Sell Your House
Los Angeles, California | Film Feature
Documentary, Comedy
Francis is a neurotic, foolhardy first-time feature filmmaker, and his friend James has just sold his house for $1 Million to finance Francis's directorial debut. Francis battles mother nature, his cast, his crew, his ego and personal setbacks to finish his film. But will James get his money back?
Sell Your House
Los Angeles, California | Film Feature
Documentary, Comedy
1 Campaigns | California, United States
Green Light
This campaign raised $12,304 for post-production. Follow the filmmaker to receive future updates on this project.
103 supporters | followers
Enter the amount you would like to pledge
Francis is a neurotic, foolhardy first-time feature filmmaker, and his friend James has just sold his house for $1 Million to finance Francis's directorial debut. Francis battles mother nature, his cast, his crew, his ego and personal setbacks to finish his film. But will James get his money back?
About The Project
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
Mission Statement
The Story
SO WHAT'S THIS ALL ABOUT?
It's a classic boy-meets-boy story: Our friend Francis had an idea for a movie. Francis tells James about his idea. James offers to sell his house to fund Francis's million-dollar movie.
James and Francis, making a movie and officially a million dollars in the hole.
Sensing something beautiful and utterly batshit was about to happen, ERIC FOSS (director) and BRANDON PICKERING (co-director) picked up their cameras and began recording anything and everything about Francis's first feature film, "The Last Stop in Yuma County." There's rifles, squibs, jibs, missing actors, a high-strung director, torrential storms, broken vehicles -- everything you'd expect from a million-dollar movie shot in the desert. Every triumph, every tragedy, and every explosion (both literal and emotional) is the basis for our new documentary, SELL YOUR HOUSE, an exploration of the peaks and pitfalls of indie filmmaking.
Francis has two faces. This is one of them.
MEET FRANCIS
Is this former punk rock drummer really ready to make a feature with a cast who have worked with the Coen Brothers, Scorsese, and Jon Favreau? Francis Galluppi can be neurotic, obsessive, and emotional, and The Last Stop in Yuma County is his baby; the torture of trying to protect it in it’s adolescence provokes high emotions, whether it be bitter anxiety, unbridled bliss, or a little bit of both. We (the audience) want Francis to succeed -- not only because he’s a nice guy, but also because he’s rebelling against the establishment by financing this film independently. By cheering for this underdog, we are undoubtedly cheering for ourselves.
James acting remarkably calm for someone who's essentially homeless.
MEET JAMES
An unlikely businessman turned film producer (who gained a loyal following as The Local Boogeyman), James Claeys' cinephile/horror t-shirt company afforded him the luxury of owning a home in Los Angeles. Now he's taken that luxury and put it on the Hollywood roulette table, risking nearly everything to fund Francis’s first feature film. If this whole thing goes south, James's livelihood is literally at stake. In SELL YOUR HOUSE, we all ride shotgun as Francis and James frantically steer the Last Stop bus... sans brakes.
WHY ON EARTH ARE WE DOING THIS?
Eric and Brandon (the brains, heart and other vital organs behind this endeavor) have spent the majority of their careers in reality television and documentary shorts. Leaving the small screen behind, SELL YOUR HOUSE officially marks their foray into documentary feature-dom. Living somewhere in the nebulous gray area between American Movie and Heart of Darkness, SELL YOUR HOUSE employs a brutally honest lens to explore the difficult, complex and occasionally idiotic situations that filmmakers put themselves in for the sake of their art. Think of it as a Greek tragedy with guns... if Greek tragedies were set in the Arizona desert and were actually highly amusing.
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WHERE WE'RE AT WITH IT
Principal photography on SELL YOUR HOUSE is 98.3% complete. Now Eric and Brandon have holed themselves up in a room with only film reels and Fritos to cut the film together... and not just into a chronological sequence of captured footage, but a verite-style, rollercoaster ride of a documentary with a compelling message for the masses. Screw the Hollywood studio system! Pick up a camera, corral your filmmaker friends, drive to the middle of nowhere and shoot something! Maybe don't sell your house before you do it (just in case you're no good at it), but don't let anything stand in your way of making something potentially great. Francis isn't perfect, but goddamnit, he's got heart.
Indie filmmaking, in a nutshell.
WHY DO WE NEED THE $$$?
