Tout Ensemble or: Everything Considered
Chicago, Illinois | Film Short
Comedy, Experimental
Tout Ensemble is a short existential tragicomedy about Zero, a man who may or may not be dead, not knowing where he’s woken up. He meanders through a bizarrely familiar world. Bumping into apparition-like eccentric characters who all seem to have an archetypal meaning to him.
Tout Ensemble or: Everything Considered
Chicago, Illinois | Film Short
Comedy, Experimental
1 Campaigns |
15 supporters | followers
Enter the amount you would like to pledge
$1,255
Goal: $3,000 for pre-production
Tout Ensemble is a short existential tragicomedy about Zero, a man who may or may not be dead, not knowing where he’s woken up. He meanders through a bizarrely familiar world. Bumping into apparition-like eccentric characters who all seem to have an archetypal meaning to him.
About The Project
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
Mission Statement
The Story
TOUT ENSEMBLE or: Everything Considered started as another exercise in run-and-gun filmmaking. It has blossomed into a challenge to infuse everything we’ve learned; toying with genre, caméra-stylo, location scouting, editing, writing, and cinematic language, pushing each to its lean limit in order to achieve something sharp and precise in all its elements.
This is a short absurdist tragicomedy about ZERO, a man who may or may not be dead, who does not know where he’s woken up. He meanders through a bizarrely familiar world. Bumping into apparition-like eccentric characters who all seem to have an archetypal meaning to him.
IT IS...
Dark and Bright. BIZARRE. Irrational. A restrained maximalist film with minimalist sensibilities. A surreal, asburd look at rewatching a life unlived. Vacillating between the circus-like atmosphere of Fellini with the sober stoic poetry of Bresson. Whimsical and unnerving. Funny and sad. The two masks of drama.
Over the last ten years, I've been lucky enough to make a wide range of short films with amazing people. Lately, I have been calling these experiments in form and practice; doodles or sketches. Filmmaking, as you know if you have ever worked on a set (big or small), is such a terribly tedious, arduous, codec and bitrate loaded fiasco. Not to mention you throw some screwball personalities into the mix, which all of us are guilty of. It's a medium that is drenched in pretense. From gear-heads to theorists, to cliques in the industry, from art films to the dreaded word "content." This is why I think "doodle" is appropriate here, to suck out the venom of snobbishness from the wound.
One of my heroes is Slava Polunin, a Russian clown. He said something that has stuck with me over the last decade: "Never make something important with people who you don't want to embrace." The goal of this short experiment is to see what we can do with little resources, so financiers can imagine what we could create if we went BIGGER. This is what I want to do. Make something special with people I want to embrace.
A. Our writer/director/cinematographer, Craig Hard has collaborated multiple times with everyone below. His films blur the line between hyper-realism and the surreal mundanity of daily life. Genre-less and genre-full, the thematic worlds he creates vary with each project. Not just in subject matter but in form and how each film is produced. From scripted and entirely shot-listed, to completely improvised Cinéma Vérité stories that build in the moment.
B. Our 1st AD, Rou Wang, born and raised in Taiwan, is a Chicago-based filmmaker. Wang’s work has reached audiences within the U.S and internationally. She began her filmmaking journey as an editor in school. Then as an assistant director alongside aspiring directors such as Will Schneider, Hannah Schierbeek, Craig Hard. While building these collaborative experiences, she is also on a path to carving stories with her intuition and perceptions. Wang’s work often inspects and challenges the definition of sanities under a coated cultural lens, questioning the most mundane daily lives.
C. Our Producer and 2nd AD, Sarah Corean, has been producing, assistant directing, and directing short narrative films for 10 years. She's had films directed by her play at festivals around the world. Her latest short film, Eggs, ran a successful crowdfunding campaign in 2022, reaching its goal of $15k in the first 10 days of its run. She's an organizational powerhouse.
D. Our Assistant Producer Katherine Nina Vasquez is a versatile actress based in Chicago, IL, working across film, television, commercial, print, and theatre represented by Talent X Alexander. She helped us get underway with wonderful marketing ideas, production logistics and elements of our fundraising campaign. Alternate Identities Include: Bird Watch Wanderer, Marketing Maniac, Literature Lover, and Gumptious Guitarist.
