Rational Creatures Season Two

Chicago, Illinois | Series

LGBTQ, Romantic Comedy

Anya Steiner

1 Campaigns | Illinois, United States

Contact

Green Light

This campaign raised $12,109 for production. Follow the filmmaker to receive future updates on this project.

159 supporters | followers

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Join us for Season Two of RATIONAL CREATURES! Inspired by Jane Austen’s Persuasion, Rational Creatures is a romantic dramedy about conquering your fears, falling (back) in love, and charting your own course in life. It’s the modern, inclusive Austen story you didn’t know you needed.

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About The Project

The Story
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The Team
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Mission Statement

As female filmmakers, we understand the importance of inclusivity both behind and in front of the camera. Our series features happy queer stories, touches on mental health and chronic illness, and explores complex women. Like Season One, our cast and crew will be a diverse, majority-women team.

The Story

Hi there! We're a multinational team of women filmmakers funding the second (and final) season of our award-winning show, RATIONAL CREATURES. Whether you're a long-time fan or you just found our project, we're glad you're here! After you check out the campaign, be sure to swing over to our YouTube Channel and watch Season One (for free!).

Jane Austen’s work has brought us treasured adaptations of her novels, from period pieces like Pride & Prejudice (we love both 1995 and 2005), to modern classics like Clueless. While these works have no doubt had a huge cultural impact, many Austen renditions feature straight, white characters. RATIONAL CREATURES reimagines a story that we know and love that’s a bit more inclusive and representative of the world around us.

Season Two will pick up where Season One left off: After being let go from the family business by her father, Ana Elías is temporarily living with her sister Marisol, Marisol’s wife Charlie, and their dog Russell.

Purely by chance, burnt out travel writer Fred Wentworth is staying with his sister Sophie in the same building as Ana, encountering her for the first time after a breakup in high school eight years ago.

Anxious university student Louis Musgrove (Charlie’s brother) is completely smitten with Fred, who is equally charmed by adorkable Louis. This is annoying news for Louis’ roommate Ben Wick, who is crushing hard on Louis, but is hesitant to share his feelings.

Will Ana figure out what she wants to do in life, or will she go back to working pro bono for her dad?
Will Fred quit country-hopping away from his feelings and fears, or realize he might not be over Ana?
Will it dawn on Louis that his roomie is in love with him, and will Ben tell Louis how he feels?

All of your burning questions about these Rational Creatures will be answered in Season Two!

Moodboard from Season One:

Our goal is to raise $12,000 in 30 days to make Season Two of RATIONAL CREATURES come to life. Season Two will wrap up the story, with approximately 13 more episodes. Like we did for Season One, the team will meet in Chicago in Spring 2020 to direct and produce the series.

We’ve carefully calculated our budget to make the most of our Green Light goal. Any extra funds we gather for this project will go towards stretch goals (see below!), improving our equipment, paying our cast and crew higher rates, and lastly, paying ourselves.

This pie chart breaks down our anticipated budget. More details can be found in our Wishlist.

Season One was filmed on a shoestring budget; we used equipment we already owned, we all wore many hats, we borrowed locations, and we camped out in Anya’s tiny apartment every night, reviewing footage and preparing meals for the next day. Most of the cash we raised for Season One went to paying our cast, getting us all to Chicago, providing transportation money for our volunteer PAs, and feeding everyone lots of quinoa salad, bagels, and fruit snacks. Our leftover budget went to submitting to festivals, where we won some awards (!!) and screened our show in front of an audience (also !!). We’re committed to using every dollar we receive as efficiently as possible, while also creating a high-quality show for you to enjoy!

While we are confident we can produce the series for $12k, any extra funds we can secure will help make the series even better. With any extra padding, we can:

Pay our cast and crew more generously
Include more costly/complicated locations
Rent or purchase higher quality equipment
And of course, make some fun extra content for you to enjoy!

As we hit funding milestones, we will share the following with you as celebration:

$1,200 - 10 Percent! Bloopers from Season One will be released into the wild!
$3,000 - 1/4 of the way there! We’ll release a peek behind the scenes of Season One!
$6,000 - Halfway! We'll give you a creator commentary for Season One, Episode Two. For every $1,000 after this, we will release another episode (three to five) until we run out!
$9,600 (aka GREEN LIGHT) - 80% and WE GET TO MAKE THE SHOW! Plus, take a look at the chemistry read with Kristina and Peter before they were officially Ana and Fred!

And as for stretch goals, here's what we'll make for you in the exciting event we surpass our goal:

$12,000 - 100% of goal - We did it! We got to 100% of our funding, so in celebration, we'll make a cast Q&A video to go along with Season Two.
$13,000 - Our Fred Wentworth (Peter Giessl) will dress up in Regency attire and read Captain Wentworth’s renowned letter from Persuasion.
$14,000 - We will record and release a creators’ commentary of the entire second season of the show! (And we’ll include cast members dependent on availability!)
$15,000 - We'll shoot an epilogue episode so you can spend a little extra time with these characters!
$20,000 - Ay Caramba! We will film and release an abridged version of Persuasion told in telenovela format, overseen by our resident telenovela lover and expert Ayelen!

There are lots of ways you can pitch in to help make Season Two of RATIONAL CREATURES happen:

Contribute a few (or a lot of) dollars! YOU are our investors. Take that, Hollywood!
Share Season One, and this campaign, with someone you think would like what we’re doing. Your friends trust you way more than they trust strangers on the internet. Don’t forget to use #RatCreatures and use your profiles to spread the word with our social media banners or Twibbon.
Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, and even here on Seed & Spark for updates, and to keep up with fun content we have planned for you during the campaign!
If you’re in the Chicago area and you’d like to get involved, we’re on the lookout for locations, crew, catering, and of course, free coffee. Got any leads? Email us at [email protected] or fill out this Google Form.