****EXCITING NEWS! As of 10/21, we have reached our second stretch goal of $21,000!!****

BUT WE STILL HAVE 9 HOURS LEFT!

We are so excited to wake up tomorrow!

Let's keep this momentum going with a FINAL NEW STRETCH GOAL! 

We are amazed by the support for Remission thus far, so we are making our final stretch goal $21,500. Our hope is to cover more of those initial film festival costs with this additional stretch amount in the remaining hours of this campaign.

About 9 hours left - we can do this!

We are grateful for your support, your zeal for our work, and for sharing our team with your team.

****

HERE'S OUR STORY:

Our 2010, award-winning horror short Remission was inspired by the the death of my wonderful, jolly, English-immigrant father, Raymond F. J. Smith, from cancer in 2003.

As I was intimately involved in my father's daily healthcare in Maine, the monumental emotional and physical burden for those inflicted with this disease and for their families became very palpable to me. The time period from my father's late diagnosis to his funeral spanned only four months to the date, but those long months cast a shadow I couldn't shake once I returned home to NYC - and to my husband, the wonderful actor Michael Fitzpatrick.

This dread began to gnaw on my psyche - this feeling of uncertainty, this anxiety of cancer returning to our lives. My biggest fear was that Michael would get it. That constant worry began to fester underneath everything else I was pursuing.

My first short with OneTakeFilms, 2008's gay romantic comedy The Back Room, had been a huge success, screening at over 50 film festivals on five continents, garnering multiple awards, winning "Best Short" on LOGO TV's The Click List: Best in Short Film Season 7, and Season 8's "Best of the Best - Romance," as well as being released on Wolfe Video's DVD compilation Boycrazy.

I wanted to create something completely different with my next film. And I love horror. So I decided to exorcise this dread by putting it on the screen. 

We shot Remission over a long weekend in late summer in upstate New York. We had a wonderful cast and crew, including Michael as "Sam," the amazing Todd Jennision Parmley as "The Figure," and our dearly departed Boston Terrier Olive as "Brenda." My friend, the ingenious filmmaker Todd Verow, shot it for me.

With a budget of only $1000, I built all of my own camera rigs from plumbing pipe, inline skate wheels, and plywood, which began a passion for DIY filmmaking that I intend to bring to our feature.

Remission went on to screen at over a dozen film festivals, and win the Out in the Desert Film Festival Audience Award for “Best Horror Short," and the FLICKERS: Rhode Island International Film Festival's “2010 Horror Film Award.” It was also included on the 2012 best-selling DVD compilation Black Briefs, by Guest House Films. I have wanted to expand the story and develop it into a feature since then.

Remission was - and still will be in its feature-length form - about the fear of cancer returning eating you alive. It's about distrusting your own gut, questioning your own vision, and about the abject terror of uncertainty in the face of death. Is Sam's fear playing tricks on his mind, or is something there, hunting him?

"Why now?" you may ask.

With the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic upon us, the themes in Remission have rarely been so universal: the fear of the intruder, the fear of contagion, the panic of isolation, the psychological strain that disease puts on us all. Also, over the last year, at least six dear friends have dealt with intense cancer issues, which has awakened much of my anxiety regarding this subject. It's time to exorcise again.

On the flip side, in true lemons-to-lemonade fashion, positive elements for filming our feature have been falling into place because of the pandemic: Michael's acting work was postponed until 2021, making him conveniently available; the original house in which we shot the short will be open to us, as its occupants will be remote teaching from elsewhere; my day job has completely evaporated, "allowing" me full concentration on pre-production, as well as the "freedom" to travel back to upstate NY for a month (we moved to LA from NYC since the short was filmed). All lemonade.

On the surface, this may seem like a bonkers time to ask for assistance in funding our little project. In light of our current economy, the important #BLM movement, and impending election, I fully understand. With OneTakeFilms, I strive to tell stories of underepresented voices, to subvert a hetero-normative narrative by including LGBTQ+ characters whose sexuality is often incidental to the plot. Visibility is key, and horror is universal. Even your small donations can be quite impactful to get these voices heard (and, of course, large donations will seriously help too!). Although our goal amount is peanuts in the world of feature films, it represents a serious chunk of change to us at OneTakeFilms. Michael and I will be creating this film by ourselves, alone, as we quarantine in upstate NY together. All pre-production and production filming will be a total cast and crew of two, with no physical assistance from the outside. Your pledges would help cover travel costs, building supplies, equipment, rentals, actor salaries, payroll taxes, insurance, and significantly assist in our post-production work flow. It's an exciting challenge for which we've been preparing a decade.

Thank you so much for your time, and for supporting our feature film Remission. We cannot wait to share it with you.

Greg Ivan Smith

September, 2020

www.onetakefilms.com