The Amazon Top 100 Bestseller list book ARV-3 was picked up by +Timid Monster a film studio with several awards for its short films, John Gray and Avarice. At the begging of Spring Timid Monster took their concept of ARV-3 and put it on Kickstarter. After being funded here are some great behind the scenes pictures as well as some interview information from Dan Baker go with the pictures.
Location: We shot in the historic Tennessee Brewery building. Built in 1890, it was home to the Tennessee Brewing Company, an early leader in brewery production. Chosen for it’s haunting atmosphere, grand scale, and beautiful archetecture, we wrote the script with this building in mind.
Premiere: After Light will premiere Saturday, November 22nd at Memphis Comic and Fantasy Convention. Given the level of involvement the Memphis filmmaking community has had with this film, and the popularity of Memphis CFC, we anticipate premiering to an audience of 200-300.
Author Cameo Renae will be in attendance, as well as the cast and crew.
How It Came About: In 2011, Timid Monster made the decision to produce and self-distribute our own films. In order to accomplish that, we began traveling to regional comic and sci-fi conventions to promote our films and build a fanbase.
We do our best to identify cross-promotion opportunities where both we and a convention or vendor can benefit. At UtopYA Con 2013 we found such an opportunity in the indie author scene: Authors have enormous fan-bases, but need professionally produced book trailers to sell their books; We can produce professional looking-book trailers, but need to grow our fan-base to sell our films.
So we pitched what we felt was a win-win for everyone: We will produce a book trailer at cost, and in exchange, the author agrees to promote Timid Monster to their fans. Through partnerships like these we have seen a dramatic increase in our own fan-base, and authors are reporting exponential increases in revenue from their books.
Cameo Renae’s ARV-3 was slated to be our next book trailer project, but when we sat down and looked at the cost of production, particularly the cost of the Arvy prosthetics and wardrobe, we determined that the project would best be suited as a short film. ...and things sort-of snoballed from there.
The Writing Process: Faced with my own writing limitations and looking for opportunities to bring the Timid Monster community into the creative process, we decided to experiment with ‘crowdsourcing’ the screenplay.
I provided the basic structure of the story, and then allowed a dozen or so volunteers to come in and fill in details and adjust the tone. I then took all the feedback and did my best to combine and unify it into a cohesive story.
Inspiration: The script is largely inspired by Joss Whedon’s strong-female characters and his impeccable ballance between action and humor.
Visually, since thie film is so short we wanted to really make the characters and atmosphere pop, which took a bit of a translation from the austere, functional world of ARV-3. I went back to a lof of James Cameron’s earlier sci-fi/horror films, like Aliens, which did such a great job at marrying high concept story with down and gritty realism.
I also took a lot of cues from horror director Scott Derrikson (Deliver Us From Evil, Sinister, The Exorcism of Emily Rose) when it came to paceing and using black negative space in shots.
Future Plans: Along with the film we’ve been producing a Behind The Scenes (BTS) educational package for up and comign filmmakers, which will include interviews, lessons, and tutorials from teh cast and crew. Sales from the BTS Package will be used to pay After Light’s volunteer cast and crew, as well as seed upcoming Timid Monster productions.
If the short does well, we can use it’s success to pitch a feature-lenght version of ARV-3 to investors.
Credits:
Producer: Rachel M Taylor (Avarice)
Associate Producer: Katie Baker
Director: Dan Baker (Avarice, John Gray)
Cast: Brandi Gist - Abi Park
Shane Christopher Hudson - Arvies
Hamid Farzam - Finn Armstrong
Blake Staples - Staphen Park
Syderek Watson - Jay Banks
Kennedy Moore - Martheus Banks
Cinematographer: Ryan Earl Parker
Production Designer: Sarah Nowlin (John Gray)
Art Director: Chad Irwin (Avarice)
Prosthetics Makeup: Matt Singer (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Bicentenial Man, Star Trek: Insurrection)
Composer: Kenton Smith (Avarice)
You can go to Timid Monsters blog here. You can purchase their award winning short Avarice here. You can get a free copy of their soon to be full feature film short John Grey here. Please follow them on twitter, and be sure to +1 this page so more people see it!
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