and personal. She focuses on narratives about human connection, belonging, and growing up as well as stories based in the LGBT community. Her first feature film as a writer is currently in Development and is projected to go into production in late 2020. Jenna’s experience as an actress allows her to connect with actors on a much deeper level as a director.
Mitchy McGhan is a Los Angeles based producer. She is a graduate from Columbia College Chicago and received her bachelor's of arts in Cinema Art + Science in 2017. As a producer, Mitchy wants to tell unique stories that resonate with audiences and believes that the representation of ethnic minorities and those who are a part of the LGBTQ community need to be portrayed on screen. Her most recent projects include: Her First Time, Prom Night, Sparked and Jeong as well as a music video collaboration with Sony Music and The Weeknd.
Mitchy & Jenna's film Prom Night was an Official Selection at the Palm Springs LGBTQ Film Festival as well as the Reeling: Cinema Diverse Chicago LGBTQ Film Festival. Their most recent film, Her First Time was a collaboration with Adamandeve.com and has ammassed over 13 million views.
Born in Veracruz, Mexico and based in Los Angeles, California; Nelly Castillo is multi-hyphenated creative and founder of VENDETTA ENTERTAINMENT. Nelly excels at bringing projects and visions to fruition. Some of her credits include producing music videos for EDM artists Tritonal, high-profile celebrity photoshoots and creating a full comedy sketch show titled ‘Jump The Wall’ which led to writing original comedy content for John Leguizamo’s Facebook Watch Channel (EOP Comedy) with over 1 million views! As a producer she has also worked with artists such as Eva Longoria, Zoe Saldana, Rita Moreno, Roselyn Sanchez, Giselle Bundchen, Amber Valetta, Chef Aaron Sanchez, Gloria Calderon- Kellet and others. She has managed teams of over 50 people and cultivated prominent clients such as Sony Music, Netflix, Hola USA magazine, Hawkers Co, Elle Spain, Cosmopolitan Spain.
As an actor, Nelly has worked with known names like Mel Gibson in Apocalypto and with Director David Ayer performing with Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña in the feature film End Of Watch. She also has extensive experience as a Host for both Spanish and English markets and contributed a s a panelist for FOX 11 and CNN en Español.
Nelly Castillo holds Bachelor Degree in Communications from the prestigious UNAM and embodies the Mexican-American character. She is a fierce advocate for gender and diversity equality in the industry. She’s an active member of Women in Film and NALIP.
A former Metal Band leader and guitarist from Barcelona, Spain; Joan Pla transitioned to music production working on artist- development, composing music for film and producing his own artists music videos. Based in Los Angeles, Joan Pla has amassed over 10 years of experience in visual production. Joan and his wife (Nelly Castillo) own and operate Vendetta Entertainment, a creative production boutique that supports equality and diversity in the industry. With 7 out of 9 directors in their roster being women and with the intent to consistently have a 50/50 female/ male crew on set, Vendetta Entertainment is taking steps to change the industry. Joan also works as a bidder / producer at Landia, the top commercial production company for the Hispanic Market with over 300 awards in advertising.
Joan Pla has extensive experience budgeting projects ranging from $10K up to over $1.5M both union and non union. His work includes commercials for brand such as Coca Cola, Corona, Toyota, Honda, Sprint, Pantene and Purina, just to name a few.
On the creative side, he’s one of the creators of Jump The Wall, a sketch comedy show along the lines of SNL and In Living Color. With the JTW team, he also produced and co-created a series of original comedic sketches for EOP Comedy Show on Facebook Watch a channel part of John Leguizamo’s company - NGL Media. The videos grabbed a lot of attention and hit over 1 Million views combined.
In film Joan has worked mostly as a line producer in several short films and a Netflix’s feature film titled ‘People You May Know'.
Erika is Swedish and is currently working and living in Barcelona. She studied political sciences, feminism and gender studies. Her debut film The Good Girl from 2004 was a manifesto against chauvinistic mainstream porn. Since then, she directed multi-award winning erotic films, wrote several books, and created XConfessions, the first crowdsourced erotic film series in the history of adult cinema. In 2015, Erika gave her essential TEDx talk It’s Time for Porn to Change.
Erika's revolutionary cinema reflects her views on sex as a healthy, natural part of life worth celebrating. With more than 150 short films, Erika also produces and finances female guest directors, supporting burgeoning talent across the globe. She defends the importance of having women behind the camera in all key positions.
Olivia Aquilina is a cinematographer who grew up in California and London. Based in Chicago, IL, she attended Columbia College Chicago where she received her BA in Cinematography in 2017. Since then, Olivia has been working on many projects including multiple commercials with Nike, music videos for notable Chicago artists, and lots of narratives and web series projects. She recently shot a short film titled, Mulatto, that debuted at Cucalorus Film Festival.
Additionally, she has worked in camera department on Lifetime features, documentaries and many other projects featuring Chance the Rapper, Hannibal Buress, Serena Williams and more. Olivia’s passion to create images, merged with her love of storytelling, drives her to generate stunning, fantastic films.