E. Our Production Sound Mixer, Dylan Smith, who founded Phd Audio, started as a one-man band to provide superb audio to creatives in Chicago & the Chicagoland area. Since Phd Audio's establishment, it has grown an extensive team and portfolio to supervise audio requests all across the world. Whether the delicate dance of run n’ gun docs, mixing live podcasts, or shaping things all together in post, he is equipped to handle any project, no matter how big or how small.
F. Our Re-recording Mixer and Dialogue Editor, Isa Hernandez (she/they). Is a trans, Latinx freelance sound designer, dialogue editor, re-recording mixer and field recordist born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Who began tinkering with sound from a young age listening to their dad’s CDs on his Technics stereo system. Growing up with a passion for music and began playing drums at 13. This sparked curiosity for how to record music, and experimenting with her mom’s computer and a basic USB mic. They have a great passion for collaborating with people and bringing their projects to sonic life. While she enjoys working independently, they also love bringing their experience to collaborative efforts with a team of any size.
BUDGET:
Our budget is lean to keep the production's ability for spontaneity at a high level. Your support goes directly to the essentials of filmmaking for our larger ensemble set pieces (shooting in late October) with a great deal of orchestration and extras. Your help allows us more freedom; via time and energy spent on NOT worrying about those costs.
PREPRO - JUNE 15 - AUG 31
Casting, location scouting, wardrobe/camera tests, and most of pre-production are completed.
PRODUCTION - AUG 12 - OCTOBER 31:
Filming has already begun, with a small splinter unit, stealing shots and pulling favors.
LARGE ENSEMBLE SHOOT DAYS: OCT 24TH - OCT 25TH
These day will be traditional-esque 10 hour days. With several company moves and lots of extras.
POST PRODUCTION: November 1st - January 1 2027
Editing will begin shortly after filming has wrapped. Then sound and color. VFX may take some time. We are hoping to have the film fully realized and ready to deliver on January 1st, 2027.
Stay along for the ride and follow our instagram for the process and more sneak peeks.
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
CATERING
Costs $500
This will cover any catering and crafty needs for our ensemble cast/extras and crew.
LOCATION
Costs $500
One of our key locations is a movie theatre. We will use this to rent FACETS, the beloved cinémathèque.
STRETCH GOAL
Costs $550
This will cover the unforeseen, which is ever-present during the beginning, middle, and end of making a film.
Direct link:
Share this update!
About This Team
Our writer/director/cinematographer, Craig Hard has collaborated multiple times with everyone below. His films blur the line between hyper-realism and the surreal mundanity of daily life. Genre-less and genre-full, the thematic worlds he creates vary with each project. Not just in subject matter but in form and how each film is produced. From scripted and entirely shot-listed, to completely improvised Cinéma Vérité stories that build in the moment.
Our 1st AD, Rou Wang, born and raised in Taiwan, is a Chicago-based filmmaker. Wang’s work has reached audiences within the U.S and internationally. She began her filmmaking journey as an editor in school. Then as an assistant director alongside aspiring directors such as Will Schneider, Hannah Schierbeek, Craig Hard. While building these collaborative experiences, she is also on a path to carving stories with her intuition and perceptions. Wang’s work often inspects and challenges the definition of sanities under a coated cultural lens, questioning the most mundane daily lives.
Our producer and 2nd AD, Sarah Corean, has been producing, assistant directing, and directing short narrative films for 10 years. She's had films directed by her play at festivals around the world. Her latest short film, Eggs, ran a successful crowdfunding campaign in 2022, reaching its goal of $15k in the first 10 days of its run. She's an organizational powerhouse.
Our 2nd producer Katherine Nina Vasquez is a versatile actress based in Chicago, IL, working across film, television, commercial, print, and theatre represented by Talent X Alexander. She helped us get underway with wonderful marketing ideas, production logistics and elements of our fundraising campaign. Alternate Identities Include: Bird Watch Wanderer, Marketing Maniac, Literature Lover, and Gumptious Guitarist.
E. Our Production Sound Mixer, Dylan Smith, who founded Phd Audio, started as a one-man band to provide superb audio to creatives in Chicago & the Chicagoland area. Since Phd Audio's establishment, it has grown an extensive team and portfolio to supervise audio requests all across the world. Whether the delicate dance of run n’ gun docs, mixing live podcasts, or shaping things all together in post, he is equipped to handle any project, no matter how big or how small.
