#Hometown Heroes Results

By, Elena Weinberg

Our lives have been a whirlwind since October 16th. We found out that we were finalists in the Seed & Spark Hometown Heroes Rally. That meant that we got to pitch the movie to the Duplass Brothers. We were told we had to submit a 30 second (NOT A MILISECOND LONGER) pitch video, up to 3 examples of previous work and either the first 20 pages of our script or a 10 page treatment. Now that the competition is over, we can share those things with you:

To be perfectly honest, the script we wrote for our pitch was about 4x as long. This is what we actually wanted to say: 

Although we did have a completed script ready to go, we chose to submit a 10 page treatment. The film is not written in a traditional three act structure, and the "people disappearing" happens around page 30, so, the first 20 pages of the movie are a very different tone than the rest of the film - on purpose. So, we felt that the first 20 pages wouldn't be a fair representation of the entire script. This is what we submitted as the treatment:

As for the previous works, we sent the first episodes of each season of #ATown and the short we did during the 12-month project called "The Spaceman."

And, well, we have good news and bad news. Bad news: we did not win the grand prize. The good news: The Duplass Brothers only awarded 2 Grand Prize Winners (they could have chosen up to five) and in addition to that, they chose 5 recipients of the brand new "Duplass Brothers Oh Shit Grant" for $1,000 to five finalists, and we were one of them! So, while we're bummed we don't get mentorship from them, we are grateful that they saw something in us and awarded us some money we don't have to pay back. (The Grand Prize was a $25k loan) We also get to screen our movie FOR FREE at the brand new AFS Cinema, so that's going to be a really cool thing when the film is completed.

Since the Rally ended, we've been working our tails off to add about $5k to our budget (which is how much we originally asked Mark & Jay for) to have all of the funds we need for production. We've been busy getting the crowdfunding incentives wrapped up and are knees deep in pre-production. We've signed on an Art Director, are choosing between two DPs as we speak, have added a couple of cast members and are hoping to confirm our leading man any day now, but those are announcements for another blog. We plan to go into production in January and can't wait to make those big announcements soon. Until next time... stay weird.