While the bulk of photography is done, there is still serious work to be done before we unveil this to the world... which is why Eric and Brandon haven't seen daylight in 23 days. Your generous contributions will help us complete the project in myriad ways: wrap up the editing process, plow through post-production (sound editing, sound mixing, color grading, visual effects, titles & graphics, etc.), help us secure music rights for the film, and cover the cost of our film festival submissions once SELL YOUR HOUSE is complete. And if we surpass our goal, we can cover even more of our anticipated costs, including E&O insurance, legal fees, and distribution / marketing costs so that this film can be seen by the widest audience possible. We're confident we can do this, and we've got a seasoned producer, Deborah Lee Smith (Butterfly in the Sky), who's going to push us to the finish line. We just need your help to get there.
WHAT CAN YOU DO RIGHT NOW?
- You can FOLLOW our campaign (scroll up and look for the heart icon) so you can stay updated with our fundraising and post-production progress.
- You can dig into your pockets and CONTRIBUTE! We've got some sweet incentives for you to check out, including breakfast with Deb, lunch with Brandon, exploring with Eric, and even a one-night's stay at a Joshua Tree Airbnb.
- You can SHARE THIS WITH THE WORLD. Call your parents. Tell your friends (especially the wealthy ones). Share this campaign on all your socials (find the share icon above, right next to the heart icon) and tell your followers to drop whatever they're doing and donate to SELL YOUR HOUSE. Something like:
Selling your house to make a movie is downright stupid,
but donating to this Seed & Spark campaign is the smartest thing you'll ever do.
Whatever you can do to get us to the finish line, we're eternally grateful. (Until we need your contribution for our next film... but that's another story.)
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
Feed Our Filmmakers
Costs $250
Somebody please buy Eric or Brandon's groceries for the week so that they can stay at their desks and finish editing the film.
Music for the Final Film
Costs $4,500
Help us fill all of the awkward silences with a soulful musical score - with drumming provided by Francis Galluppi (the director) himself.
Visual Effects for Final Film
Costs $1,000
After all the filming and fighting and editing is done, the visual effects sweep in to make it all make sense. Help us make sense of it all.
Titles & Graphics for the Film
Costs $1,250
Gone are the days of slapping ClipArt onto your finished product. Titles these days better sing, dance and act - and ours are no exception.
Film Festival Submissions
Costs $500
When all is said and done, we'll be shipping this thing off to Sundance and a million other sexy film festivals, all with hefty entry fees.
Final Color for the Film
Costs $7,500
Colorists are behind-the-scenes saviors who add vibrancy and saturation to dreary visuals. Because nobody likes dreary visuals.
Cash Pledge
Costs $0
Direct link:
Share this update!
About This Team
ERIC ALEXANDER FOSS, Director
In 2010, Eric Alexander Foss graduated from USC film school with the standard naïveté and poverty that has plagued youngsters since the dawn of time. In 2014, just as he was considering bank robbery, he was hired as a cameraman to work on Naked and Afraid (a strange survival show on Discovery). Suddenly, Eric was living 6 months a year in tiny jungle villages around the world where things like hot water, electricity, and even sometimes walls (like enclosed spaces) are a luxury. Armed with a new appreciation for his privileged life, Eric splits the year between self-producing personal projects and working in unscripted TV as a Director of Photography. Eric’s last two films brought him to 30 film festivals including Dances With Films and Filmquest, won fourteen awards, and found distribution through Filmocracy. He just completed his most recent film, The Bare You, a documentary short which, so far, played at Flickers Rhode Island International, AmDocs, and No Man’s Land.
BRANDON PICKERING, Co-Director
In 2010, Brandon Pickering did not graduate from USC film school. He has never been to USC film school, and would prefer if people stopped asking about it. He has instead worked for the last decade on a wealth of different projects, spanning a variety of genres and quality. From directing award-winning short films and music videos for former members of The Commodores, to filming some of the most popular reality shows on television. His most recent credit was as Producer and Director of Photography on the upcoming feature documentary, Stolen Kingdom, from Executive Producer Jeff Tremaine. In 2020, he met Eric in a swamp somewhere in Florida while filming naked people attempting to not die for a month. This has culminated in a years long friendship that may very well be ended by him coming on as Co-Director for Sell Your House. His ability to create engaging and energetic narratives as a producer, DP, and editor has made him an asset in the crafting of this film.