F. Our Re-recording Mixer and Dialogue Editor, Isa Hernandez (she/they). Is a trans, Latinx freelance sound designer, dialogue editor, re-recording mixer and field recordist born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Who began tinkering with sound from a young age listening to their dad’s CDs on his Technics stereo system. Growing up with a passion for music and began playing drums at 13. This sparked curiosity for how to record music, and experimenting with her mom’s computer and a basic USB mic. They have a great passion for collaborating with people and bringing their projects to sonic life. While she enjoys working independently, they also love bringing their experience to collaborative efforts with a team of any size.
Current Team
Incentives
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
Mission Statement
The Story
TOUT ENSEMBLE or: Everything Considered started as another exercise in run-and-gun filmmaking. It has blossomed into a challenge to infuse everything we’ve learned; toying with genre, caméra-stylo, location scouting, editing, writing, and cinematic language, pushing each to its lean limit in order to achieve something sharp and precise in all its elements.
This is a short absurdist tragicomedy about ZERO, a man who may or may not be dead, who does not know where he’s woken up. He meanders through a bizarrely familiar world. Bumping into apparition-like eccentric characters who all seem to have an archetypal meaning to him.
IT IS...
Dark and Bright. BIZARRE. Irrational. A restrained maximalist film with minimalist sensibilities. A surreal, asburd look at rewatching a life unlived. Vacillating between the circus-like atmosphere of Fellini with the sober stoic poetry of Bresson. Whimsical and unnerving. Funny and sad. The two masks of drama.
Over the last ten years, I've been lucky enough to make a wide range of short films with amazing people. Lately, I have been calling these experiments in form and practice; doodles or sketches. Filmmaking, as you know if you have ever worked on a set (big or small), is such a terribly tedious, arduous, codec and bitrate loaded fiasco. Not to mention you throw some screwball personalities into the mix, which all of us are guilty of. It's a medium that is drenched in pretense. From gear-heads to theorists, to cliques in the industry, from art films to the dreaded word "content." This is why I think "doodle" is appropriate here, to suck out the venom of snobbishness from the wound.
One of my heroes is Slava Polunin, a Russian clown. He said something that has stuck with me over the last decade: "Never make something important with people who you don't want to embrace." The goal of this short experiment is to see what we can do with little resources, so financiers can imagine what we could create if we went BIGGER. This is what I want to do. Make something special with people I want to embrace.
A. Our writer/director/cinematographer, Craig Hard has collaborated multiple times with everyone below. His films blur the line between hyper-realism and the surreal mundanity of daily life. Genre-less and genre-full, the thematic worlds he creates vary with each project. Not just in subject matter but in form and how each film is produced. From scripted and entirely shot-listed, to completely improvised Cinéma Vérité stories that build in the moment.
B. Our 1st AD, Rou Wang, born and raised in Taiwan, is a Chicago-based filmmaker. Wang’s work has reached audiences within the U.S and internationally. She began her filmmaking journey as an editor in school. Then as an assistant director alongside aspiring directors such as Will Schneider, Hannah Schierbeek, Craig Hard. While building these collaborative experiences, she is also on a path to carving stories with her intuition and perceptions. Wang’s work often inspects and challenges the definition of sanities under a coated cultural lens, questioning the most mundane daily lives.
C. Our Producer and 2nd AD, Sarah Corean, has been producing, assistant directing, and directing short narrative films for 10 years. She's had films directed by her play at festivals around the world. Her latest short film, Eggs, ran a successful crowdfunding campaign in 2022, reaching its goal of $15k in the first 10 days of its run. She's an organizational powerhouse.
D. Our Assistant Producer Katherine Nina Vasquez is a versatile actress based in Chicago, IL, working across film, television, commercial, print, and theatre represented by Talent X Alexander. She helped us get underway with wonderful marketing ideas, production logistics and elements of our fundraising campaign. Alternate Identities Include: Bird Watch Wanderer, Marketing Maniac, Literature Lover, and Gumptious Guitarist.
E. Our Production Sound Mixer, Dylan Smith, who founded Phd Audio, started as a one-man band to provide superb audio to creatives in Chicago & the Chicagoland area. Since Phd Audio's establishment, it has grown an extensive team and portfolio to supervise audio requests all across the world. Whether the delicate dance of run n’ gun docs, mixing live podcasts, or shaping things all together in post, he is equipped to handle any project, no matter how big or how small.
