If This Is Spinal Tap met The Blair Witch Project... If Tropic Thunder met Hell House LLC...

Roll Camera's Synopsis

A green PA joins a faltering feature film crew to explore her new career path when she uncovers clues suggesting the film’s dismantling is not a coincidence at all, but due to a demonic entity known as the Harlequin, a spirit cursed onto the production by the producers and their secret agenda. Will the crew make it out alive? Or more importantly, will the producers' footage make it out untouched? 

Directors’ Statements

Elliana Polyak: The premise of Roll Camera has come to me many times, in many forms, after nearly every shoot I have ever worked on. The premise takes different iterations each time, echoing the mistakes or issues on the most recent set I was on. Eventually, all of my ideas fell together in conversation with David, as we talked about what it feels like to be full time filmmakers in today’s industry. Comments about how it feels like Hollywood is gatekept, or that it takes a blood sacrifice to make it kept spilling out of our mouth as we griped about how we didn’t have many work opportunities unless we were to move. Eventually our whining became riffing on the idea of a terrible set with a terribly tempered crew haunted by a demonic entity they are all too myopic to notice. Roll Camera’s story began echoing many of our difficulties but also allowed us to recognize our specific enjoyment of that difficult process. For a moment writing the story, I experienced a level of nostalgia for the work I was doing right then and there, realizing that this is what I got into this career to do, to make impossible things possible. I got into this career to make stories come to life, and I am very excited to be doing that again with Roll Camera, a piece that has become very near and dear to my heart in all of its hilarity and absurdity. 

David Christ: When Ellie presented me with her original pitch for what would become Roll Camera, I instantly resonated with the concept, and found myself pulling from my own experiences and ideas I had been kicking around. The project found its footing and themes before Ellie and I necessarily even realized. This narrative is based on the merging of the Hollywood and social media spheres, and how it has formed a new hybrid landscape navigated by newly graduated filmmakers like ourselves. This unique environment brings both fear and excitement to me as an independent filmmaker. Growing up in the early 2000s, I witnessed first hand how social media personalities turned hobbies into career paths while Hollywood contracted itself into franchising hell. As the film industry has slowly started to embrace internet stars over the past decade, a rare new pathway has been opened into the notoriously gatekept film industry. Roll Camera is our exploration of this strange limbo between two previously foreign fields. As we filled out our cast and crew with real life internet stars and industry professionals, I saw the true story behind Roll Camera unfold in front of my eyes. While we poke holes at the fragility of unstructured, money-centric modern productions, we are confident that a new and exciting world of film can come from this budding new realm as seen within Roll Camera’s production.

Why Roll Camera?

As today’s young social media stars take their stab at Hollywood stardom, Roll Camera brings to question the dangerous and sometimes predatory methods often taken to reach fast fame. Our goal is to communicate with current cultural movements in media while satirizing modern content creator and influencer stereotypes, and their new found crossover with the film industry.

This film is a meta-cinematic look at the power structures within filmmaking and what people are willing to sacrifice for money and recognition. Roll Camera will take the audience on a journey through an unravelling filmset, and the unsavory tempers of a selfish crew in distress. 

The project largely represents that good stories and good cinema can be found anywhere, hence the story’s midwestern setting and its midwestern cast and crew. Roll Camera is much more than a comedy-horror movie, as it depicts the current bottlenecking those entering the industry must squeeze through. Roll Camera aims to uncover the Hollywood facade and showcase that high-quality moviemaking and films can be found across the American heartland. 

Why Roll Camera Works

Roll Camera taps into a broad market due to its melding of comedic-mockumentary and horrifying-found footage, making it likely to find a large audience spanning multiple demographics. 

The comedy audience is one of the few genres watched that has a higher female viewership than male, with the average age falling between 15-24 and 45+.The comedy genre finds the most viewer engagement in terms of rewatching, allowing indie comedy films to find higher margins of success when considering repeat viewership. Comedy has strong audience loyalty, with fans still queuing into the news, years after the film has been released. Films and franchises also have consistently high merchandise purchase rates with examples such as Superbad or Scary Movie. 

Horror is currently on a Hollywood hot-streak, with popular releases from new names like the micro-budget indie, Obsession (Curry Barker), and the studio production, Backrooms (Kane Parsons), commanding the 2026 box office. Ever since 2018’s Hereditary (Ari Aster), Hollywood has been trying to quench the younger audience’s unrelenting thirst for scary movies. 

Horror as a genre is driven by the younger generations, with most of its viewers in their late teens to early 20s. Horror is the most divisive genre with only 25% of movie-goers saying they “love” horror, but it is known for its audience-loyalty. The term “cult-classic” exists for a reason, and Roll Camera is targeted to reach that same status.