DEBORAH LEE SMITH, Producer
Deborah Lee Smith is an award winning Los Angeles based actor, producer, writer and founder of Pink Boots Entertainment. She currently has six features that she produced under her belt including Here Awhile (starring Anna Camp, Joe Lo Truglio and Steven Strait), currently on HULU, and the action/thriller Last Three Days, in which she starred opposite Robert Palmer Watkins. Her most recent film, Butterfly in the Sky, is a documentary about Reading Rainbow, which premiered at Tribeca last June before going on to entertain audiences at over 40 festivals. Deborah is also a vocal mental health advocate and founder of More Than You See, a non profit organization and podcast dedicated to sharing stories and resources surrounding the daily struggles of mental health. She is currently in development on many projects with a focus on telling authentic stories about the successes and inner struggles that we all face.
Current Team
Incentives
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
Mission Statement
The Story
SO WHAT'S THIS ALL ABOUT?
It's a classic boy-meets-boy story: Our friend Francis had an idea for a movie. Francis tells James about his idea. James offers to sell his house to fund Francis's million-dollar movie.
James and Francis, making a movie and officially a million dollars in the hole.
Sensing something beautiful and utterly batshit was about to happen, ERIC FOSS (director) and BRANDON PICKERING (co-director) picked up their cameras and began recording anything and everything about Francis's first feature film, "The Last Stop in Yuma County." There's rifles, squibs, jibs, missing actors, a high-strung director, torrential storms, broken vehicles -- everything you'd expect from a million-dollar movie shot in the desert. Every triumph, every tragedy, and every explosion (both literal and emotional) is the basis for our new documentary, SELL YOUR HOUSE, an exploration of the peaks and pitfalls of indie filmmaking.
Francis has two faces. This is one of them.
MEET FRANCIS
Is this former punk rock drummer really ready to make a feature with a cast who have worked with the Coen Brothers, Scorsese, and Jon Favreau? Francis Galluppi can be neurotic, obsessive, and emotional, and The Last Stop in Yuma County is his baby; the torture of trying to protect it in it’s adolescence provokes high emotions, whether it be bitter anxiety, unbridled bliss, or a little bit of both. We (the audience) want Francis to succeed -- not only because he’s a nice guy, but also because he’s rebelling against the establishment by financing this film independently. By cheering for this underdog, we are undoubtedly cheering for ourselves.
James acting remarkably calm for someone who's essentially homeless.
MEET JAMES
An unlikely businessman turned film producer (who gained a loyal following as The Local Boogeyman), James Claeys' cinephile/horror t-shirt company afforded him the luxury of owning a home in Los Angeles. Now he's taken that luxury and put it on the Hollywood roulette table, risking nearly everything to fund Francis’s first feature film. If this whole thing goes south, James's livelihood is literally at stake. In SELL YOUR HOUSE, we all ride shotgun as Francis and James frantically steer the Last Stop bus... sans brakes.
WHY ON EARTH ARE WE DOING THIS?
Eric and Brandon (the brains, heart and other vital organs behind this endeavor) have spent the majority of their careers in reality television and documentary shorts. Leaving the small screen behind, SELL YOUR HOUSE officially marks their foray into documentary feature-dom. Living somewhere in the nebulous gray area between American Movie and Heart of Darkness, SELL YOUR HOUSE employs a brutally honest lens to explore the difficult, complex and occasionally idiotic situations that filmmakers put themselves in for the sake of their art. Think of it as a Greek tragedy with guns... if Greek tragedies were set in the Arizona desert and were actually highly amusing.
WHERE WE'RE AT WITH IT
Principal photography on SELL YOUR HOUSE is 98.3% complete. Now Eric and Brandon have holed themselves up in a room with only film reels and Fritos to cut the film together... and not just into a chronological sequence of captured footage, but a verite-style, rollercoaster ride of a documentary with a compelling message for the masses. Screw the Hollywood studio system! Pick up a camera, corral your filmmaker friends, drive to the middle of nowhere and shoot something! Maybe don't sell your house before you do it (just in case you're no good at it), but don't let anything stand in your way of making something potentially great. Francis isn't perfect, but goddamnit, he's got heart.
Indie filmmaking, in a nutshell.
WHY DO WE NEED THE $$$?
While the bulk of photography is done, there is still serious work to be done before we unveil this to the world... which is why Eric and Brandon haven't seen daylight in 23 days. Your generous contributions will help us complete the project in myriad ways: wrap up the editing process, plow through post-production (sound editing, sound mixing, color grading, visual effects, titles & graphics, etc.), help us secure music rights for the film, and cover the cost of our film festival submissions once SELL YOUR HOUSE is complete. And if we surpass our goal, we can cover even more of our anticipated costs, including E&O insurance, legal fees, and distribution / marketing costs so that this film can be seen by the widest audience possible. We're confident we can do this, and we've got a seasoned producer, Deborah Lee Smith (Butterfly in the Sky), who's going to push us to the finish line. We just need your help to get there.