F. Our Re-recording Mixer and Dialogue Editor, Isa Hernandez (she/they). Is a trans, Latinx freelance sound designer, dialogue editor, re-recording mixer and field recordist born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Who began tinkering with sound from a young age listening to their dad’s CDs on his Technics stereo system. Growing up with a passion for music and began playing drums at 13. This sparked curiosity for how to record music, and experimenting with her mom’s computer and a basic USB mic. They have a great passion for collaborating with people and bringing their projects to sonic life. While she enjoys working independently, they also love bringing their experience to collaborative efforts with a team of any size.
BUDGET:
Our budget is lean to keep the production's ability for spontaneity at a high level. Your support goes directly to the essentials of filmmaking for our larger ensemble set pieces (shooting in late October) with a great deal of orchestration and extras. Your help allows us more freedom; via time and energy spent on NOT worrying about those costs.
PREPRO - JUNE 15 - AUG 31
Casting, location scouting, wardrobe/camera tests, and most of pre-production are completed.
PRODUCTION - AUG 12 - OCTOBER 31:
Filming has already begun, with a small splinter unit, stealing shots and pulling favors.
LARGE ENSEMBLE SHOOT DAYS: OCT 24TH - OCT 25TH
These day will be traditional-esque 10 hour days. With several company moves and lots of extras.
POST PRODUCTION: November 1st - January 1 2027
Editing will begin shortly after filming has wrapped. Then sound and color. VFX may take some time. We are hoping to have the film fully realized and ready to deliver on January 1st, 2027.
Stay along for the ride and follow our instagram for the process and more sneak peeks.
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
CATERING
Costs $500
This will cover any catering and crafty needs for our ensemble cast/extras and crew.
LOCATION
Costs $500
One of our key locations is a movie theatre. We will use this to rent FACETS, the beloved cinémathèque.
STRETCH GOAL
Costs $550
This will cover the unforeseen, which is ever-present during the beginning, middle, and end of making a film.
Direct link:
Share this update!
About This Team
Our writer/director/cinematographer, Craig Hard has collaborated multiple times with everyone below. His films blur the line between hyper-realism and the surreal mundanity of daily life. Genre-less and genre-full, the thematic worlds he creates vary with each project. Not just in subject matter but in form and how each film is produced. From scripted and entirely shot-listed, to completely improvised Cinéma Vérité stories that build in the moment.
Our 1st AD, Rou Wang, born and raised in Taiwan, is a Chicago-based filmmaker. Wang’s work has reached audiences within the U.S and internationally. She began her filmmaking journey as an editor in school. Then as an assistant director alongside aspiring directors such as Will Schneider, Hannah Schierbeek, Craig Hard. While building these collaborative experiences, she is also on a path to carving stories with her intuition and perceptions. Wang’s work often inspects and challenges the definition of sanities under a coated cultural lens, questioning the most mundane daily lives.
Our producer and 2nd AD, Sarah Corean, has been producing, assistant directing, and directing short narrative films for 10 years. She's had films directed by her play at festivals around the world. Her latest short film, Eggs, ran a successful crowdfunding campaign in 2022, reaching its goal of $15k in the first 10 days of its run. She's an organizational powerhouse.
Our 2nd producer Katherine Nina Vasquez is a versatile actress based in Chicago, IL, working across film, television, commercial, print, and theatre represented by Talent X Alexander. She helped us get underway with wonderful marketing ideas, production logistics and elements of our fundraising campaign. Alternate Identities Include: Bird Watch Wanderer, Marketing Maniac, Literature Lover, and Gumptious Guitarist.
E. Our Production Sound Mixer, Dylan Smith, who founded Phd Audio, started as a one-man band to provide superb audio to creatives in Chicago & the Chicagoland area. Since Phd Audio's establishment, it has grown an extensive team and portfolio to supervise audio requests all across the world. Whether the delicate dance of run n’ gun docs, mixing live podcasts, or shaping things all together in post, he is equipped to handle any project, no matter how big or how small.
F. Our Re-recording Mixer and Dialogue Editor, Isa Hernandez (she/they). Is a trans, Latinx freelance sound designer, dialogue editor, re-recording mixer and field recordist born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Who began tinkering with sound from a young age listening to their dad’s CDs on his Technics stereo system. Growing up with a passion for music and began playing drums at 13. This sparked curiosity for how to record music, and experimenting with her mom’s computer and a basic USB mic. They have a great passion for collaborating with people and bringing their projects to sonic life. While she enjoys working independently, they also love bringing their experience to collaborative efforts with a team of any size.