Each genre is non-specific in regards to regional interest, and each has proven to find audiences on all platforms from VOD, direct-to-sales, theatrical release, festival release, or independent internet distribution.

Alongside its genre and market positioning, Roll Camera is a film supported by a lot of passion. Many individuals and resources used are participating due to interest in the story and the promise of the project. With this, we have been able to acquire over 22k in physical resources and discounted labor to accomplish the project. There is still a gap within our financial resources for permits, certain contract and agency fees, emergency funds, and compensation for crew. Despite that, we have many talented individuals still gearing up to work on the project, providing many hours of physical and administrative labor to make this happen. 

Within our company resources, we are able to provide 2 cinema camera packages along with fulfilling almost our entire equipment needs list with in-house resources. Junk Drawer Pictures also comes with a background specifically in multi-camera, comedy capturing allowing the team tackling this to step into the project with full confidence. There is no doubt that between the caliber of equipment we work with and the skills of the crew on Roll Camera that the visual and auditory quality will be something set to compete with entries at festivals like SXSW, nffty, Hollyshorts, NYCF, and more. 

Inclusivity On Set

While Roll Camera’s cast is mostly male, we are so proud to have a woman and queer forward cast and crew behind this project, and leading this project with Elliana Polyak, a filmmaker with a disability, joining David Christ to direct. Our lack of female supporting roles purposefully isolates our PA as one of the only women on set. This choice represents the very real statistic that filmmaking is a male dominated industry, with only about 25% of crew roles fulfilled by women. Women often find themselves in positions like costume, art, or hair and makeup, and struggle to find jobs in other key departments due to gender bias in the industry. These are considered more “feminine” positions and are often the only places you will find a woman on set. Within our female crewmembers’ experiences, from student to semi-professional or commercial work, there is an assumption that a female crew member will know less about technological or equipment issues or be less apt with finances and administrative work. We are currently seeing an accelerated drop in women as producers, writers, leads, regressing back to the gender demographics of 2001. Roll Camera has staffed double the current industry average of women behind the scenes, with 40% of our crew made up of strong, skilled women in the industry. 

Roll Camera also aims to challenge the lack of queer media that isn’t centered around a conflict of queerness. Roll Camera, simply through the nature of its development, and our work with our ensemble, has created seven sizable LGBTQ+ character roles that beat out average queer character run-time. Roll Camera has many amazing people who identify as LGBTQ+, not just in the story but, within our real life cast and crew who are building this to be a fresh, kitschy new story ultimately about people being people. With classic callouts to queer horror and comedy roots, and old performing arts allusions, this film ultimately is a love letter to the craft and to the people before us.

Rush Events and Added Incentives

Roll Camera is already offering several incentives through our Seed&Spark, and with rush events promoted through Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and updates on Seed&Spark. These campaigns offer extra gifts for donors during select time periods, or donors who help us hit certain bench marks. These events include the First 48 Hour Rush, where donors are able to receive access to a private Instagram if they donate before September 5th; Adopt A Shot, a day where donors will be able to "Adopt a Shot" and receive a virtual, digital certificate and coupling of stills from the movie if they donate past a $15 threshold on that day; or the Support Raffle, where one donator who has pledged $100 or more is chosen at random for an exclusive incentive worth $5000. All rush events and their gifts are to be added onto the incentive package the donor has selected.

Still fromYou See It Now (2025)

Producers’ Statement

Roll Camera is brought to us at a turning point in American cinema, another recycling of Hollywood, hoping to dissect the cross points between social media stars and industry professionals. The piece behind the scenes is exactly what the industry is looking for now but within the story calls the current staleness of Hollywood out, plain and simple. We are excited at Junk Drawer to be fronting this project as it stands in the wake of major industry shifts. With the film and entertainment industries moving away from rigid structures, it leaves room for the rule book to change the way stories are told. We want to be at the forefront of this new wave of filmmaking. 

Budget

Roll Camera, and the Junk Drawer Pictures team behind it, are pushing to raise $24,200.00 for the film’s production and festival run. This money is used to pay contracted artists, rent and purchase necessary equipment and software, hire a professional editing team and publicist, and push the film through film festivals and distribution. 

Despite Roll Camera being defined as a micro-budget film by all industry standards, this is still a very sizable amount to raise on a shorter timeline, so we are implementing multiple strategies to reach our fundraising goal. 

