Snowbird
Los Angeles, California | Film Short
Comedy, Drama
We're living in strange times. It's the age of misinformation. Fake news! Conspiracy theories run amok! And believers in the Flat Earth model have come to roost. Snowbird is a funny, heartfelt, intimate look at how we communicate unpopular ideas with one another, and how we reconcile them.
Snowbird
Los Angeles, California | Film Short
Comedy, Drama
1 Campaigns | California, United States
Green Light
This campaign raised $28,835 for production. Follow the filmmaker to receive future updates on this project.
136 supporters | followers
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We're living in strange times. It's the age of misinformation. Fake news! Conspiracy theories run amok! And believers in the Flat Earth model have come to roost. Snowbird is a funny, heartfelt, intimate look at how we communicate unpopular ideas with one another, and how we reconcile them.
About The Project
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
Mission Statement
The Story
LOGLINE: Lyle, a self-taught rocket scientist, invites a big city journalist out into the desert
to cover a launch that he says will prove, once and for all, that the Earth is flat.
A dawn's sun-soak rolls over the arid stretch of a remote, Southern California desert. It's here that Lyle Arsenault, a self-imposed recluse, and his exceedingly agreeable, paid-by-the-hour sidekick Miguel, have spent the last eight months emailing strangers and... building a rocket. This rocket, according to our hero pilot, will launch 2,000 feet into the air, recording all the while, measuring the horizon from here to there. 
If the horizon curves, so says Lyle, the Earth might just be a sphere. But if it doesn't, and Lyle is sure it won't, well... there's no debate. The Earth must be flat.
And so it is on this particular morning, the first and only of those emailed strangers to reply finally arrives. Her name is Murray, a storied journalist, who, with her photographer Dan in tow, has come to humor our eccentric rocketeer.
What follows is the contentious banter of two sides of an argument, both sure they're right, and both at least a little bit wrong. As the debate unfolds, and Lyle allows Murray to see a bit of his humanity, we're left with an important question: is it good to have something - anything - to believe in, no matter how absurd those beliefs might be?
Ultimately, Snowbird is a funny, feel good piece about 'strangers' coming together to connect. With a few twists and turns and a reveal that not everything is as it seems, Snowbird is sure to satisfy our audiences and hopefully move the needle in our own debates about how we relate to each other in an ever-polarizing world.
Why Snowbird? Why now?
Our Cast
Larry is from Cynthania, Kentucky and a graduate of Northwestern University, a prolific and adored journeyman of both stage and screen for the last seven decades. Post-graduate appearances include work at the Eagles Mere Playhouse, the American Shakespeare Festival and Lincoln Center. He was a favorite collaborator of Harold Pinter and debuted much of his work, most notably as Charlie Cohn in Man In The Glass Booth, a role he reprised in the film adaptation.
Larry worked a ton in commercials in his time in NYC. He tells stories of actors being expected to show up to auditions in a suit and tie, and the nicer the jacket the better shot you had at booking. Production would ship him out to New Jersey for the day where they had ‘real kitchens, actual homes’ and have a driver waiting to take him back to the city at wrap so he could make curtain for his Broadway show that night.
After a successful stretch back east, Larry came to Los Angeles to test his luck in front of the camera and his credits speak for themselves: Mulligan’s Stew, 9 to 5, The Hellstrom Chronicle, Shaft and Doogie Howser, M.D., to name only a few.
Larry’s awards and nominations include recognition from Drama-Logue, the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, Ovation, Garland, LA Weekly, GLAAD and Broadway’s Theatre World Awards. We’d tell you we’re lucky to have him, but you already know.
Ansuya is from Adelaide, Australia and trained at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA). She served as company producer and co-Artistic Director of Tamarama Rock Surfers, the resident independent theatre company at the Old Fitzroy Theatre in Sydney. Her time developing new Australian work there has helped cultivate an innate sense of story and structure, which is now applied to the screen, having just completed a placement with Closer Productions for the Screen Australia and SAFC-supported SBS Emerging Writers’ Incubator.
In 2010, Ansuya wrote and performed Long Live the King, a Stage Award nominated solo show for the Edinburgh Fringe. The show is a mashup of her parents’ migration and the death of Elvis Presley, which she is currently adapting into a novel with support of an Arts SA Literature Grant.
She worked on the Olivier Award-winning La Clique in London’s West End before coming to The States, producing and hosting the Another Aussie in LA podcast. She had a part in the Stan/BBC series The Tourist. Other screen credits include: Hotel Mumbai, Upright and Wait. She is about ready to release her web series The Art of Keeping It Casual, which she wrote and stars in, which we’re all very excited about.