WHAT CAN YOU DO RIGHT NOW?
- You can FOLLOW our campaign (scroll up and look for the heart icon) so you can stay updated with our fundraising and post-production progress.
- You can dig into your pockets and CONTRIBUTE! We've got some sweet incentives for you to check out, including breakfast with Deb, lunch with Brandon, exploring with Eric, and even a one-night's stay at a Joshua Tree Airbnb.
- You can SHARE THIS WITH THE WORLD. Call your parents. Tell your friends (especially the wealthy ones). Share this campaign on all your socials (find the share icon above, right next to the heart icon) and tell your followers to drop whatever they're doing and donate to SELL YOUR HOUSE. Something like:
Selling your house to make a movie is downright stupid,
but donating to this Seed & Spark campaign is the smartest thing you'll ever do.
Whatever you can do to get us to the finish line, we're eternally grateful. (Until we need your contribution for our next film... but that's another story.)
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
Feed Our Filmmakers
Costs $250
Somebody please buy Eric or Brandon's groceries for the week so that they can stay at their desks and finish editing the film.
Music for the Final Film
Costs $4,500
Help us fill all of the awkward silences with a soulful musical score - with drumming provided by Francis Galluppi (the director) himself.
Visual Effects for Final Film
Costs $1,000
After all the filming and fighting and editing is done, the visual effects sweep in to make it all make sense. Help us make sense of it all.
Titles & Graphics for the Film
Costs $1,250
Gone are the days of slapping ClipArt onto your finished product. Titles these days better sing, dance and act - and ours are no exception.
Film Festival Submissions
Costs $500
When all is said and done, we'll be shipping this thing off to Sundance and a million other sexy film festivals, all with hefty entry fees.
Final Color for the Film
Costs $7,500
Colorists are behind-the-scenes saviors who add vibrancy and saturation to dreary visuals. Because nobody likes dreary visuals.
Cash Pledge
Costs $0
Direct link:
Share this update!
About This Team
ERIC ALEXANDER FOSS, Director
In 2010, Eric Alexander Foss graduated from USC film school with the standard naïveté and poverty that has plagued youngsters since the dawn of time. In 2014, just as he was considering bank robbery, he was hired as a cameraman to work on Naked and Afraid (a strange survival show on Discovery). Suddenly, Eric was living 6 months a year in tiny jungle villages around the world where things like hot water, electricity, and even sometimes walls (like enclosed spaces) are a luxury. Armed with a new appreciation for his privileged life, Eric splits the year between self-producing personal projects and working in unscripted TV as a Director of Photography. Eric’s last two films brought him to 30 film festivals including Dances With Films and Filmquest, won fourteen awards, and found distribution through Filmocracy. He just completed his most recent film, The Bare You, a documentary short which, so far, played at Flickers Rhode Island International, AmDocs, and No Man’s Land.
BRANDON PICKERING, Co-Director
In 2010, Brandon Pickering did not graduate from USC film school. He has never been to USC film school, and would prefer if people stopped asking about it. He has instead worked for the last decade on a wealth of different projects, spanning a variety of genres and quality. From directing award-winning short films and music videos for former members of The Commodores, to filming some of the most popular reality shows on television. His most recent credit was as Producer and Director of Photography on the upcoming feature documentary, Stolen Kingdom, from Executive Producer Jeff Tremaine. In 2020, he met Eric in a swamp somewhere in Florida while filming naked people attempting to not die for a month. This has culminated in a years long friendship that may very well be ended by him coming on as Co-Director for Sell Your House. His ability to create engaging and energetic narratives as a producer, DP, and editor has made him an asset in the crafting of this film.
DEBORAH LEE SMITH, Producer
Deborah Lee Smith is an award winning Los Angeles based actor, producer, writer and founder of Pink Boots Entertainment. She currently has six features that she produced under her belt including Here Awhile (starring Anna Camp, Joe Lo Truglio and Steven Strait), currently on HULU, and the action/thriller Last Three Days, in which she starred opposite Robert Palmer Watkins. Her most recent film, Butterfly in the Sky, is a documentary about Reading Rainbow, which premiered at Tribeca last June before going on to entertain audiences at over 40 festivals. Deborah is also a vocal mental health advocate and founder of More Than You See, a non profit organization and podcast dedicated to sharing stories and resources surrounding the daily struggles of mental health. She is currently in development on many projects with a focus on telling authentic stories about the successes and inner struggles that we all face.