These strategies include:

• Casual Donator Campaign - Seed&Spark targeting friends, extended family, acquaintances, and indie filmmakers. 
• Pushed through campaign updates on email, social media, Junk Drawer’s website, and the Seed&Spark. 
• Incentivized First 48 Rush donation period with exclusive rewards, along with other rush periods that offer exclusive rewards or offers.
• Standard incentivization packages that provide gifts from the production team and special/early access codes. 
• Personal Pledge Campaign - targeting close friends, family, professional connections, and our industry network to pledge prior to Seed&Spark launch. 
• Currently active and on a 30 day timeline. 
• These financial pledges are declared through a written agreement. If actuated within the first 48 hours of the Seed&Spark, the donor is set to receive the Very Special Thanks package plus the First 48 Hour Rush incentive (access to the private Instagram story to get exclusive updates about the film from the production team, and recipient of their name within the Special Thanks credit roll..) 
• Professional Pledge Campaign - targeting companies with interest in the arts, patrons of film, and production studios.
• Currently active and on a 45 day timeline.
• Organized similarly to the above. Potential donors are contacted directly to address interest and garner support. This outreach is coupled with our donator package. If a support agreement is something the possible donor is interested in, a conversation will be scheduled through virtual meets, or face-to-face if possible. 
• A support agreement looks similar to the Personal Pledge Campaign, but offers Executive Producer credentials and exclusive access to the development of the entire film for any donation over $4,000, plus the Very Special Thanks package altered to fit an EP credit in addition to a special supporter credit.
• The financial agreement will use Seed&Spark as the transaction medium to count towards our larger public fundraiser counter, unless the donor is supporting via another agreed upon transaction medium.
• Guerrilla Virality Campaign - targeting new audience members on social media and within our local communities.
• This campaign is currently active through the end of the film’s distribution run. However, the campaign as of October 9th will transition from garnering donations to advertising the release of Roll Camera.
• The production team, Roll Camera, and Junk Drawer Pictures socials will be creating multiple internet series to garner new audience interest and create another stream of income through Adsense and monetization that will go towards the overall financing campaign, donated personally by Junk Drawer Pictures LLC.
• These series are projects such as “Count My Tips With Me That I’m Putting Towards My Indie-Film,” “Trial SFX-Effects With Us,” “How To Budget An Indie-Film,” “Get Ready With Us For A Cold-Call,” “What We Do To Finance Our Film,” and others. 

The budget breakdown is listed below.

Budget Breakdown

21% Permits, Location Fees, and Insurance

15% Camera and GnE Department Equipment Fees and Compensation

14% Festival Packaging and Festival Run

13% Art Crew Equipment/Materials Fees and Compensation (Includes SFX Considerations)

10.5% Cast Compensation

5.5% Production Team Compensation

5% Post Production

4.3% Direction Department

3.5% Makeup Needs

3.5% Meals and Crafty

2.7% Wardrobe Needs

2% Sound Compensation and Kit Fees

= 100% Great Movie

Who We Are At Junk Drawer Pictures

Junk Drawer Pictures is an indie-production studio that aims to foster and support independent filmmakers and artists, with a focus on bringing Hollywood-level films into middle-American cities. JDP, through its collaborations and projects, proves that film and stories can be told anywhere if aided by caring communities and healthy relationships with artists. JDP with its launch was partnered with a 6 year plan including projects like the ones below.

Stills from You See It Now (2025)

Future Projects

In Development in 2026: Script Tease S2 and With All That Isn’t Still. In Production in 2026: Script Tease S1 and Roll Camera. In Development in 2027: Speech and Debate, Untitled Influencer Vampire Movie, and Untitled Naples Retirement Village Murder Mystery. In Production in 2027: Script Tease S2 and With All That Isn’t Still. 

Still from "Queer Eye" Ep. 05 S1 of Script Tease

BTS from "Penis Inspector" Ep. 05 S1 of Script Tease

Keep your friends close but your crew-mates closer. Join our crew and help make Roll Camera happen!

Movies are made every day, but not many like ours. Combining passion, performance backgrounds, innovation in pre-production and production, merging genres and filming styles, and talent, we will be bringing a story not told on screens until now. We do this because we are, not only just lovers of storytelling, but people who believe art is made through community, and want to make a story that shares that. Roll Camera comes at a time when AI is being integrated into every software or hardware available, LLMs and generative programs that eat away at our limited natural resources and take jobs from hardworking citizens. These programs have accelerated the commodification of art that has been happening within the media and fine arts worlds. Roll Camera wants to demonstrate the weaknesses seen in disbelieving in humans and their ability to create. With an equally both excited and talented team, we have full confidence in our ability to create this story but it cannot be done without your support. We would be very excited to welcome you to our Roll Camera team and make this movie together today!