Ansuya is the perfect sparring partner for Larry, and we can’t wait to watch them dig in.
Greg is from Dallas, TX and got his start in comedy in the Dallas improv theatre group The Ad-Libs. He went on to develop his own shows: The Comedy Madhouse in Las Vegas and The Greg Wilson’s Stand-Up/Smackdown! in New York City.
Greg’s stand-up venue credits include The Laugh Factory and Stand Up NY. TV credits include Bones, Ugly Betty, and Modern Family, several comedy shows and specials, including Showtime’s White Boyz in the Hood, Comics Unleashed and Comedy.tv and was featured in an episode of the reality dating show Who Wants to Date a Comedian? He was a cast member of World’s Dumbest from 2012-2013 and hosts a podcast called Hot N’ Heavy with Angie Everhart.
He’s probably best known as Arno Blount, the male lead’s quirky childhood friend, in The Hottie and the Nottie, a famous box office bomb, universally negatively reviewed film, and is cited as one of the worst films of all time. Greg also runs a stand-up comedy academy, The Comedy Institute. In it, he offers courses on storytelling, handling hecklers, and other skills necessary for a stand-up comedian.
St
ephen is from Winchester, MA and a graduate of the theatre department at Bates College. While at school, Stephen was recognized as a particular talent with the Bard’s prose, a fact he buries in most of his bios. After a quick stint in the NYC theatre scene, Stephen came to Hollywood and starred as Angelo in Write Act Repertory’s Measure for Measure, to rave reviews.
Stephen co-wrote, produced and starred in the award winning webseries Keeping Up with the Downs and wrote, starred in, and directed his own short, A Drowning Man. Stephen now works predominantly as a TV writer, with many projects in various stages of development.
What They're Saying
There's a lot of great screenwriting competitions out there, and ScreenCraft is among them. It's a cheap(ish) way for writers to get their work in front of some anonymous, unbiased eyes to see where they stack up. Snowbird only landed in one such competition, and the response and notes were very positive.
And while one set of feedback isn't enough to derail or greenlight a project, a reader's emotional resonance with written materials tells us we're on the right track. If we can translate the emotional pathos on the page into something similar on the screen, we'll be sitting on a very special piece.
The Plan for the Film
Every indie filmmaker dreams of finding a place for their work to be celebrated at the most prestigious film festivals, and yes, we're aiming for the mountaintop with SNOWBIRD. Every festival has a sensibility and attracts specific tones in their work, and SXSW and Toronto are the hanging gardens of Babylon for us. We'll go the festival route with our film, too, and throw paint on the wall and see what sticks.
SNOWBIRD is also a companion piece (more like a distant cousin) to Patrick's feature Golden and Gone, and we'll use our short to show potential investors what we can do with a bigger project.
As the tone of SNOWBIRD is also in the pocket of funny, fun, quick-witted and sentimental, it's a perfect calling card for Patrick in his ambitions to move into the commercial directing arena, and with any luck we'll use Snowbird as a perfect pitch package to bring commercial advertising work to Bottle of Smoke Films.
What's most exciting about what we're doing with Snowbird is that between the launch of this campaign and when our film goes live to the public, you'll have been with us every step of the way. We're lucky to have you.
What We Need
Filmmaking is an expensive endeavour, especially if you set out to do it the right way. We have over 100 combined years of trained experience as working professionals in our field, and the crew we're bringing on to execute the rest of this project are of the same caliber. Yes, we're calling in a lot of favors. And yes, the budget still swells when you want to make a movie with a real impact.
For a more specific idea of what our budget looks like and where the money in this campaign will be going, click on the WISHLIST tab above. Here is a run-of-the-mill film production budget, highlighting a theoretical breakdown of what each phase of the making of this movie will cost. Take that red slice away, the writer/director and producers aren't taking a dime. Make that slice purple, as the rights to Anne Murray's 'Snowbird' and our composer recording an acapella version for the opening credits will make post more expensive.
The safety of our cast and crew are paramount to our plans for shooting in May. No stone has gone unturned in assuring that every phase of this project has safety, health and wellness as the tip of the spear. Our 1st AD Eric has almost 600 on-set AD PA days and Patrick used to run his own on-set COVID compliance company during the pandemic.
Budget items include:
- production insurance
- cast and crew day rates
- camera/lighting/electric/sound equipment rentals
- a drone operator and their equipment
- locations fees
- art department (props, set dressing, rocket build)
- vanities (wardrobe, hair and makeup)
- catering and crafty
- production supplies (vehicles, pop-up tents, chairs and tables, generators, wardrobe rack, walkie-talkies, etc.)
