Are you an upright citizen who lives by a high moral standard? In the heat of the moment, would you choose what is ethically right over a check for five million dollars?

"The Big Pitch" is a dramatic short film, telling the story of two college entrepreneurs gearing up for the pitch of their lives. Our fast flowing, hard-hitting story takes place in Manhattan, New York—the center of the financial world, and where a million dreams are born every day and die just as quickly, rising and falling like tickers on the New York Stock Exchange. Our main characters Peter and Marc have just created a revolutionary app, and soon find themselves staring down the barrel of a five million dollar choice—take the money but abandon their ethics, or turn it down and start again.

The conflict at the center of "The Big Pitch" orbits around an ethical disagreement over their new app's addictive nature. Peter has seemingly developed code that creates the most effective user engagement metrics on the market, a software that would have children and adults alike spending hours scrolling mindlessly through their phones, addicted to the way in which the app responds to their engagement. Marc, a young shark in the making, knows this is their greatest selling point—dollar signs light his eyes. Peter, the code maestro and the more reserved of the two, struggles with the fact that he may have created a monster in the form of an algorithm—and worries that Marc's power-hungry nature will upend their friendship on the eve of pitching their app concept to the dynamic Powers Venture Capital firm.

The script, written by Alex Morsanutto ("Hi-Glow Retro" "The Everchanging World of Kid Super") and Robert Enriquez, is a strong, didactic piece of storytelling in the hard-hitting vein of Aaron Sorkin or David Mamet. For his final New York Film Academy project, Robert wanted to create a film that explores contemporary phone addiction, the shortening of attention spans, and the hunger for a fast, cheap, and unlimited supply of content that feeds our unrelenting dopamine dependency.

THE PLAN

"The Big Pitch" is a New York film and will be shot in New York City. Our plan is to gain access and shoot the film in a collection of dynamic locations that reinforce the concepts and style the film aims to achieve. Importantly, we want to make a film that looks, feels and embodies the energy and intensity that is New York City.

In order to do so, we are looking to stretch our budget during pre-production by fundraising to make additional resources available so we can make the best film possible. And because we're shooting within the Five Boroughs, costs are generally more expensive for a production—even a student film. From June 14th until July 9th we will be running this campaign as we assemble our pre-production materials and build our crew and talent roster for the production, aiming to shoot between July 14th and July 28th—dates TBD.

With the money raised during this period, it will help us provision our pre-production resources—casting, rehearsals, brokering locations, developing art direction and production design, and generally getting our ducks in a row for the shoot—and add extra padding for our shoot window, as well.

But perhaps most importantly, the money raised during this period will aid in helping to get the film finished. Post-production is one of our largest single cost periods, and with an eye to enter the film into some of the major prestige festivals in the late 2021/early 2022 period, we want to pursue an aggressive post-production timeline, coinciding directly after the film has wrapped production and principle photography. With a portion of the funds we raise during this time, we will be able to work with professional post-houses here in NYC on sound design, scoring, color correction and mastering and put together a fantastic showpiece that will fulfill my academic mission, as well as help to facilitate getting into the workstream of the film industry here in New York.

YOUR SUPPORT GOES A LONG WAY

So you may be wondering, "Why should I give this crazy kid my money for his little film?" Simply put, making movies, even short films, is an expensive venture—and making them authentically and with purpose here in NYC doesn't make them cheaper. But by contributing to this fundraising campaign, you're contributing to the start of one young filmmaker's formal career, as well as supporting everyone else involved in the production—the producers, the crew, the talent and anyone else who touches the project.

I have aligned myself with professionals to make this film, and as such, I am looking to show them the level of professionalism—even at a low-budget level—that a project like this deserves. Below is a breakdown of how every dollar will be spent from pre-production, thru principle photography, and all the way to post-production and delivery:

Our budget will be comprised of:

- Production Departments - 15% - We are fortunate enough to have NYFA helping to baseline our departmental production such as camera department and G&E, but in order for us to make sure our teams have the tools they need to do the work, we are looking to pad each department with additional resources to help support them in the work. The lion's share will go to Production Design, to ensure we have a detailed, naturalistic world in which our characters live and exist, full of meaning and subtext. The rest will help to support each department - camera + G&E, art + makeup, and production in general.

- Salaries - 20% - We are lucky enough to have a team of dedicated professionals overseeing and supporting the production on a pro bono basis, but in order to make crucial crew hires, it is important for the production to offer honorarium rates to the skilled filmworkers on our team for giving this show their time and raw talent.

- Locations - 30% - Locations make our story, and in NYC, they don't come cheap. We are aiming to access fantastically cinematic spaces and places to help give life and presence to the world in which our characters inhabit. 

- Food/Craft Services - 15% - Needless to say, when you put on a film project of any size, you need to feed people. We are trying to make sure the crew has diverse, healthy options to keep them motivated and energized throughout our shoot.

- Transportation and Operational Logistics - 10% - You gotta move people when you make movies, and it isn't cheap.

- Post-Production - 10% - We're lucky, as filmmakers and collaborators, that we will be able to work on post-production, well, after the production—this way, we can elect to make informed hires for music composition, sound design, any visual effects, color correction, mix + mastering and conform. Raising this "last mile" capital to help us put dedicated resources into post-production is intrinsic to how we finish this film, and the delivered product.

Our goal is to raise $10,000 to fund this film. If we can exceed that, we'll be over the moon. But any dollar amount helps us get that much closer to bringing "The Big Pitch" to life, and hopefully, to a screen near you soon.