- post-production (editing, color correction, sound design, composer recording session)
- music publishing rights
- film festival submissions and promotional materials (posters, ad space)
It adds up quick, but with a successful crowdfunding campaign we can be sure to march into production confident that we have everything we need.
Should we exceed our budget in this phase of crowdfunding, we'll be able to:
- spend more time in the recording studio
- submit to more film festivals
- have a longer run of music publishing rights to the song
- add the drone operator to a second day of filming
Yes, we want to hit our fundraising goal. But a short at $36,000 would set us up for colossal success.
Lastly...
If you've made it this far in the pitch, you deserve to know that not everything is as it seems in this story (ALERT! Stop reading now to avoid SPOILERS).
Yes, we teased this bit in the mission statement piece, but the twist reveal at the end of our story is two-fold and should emotionally resonate with our audiences. In truth, Lyle, our rocketeer, isn't altogether well, and is dealing with some advanced-stage dementia. It's a story tangent that I explore in a lot of my work, as my beloved grandmother Dorothy struggled with Alzheimer's for 10 years before passing on in 2019. SNOWBIRD means to highlight a snapshot of Lyle's journey through his own dementia, that grey area between diagnosis and the deep, lonely dark of Alzheimer's and diseases like it.
There's a certain care Murray takes in dealing with Lyle throughout the piece that should hint to our audiences that maybe their relationship is something more than just between journalist and subject, and the payoff for this beat is also quite satisfying. The script does a good job of hiding these secrets until the very last beats of the story, and we'll aim to do the same in its execution on film.
Ultimately, this is a story about family at a crossroads, with fundamentally polarizing ideas about the world and what we've come to know as true. How far would you go to share with the ones you love what matters to you? Is there room for family to meet in the middle about ideas that can't? SNOWBIRD thinks there is, and so do we.
We PROMISE this is a film you'll be proud to be involved in.
Become a Snowbirdie TODAY! We hope you'll follow, contribute and share!
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
Locations
Costs $4,080
We'll rent our desert location and our 60s flashback living room location at $85/hr, for 12 hours per day, for four total days.
Trailer Rental
Costs $795
We'll rent a hero camper trailer to park in our desert location. We'll also dress the inside of the trailer for interior shots.
Catering and Crafty
Costs $2,500
We'll be feeding our crew twice per day over four days, plus assorted snacks and beverages to keep energy up!
Lighting Package
Costs $1,700
We'll be using state-of-the-art movie lights to put an accent on every frame of our film.
Drone Operator and Camera
Costs $750
We'll need a drone operator to execute our rocket launch sequence and some other exciting set-ups.
Camera Package
Costs $1,475
We'll be shooting on a state of the art camera, and this package will include lenses and everything Shaun needs to execute his vision.
Rocket Construction
Costs $4,500
Our big ticket item will be building two versions of the rocket that looks like it can fly: a hero rocket and a modular version for tights.
Cast and Crew Day Rates
Costs $3,500
To make a professional film, we'll need a professional cast and crew. Pros don't work for free, except for Patrick. His rate is $0/day.
Post Production: Editing, Color, Sound
Costs $3,200
We'll hire an editor who will bring what we capture to life before the film goes in for color correction and sound editing.
Festival Submissions and Marketing
Costs $650
This fund will help us put the movie out into the world, submitting to film festivals and printing copies of our movie poster.
Music Licensing
Costs $2,500
To secure the right to play Anne Murray's Snowbird in a film festival run, we'll need to pay her publisher for the rights to the song.
Composer Recording Session
Costs $1,200
We'll need a little time in a recording studio to execute what our film composer has written for the piece.
Production Insurance
Costs $1,800
Everything by the books!
Cash Pledge
Costs $0
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About This Team
Hey Snowbirdies!
Here's a look at just some of the creative hive buzzing around our short!
Our Crew
Patrick is an actor, writer, director and producer from Newtown, CT, who's been working in independent film for over 15 years. He gravitates towards projects based on true stories and intimate, character-driven, social change pieces. A trademark of his work is using humor to cut through challenging, dark subject matter traditionally reserved for drama. He has a particular interest in stories that tackle issues surrounding dementia and Alzheimer's disease, and likes to make heroes of characters at the end of their lives.
Patrick makes his living as a commercial actor, having appeared in over 50 national campaigns for some of the biggest companies in the world. And YES, he's the bartender at the end of Taylor Swift's Capital One Era's Tour commercial, and YES, he loves being asked about it.
Patrick's script Golden and Gone won the 2015 Los Angeles Comedy Film Festival's Best Screenplay Award and his script Fragile won the Industry Insider's Best Screenplay hosted by Sheldon Turner and the Writer's Store. Patrick is also a Nicholl Fellowship Semifinalist (Top 50, 2016).
With over 14 years of experience as a Cinematographer, Shaun is passionate about the collaborative spirit of filmmaking and strives for the continual refinement of the craft of motion pictures. With a deep understanding of optics, lighting, camera movement, and positive project management, he strives to visually translate ideas into emotions that resonate with viewers.
Shaun's body of work demonstrates this skill set across various mediums, including commercials, documentaries, narrative, and new emerging canvases like Immersive Experiences. He has over a decade of experience in the immersive field, with projects having a global presence. Some of his notable works include The Stranger Things Experience, The Circle Room at the Grand Ole Opry, The Selig Experience at Miller Park, and the recently launched Raiders Experience at Allegiant Stadium.
Working in immersive requires an expertise of various filmmaking techniques and an understanding of the technical requirements to best achieve an effect in relationship to how it's presented in a physical environment. This entails a versatile skill set, ranging from traditional filmmaking approaches to 3D stereographic capture, from classic in-camera special effects to large-scale visual effects production.
Shaun is enthusiastic about spearheading the evolution of immersive experiences and is wholeheartedly committed to crafting novel encounters where emerging technologies empower the boundless creativity of our visions.
Born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Devin's desire to entertain took hold at an early age in the form of athletics. As a standout athlete, he accepted an offer to play NCAA Division soccer at Santa Clara University, where he also discovered his love of acting and writing. After finishing school, Devin moved to Los Angeles, where he has spent the past decade appearing in countless short films, web series, commercials, and print campaigns.
Shifting most of his energy to writing, Devin wrote the pilots Extra/Ordinary and Narrowchapel, the latter of which placed top 25 in the 2019 Page International Screenwriting Awards for comedy pilots.
Devin also writes screenplays with director/actor/writer Ansuya Nathan, who is perhaps not coincidentally also his wife. Their first feature together, the horror thriller Rakshasa, has been optioned. Their second feature, the post-apocalyptic fever dream Cal, is currently being shopped.
Jay is an actor and producer from Hasbrouck Heights, NJ and a graduate of Ramapo College. A prolific journeyman of the big and little screen, Jay's acting credits include recurring work on Mad Men, Bosch, Sneakerheads and Awake. Other credits include TV work on Unbelievable and film roles in Gotti, Bigger, Continue and Best Thanksgiving Ever, the latter two he also produced.
Jay was executive producer on Desperation Road, a 2023 indie thriller starring Mel Gibson and Garrett Hedlund. Jay is a former recipient of the Garden State Film Festival 'Rising Star Award'.
Puerto Rican artist NiNo was introduced to the world of arts at an early age when his parents noticed how much he enjoyed drawing and painting. When he attended college at the University of Puerto Rico, he joined the National Student Exchange Program which transferred him to Indiana University where he majored in Graphic Design.
NiNo's experience as an artist has since been very eclectic. It has brought him to designing sets and shows for stage, film, and commercials in Los Angeles. He was part of the design team for NBC’s TV show “American Dream Builders” and has been working as the Art Director/Prop Master for Ricky Martin since 2017. NiNo's favorite projects have been creations that bring communities together, notably the public art project, “Múcaro’s Rising”, a basketball court mural located in Puerto Rico. It was the first of its kind on the island sponsored by the 2K Foundation. The project also served as an outreach program to involve the community to paint and refurbish the court, an experience NiNo was proud to lead. Múcaro’s Rising was recognized with a CODAward as one of the 2021 Top 100 commissioned art installations in the world.
Other public art projects NiNo designed and created are “Got Framed”, a popular interactive art installation at Burning Man (2015 & 2016), recognizing him as the first Puerto Rican to bring art to Burning Man, and the wise woody owl named “MÚCARO” which received the 2017 Burning Man Honoraria Art Grant. He recently received his second Honoraria Art Grant to bring a new interactive art piece “ATABEY” to the 2022 event.
NiNo owes a lot of his big art fabrication and installation experience to his years working at one of the best U.S. art fabrication houses, Carlson Baker Arts. He has had the opportunity to collaborate with renowned artists such as Christian Moeller (“Cactus” at the Henry B. González Convention Center, San Antonio Texas) and Pae White (“Woven Walk” at the LAX, Los Angeles Tom Bradley International Airport).
In 2021 he joined forces with his talented friend Thomas Dambo, fabricating five of his world-renowned troll installations at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay, Maine called in “Guardians Of The Seeds”. What fulfills NiNo the most is creating spaces that provoke thought and conversation. He loves seeing people being stimulated, and better yet, inspired to create, thrive and dream BIG.
Current Team
Incentives
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
Mission Statement
The Story
LOGLINE: Lyle, a self-taught rocket scientist, invites a big city journalist out into the desert
to cover a launch that he says will prove, once and for all, that the Earth is flat.
A dawn's sun-soak rolls over the arid stretch of a remote, Southern California desert. It's here that Lyle Arsenault, a self-imposed recluse, and his exceedingly agreeable, paid-by-the-hour sidekick Miguel, have spent the last eight months emailing strangers and... building a rocket. This rocket, according to our hero pilot, will launch 2,000 feet into the air, recording all the while, measuring the horizon from here to there.
If the horizon curves, so says Lyle, the Earth might just be a sphere. But if it doesn't, and Lyle is sure it won't, well... there's no debate. The Earth must be flat.
And so it is on this particular morning, the first and only of those emailed strangers to reply finally arrives. Her name is Murray, a storied journalist, who, with her photographer Dan in tow, has come to humor our eccentric rocketeer.
What follows is the contentious banter of two sides of an argument, both sure they're right, and both at least a little bit wrong. As the debate unfolds, and Lyle allows Murray to see a bit of his humanity, we're left with an important question: is it good to have something - anything - to believe in, no matter how absurd those beliefs might be?
Ultimately, Snowbird is a funny, feel good piece about 'strangers' coming together to connect. With a few twists and turns and a reveal that not everything is as it seems, Snowbird is sure to satisfy our audiences and hopefully move the needle in our own debates about how we relate to each other in an ever-polarizing world.
Why Snowbird? Why now?
Our Cast
Larry is from Cynthania, Kentucky and a graduate of Northwestern University, a prolific and adored journeyman of both stage and screen for the last seven decades. Post-graduate appearances include work at the Eagles Mere Playhouse, the American Shakespeare Festival and Lincoln Center. He was a favorite collaborator of Harold Pinter and debuted much of his work, most notably as Charlie Cohn in Man In The Glass Booth, a role he reprised in the film adaptation.
Larry worked a ton in commercials in his time in NYC. He tells stories of actors being expected to show up to auditions in a suit and tie, and the nicer the jacket the better shot you had at booking. Production would ship him out to New Jersey for the day where they had ‘real kitchens, actual homes’ and have a driver waiting to take him back to the city at wrap so he could make curtain for his Broadway show that night.
After a successful stretch back east, Larry came to Los Angeles to test his luck in front of the camera and his credits speak for themselves: Mulligan’s Stew, 9 to 5, The Hellstrom Chronicle, Shaft and Doogie Howser, M.D., to name only a few.
Larry’s awards and nominations include recognition from Drama-Logue, the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, Ovation, Garland, LA Weekly, GLAAD and Broadway’s Theatre World Awards. We’d tell you we’re lucky to have him, but you already know.
Ansuya is from Adelaide, Australia and trained at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA). She served as company producer and co-Artistic Director of Tamarama Rock Surfers, the resident independent theatre company at the Old Fitzroy Theatre in Sydney. Her time developing new Australian work there has helped cultivate an innate sense of story and structure, which is now applied to the screen, having just completed a placement with Closer Productions for the Screen Australia and SAFC-supported SBS Emerging Writers’ Incubator.
In 2010, Ansuya wrote and performed Long Live the King, a Stage Award nominated solo show for the Edinburgh Fringe. The show is a mashup of her parents’ migration and the death of Elvis Presley, which she is currently adapting into a novel with support of an Arts SA Literature Grant.
She worked on the Olivier Award-winning La Clique in London’s West End before coming to The States, producing and hosting the Another Aussie in LA podcast. She had a part in the Stan/BBC series The Tourist. Other screen credits include: Hotel Mumbai, Upright and Wait. She is about ready to release her web series The Art of Keeping It Casual, which she wrote and stars in, which we’re all very excited about.
Ansuya is the perfect sparring partner for Larry, and we can’t wait to watch them dig in.
Greg is from Dallas, TX and got his start in comedy in the Dallas improv theatre group The Ad-Libs. He went on to develop his own shows: The Comedy Madhouse in Las Vegas and The Greg Wilson’s Stand-Up/Smackdown! in New York City.
Greg’s stand-up venue credits include The Laugh Factory and Stand Up NY. TV credits include Bones, Ugly Betty, and Modern Family, several comedy shows and specials, including Showtime’s White Boyz in the Hood, Comics Unleashed and Comedy.tv and was featured in an episode of the reality dating show Who Wants to Date a Comedian? He was a cast member of World’s Dumbest from 2012-2013 and hosts a podcast called Hot N’ Heavy with Angie Everhart.
He’s probably best known as Arno Blount, the male lead’s quirky childhood friend, in The Hottie and the Nottie, a famous box office bomb, universally negatively reviewed film, and is cited as one of the worst films of all time. Greg also runs a stand-up comedy academy, The Comedy Institute. In it, he offers courses on storytelling, handling hecklers, and other skills necessary for a stand-up comedian.
Stephen is from Winchester, MA and a graduate of the theatre department at Bates College. While at school, Stephen was recognized as a particular talent with the Bard’s prose, a fact he buries in most of his bios. After a quick stint in the NYC theatre scene, Stephen came to Hollywood and starred as Angelo in Write Act Repertory’s Measure for Measure, to rave reviews.
Stephen co-wrote, produced and starred in the award winning webseries Keeping Up with the Downs and wrote, starred in, and directed his own short, A Drowning Man. Stephen now works predominantly as a TV writer, with many projects in various stages of development.
What They're Saying
There's a lot of great screenwriting competitions out there, and ScreenCraft is among them. It's a cheap(ish) way for writers to get their work in front of some anonymous, unbiased eyes to see where they stack up. Snowbird only landed in one such competition, and the response and notes were very positive.
And while one set of feedback isn't enough to derail or greenlight a project, a reader's emotional resonance with written materials tells us we're on the right track. If we can translate the emotional pathos on the page into something similar on the screen, we'll be sitting on a very special piece.
The Plan for the Film
Every indie filmmaker dreams of finding a place for their work to be celebrated at the most prestigious film festivals, and yes, we're aiming for the mountaintop with SNOWBIRD. Every festival has a sensibility and attracts specific tones in their work, and SXSW and Toronto are the hanging gardens of Babylon for us. We'll go the festival route with our film, too, and throw paint on the wall and see what sticks.
SNOWBIRD is also a companion piece (more like a distant cousin) to Patrick's feature Golden and Gone, and we'll use our short to show potential investors what we can do with a bigger project.
As the tone of SNOWBIRD is also in the pocket of funny, fun, quick-witted and sentimental, it's a perfect calling card for Patrick in his ambitions to move into the commercial directing arena, and with any luck we'll use Snowbird as a perfect pitch package to bring commercial advertising work to Bottle of Smoke Films.
What's most exciting about what we're doing with Snowbird is that between the launch of this campaign and when our film goes live to the public, you'll have been with us every step of the way. We're lucky to have you.
What We Need
Filmmaking is an expensive endeavour, especially if you set out to do it the right way. We have over 100 combined years of trained experience as working professionals in our field, and the crew we're bringing on to execute the rest of this project are of the same caliber. Yes, we're calling in a lot of favors. And yes, the budget still swells when you want to make a movie with a real impact.
For a more specific idea of what our budget looks like and where the money in this campaign will be going, click on the WISHLIST tab above. Here is a run-of-the-mill film production budget, highlighting a theoretical breakdown of what each phase of the making of this movie will cost. Take that red slice away, the writer/director and producers aren't taking a dime. Make that slice purple, as the rights to Anne Murray's 'Snowbird' and our composer recording an acapella version for the opening credits will make post more expensive.
The safety of our cast and crew are paramount to our plans for shooting in May. No stone has gone unturned in assuring that every phase of this project has safety, health and wellness as the tip of the spear. Our 1st AD Eric has almost 600 on-set AD PA days and Patrick used to run his own on-set COVID compliance company during the pandemic.
Budget items include:
- production insurance
- cast and crew day rates
- camera/lighting/electric/sound equipment rentals
- a drone operator and their equipment
- locations fees
- art department (props, set dressing, rocket build)
- vanities (wardrobe, hair and makeup)
- catering and crafty
- production supplies (vehicles, pop-up tents, chairs and tables, generators, wardrobe rack, walkie-talkies, etc.)
- post-production (editing, color correction, sound design, composer recording session)
- music publishing rights
- film festival submissions and promotional materials (posters, ad space)
It adds up quick, but with a successful crowdfunding campaign we can be sure to march into production confident that we have everything we need.
Should we exceed our budget in this phase of crowdfunding, we'll be able to:
- spend more time in the recording studio
- submit to more film festivals
- have a longer run of music publishing rights to the song
- add the drone operator to a second day of filming
Yes, we want to hit our fundraising goal. But a short at $36,000 would set us up for colossal success.
Lastly...
If you've made it this far in the pitch, you deserve to know that not everything is as it seems in this story (ALERT! Stop reading now to avoid SPOILERS).
Yes, we teased this bit in the mission statement piece, but the twist reveal at the end of our story is two-fold and should emotionally resonate with our audiences. In truth, Lyle, our rocketeer, isn't altogether well, and is dealing with some advanced-stage dementia. It's a story tangent that I explore in a lot of my work, as my beloved grandmother Dorothy struggled with Alzheimer's for 10 years before passing on in 2019. SNOWBIRD means to highlight a snapshot of Lyle's journey through his own dementia, that grey area between diagnosis and the deep, lonely dark of Alzheimer's and diseases like it.
There's a certain care Murray takes in dealing with Lyle throughout the piece that should hint to our audiences that maybe their relationship is something more than just between journalist and subject, and the payoff for this beat is also quite satisfying. The script does a good job of hiding these secrets until the very last beats of the story, and we'll aim to do the same in its execution on film.
Ultimately, this is a story about family at a crossroads, with fundamentally polarizing ideas about the world and what we've come to know as true. How far would you go to share with the ones you love what matters to you? Is there room for family to meet in the middle about ideas that can't? SNOWBIRD thinks there is, and so do we.
We PROMISE this is a film you'll be proud to be involved in.
Become a Snowbirdie TODAY! We hope you'll follow, contribute and share!
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
Locations
Costs $4,080
We'll rent our desert location and our 60s flashback living room location at $85/hr, for 12 hours per day, for four total days.
Trailer Rental
Costs $795
We'll rent a hero camper trailer to park in our desert location. We'll also dress the inside of the trailer for interior shots.
Catering and Crafty
Costs $2,500
We'll be feeding our crew twice per day over four days, plus assorted snacks and beverages to keep energy up!
Lighting Package
Costs $1,700
We'll be using state-of-the-art movie lights to put an accent on every frame of our film.
Drone Operator and Camera
Costs $750
We'll need a drone operator to execute our rocket launch sequence and some other exciting set-ups.
Camera Package
Costs $1,475
We'll be shooting on a state of the art camera, and this package will include lenses and everything Shaun needs to execute his vision.
Rocket Construction
Costs $4,500
Our big ticket item will be building two versions of the rocket that looks like it can fly: a hero rocket and a modular version for tights.
Cast and Crew Day Rates
Costs $3,500
To make a professional film, we'll need a professional cast and crew. Pros don't work for free, except for Patrick. His rate is $0/day.
Post Production: Editing, Color, Sound
Costs $3,200
We'll hire an editor who will bring what we capture to life before the film goes in for color correction and sound editing.
Festival Submissions and Marketing
Costs $650
This fund will help us put the movie out into the world, submitting to film festivals and printing copies of our movie poster.
Music Licensing
Costs $2,500
To secure the right to play Anne Murray's Snowbird in a film festival run, we'll need to pay her publisher for the rights to the song.
Composer Recording Session
Costs $1,200
We'll need a little time in a recording studio to execute what our film composer has written for the piece.
Production Insurance
Costs $1,800
Everything by the books!
Cash Pledge
Costs $0
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About This Team
Hey Snowbirdies!
Here's a look at just some of the creative hive buzzing around our short!
Our Crew
Patrick is an actor, writer, director and producer from Newtown, CT, who's been working in independent film for over 15 years. He gravitates towards projects based on true stories and intimate, character-driven, social change pieces. A trademark of his work is using humor to cut through challenging, dark subject matter traditionally reserved for drama. He has a particular interest in stories that tackle issues surrounding dementia and Alzheimer's disease, and likes to make heroes of characters at the end of their lives.
Patrick makes his living as a commercial actor, having appeared in over 50 national campaigns for some of the biggest companies in the world. And YES, he's the bartender at the end of Taylor Swift's Capital One Era's Tour commercial, and YES, he loves being asked about it.
Patrick's script Golden and Gone won the 2015 Los Angeles Comedy Film Festival's Best Screenplay Award and his script Fragile won the Industry Insider's Best Screenplay hosted by Sheldon Turner and the Writer's Store. Patrick is also a Nicholl Fellowship Semifinalist (Top 50, 2016).
With over 14 years of experience as a Cinematographer, Shaun is passionate about the collaborative spirit of filmmaking and strives for the continual refinement of the craft of motion pictures. With a deep understanding of optics, lighting, camera movement, and positive project management, he strives to visually translate ideas into emotions that resonate with viewers.
Shaun's body of work demonstrates this skill set across various mediums, including commercials, documentaries, narrative, and new emerging canvases like Immersive Experiences. He has over a decade of experience in the immersive field, with projects having a global presence. Some of his notable works include The Stranger Things Experience, The Circle Room at the Grand Ole Opry, The Selig Experience at Miller Park, and the recently launched Raiders Experience at Allegiant Stadium.
Working in immersive requires an expertise of various filmmaking techniques and an understanding of the technical requirements to best achieve an effect in relationship to how it's presented in a physical environment. This entails a versatile skill set, ranging from traditional filmmaking approaches to 3D stereographic capture, from classic in-camera special effects to large-scale visual effects production.
Shaun is enthusiastic about spearheading the evolution of immersive experiences and is wholeheartedly committed to crafting novel encounters where emerging technologies empower the boundless creativity of our visions.
Born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Devin's desire to entertain took hold at an early age in the form of athletics. As a standout athlete, he accepted an offer to play NCAA Division soccer at Santa Clara University, where he also discovered his love of acting and writing. After finishing school, Devin moved to Los Angeles, where he has spent the past decade appearing in countless short films, web series, commercials, and print campaigns.
Shifting most of his energy to writing, Devin wrote the pilots Extra/Ordinary and Narrowchapel, the latter of which placed top 25 in the 2019 Page International Screenwriting Awards for comedy pilots.
Devin also writes screenplays with director/actor/writer Ansuya Nathan, who is perhaps not coincidentally also his wife. Their first feature together, the horror thriller Rakshasa, has been optioned. Their second feature, the post-apocalyptic fever dream Cal, is currently being shopped.
Jay is an actor and producer from Hasbrouck Heights, NJ and a graduate of Ramapo College. A prolific journeyman of the big and little screen, Jay's acting credits include recurring work on Mad Men, Bosch, Sneakerheads and Awake. Other credits include TV work on Unbelievable and film roles in Gotti, Bigger, Continue and Best Thanksgiving Ever, the latter two he also produced.
Jay was executive producer on Desperation Road, a 2023 indie thriller starring Mel Gibson and Garrett Hedlund. Jay is a former recipient of the Garden State Film Festival 'Rising Star Award'.
Puerto Rican artist NiNo was introduced to the world of arts at an early age when his parents noticed how much he enjoyed drawing and painting. When he attended college at the University of Puerto Rico, he joined the National Student Exchange Program which transferred him to Indiana University where he majored in Graphic Design.
NiNo's experience as an artist has since been very eclectic. It has brought him to designing sets and shows for stage, film, and commercials in Los Angeles. He was part of the design team for NBC’s TV show “American Dream Builders” and has been working as the Art Director/Prop Master for Ricky Martin since 2017. NiNo's favorite projects have been creations that bring communities together, notably the public art project, “Múcaro’s Rising”, a basketball court mural located in Puerto Rico. It was the first of its kind on the island sponsored by the 2K Foundation. The project also served as an outreach program to involve the community to paint and refurbish the court, an experience NiNo was proud to lead. Múcaro’s Rising was recognized with a CODAward as one of the 2021 Top 100 commissioned art installations in the world.
Other public art projects NiNo designed and created are “Got Framed”, a popular interactive art installation at Burning Man (2015 & 2016), recognizing him as the first Puerto Rican to bring art to Burning Man, and the wise woody owl named “MÚCARO” which received the 2017 Burning Man Honoraria Art Grant. He recently received his second Honoraria Art Grant to bring a new interactive art piece “ATABEY” to the 2022 event.
NiNo owes a lot of his big art fabrication and installation experience to his years working at one of the best U.S. art fabrication houses, Carlson Baker Arts. He has had the opportunity to collaborate with renowned artists such as Christian Moeller (“Cactus” at the Henry B. González Convention Center, San Antonio Texas) and Pae White (“Woven Walk” at the LAX, Los Angeles Tom Bradley International Airport).
In 2021 he joined forces with his talented friend Thomas Dambo, fabricating five of his world-renowned troll installations at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay, Maine called in “Guardians Of The Seeds”. What fulfills NiNo the most is creating spaces that provoke thought and conversation. He loves seeing people being stimulated, and better yet, inspired to create, thrive and dream BIG.