A Room Full of Nothing

By: Duncan Coe

When we first brainstormed what kind of a movie we wanted to make for our first feature we knew we had to come up with something that we could make within our means. We don’t have a lot of cash to make a movie so it needed to be made on the cheap. After a bit of thinking we came to the conclusion that one of the easiest way to cut the budget is to make a movie with as few people as possible. This sort of raised the question, “how can we make a movie with as few people as possible?” Shortly after a lightbulb went off and we had a premise, “what if we make a movie where everyone in the world disappears except for one person?” Bam!

So we had a premise for a film and I set off writing. Writing, most writers will agree, is an excruciatingly painful and unrewarding process while you’re doing it. I think it was Dorothy Parker who was famously quoted as saying, “I hate writing, I love having written.” I must have gone through a hundred pages of writing and three different partial scripts before I finally landed on the story that turned into the final script.

I’ve been working on this script on and off since early in 2017, but when Seed & Spark announced their collaboration with the Duplass brothers it lit a fire under my ass to get the script done for the Hometown Heroes rally. We’ve crowdfunded before so we knew we could do it and this was too good of an opportunity to pass up. Crowdfunding, like writing, is an excruciating process. It’s panic inducing, nerve racking, and is basically a 30 day anxiety attack that consumes you.

No matter how much preparation you do there’s a level of uncertainty that can’t be overcome until after the campaign is over. I think it would be fair to appropriate Dorothy’s quote and say, I hate crowdfunding, I love having crowdfunded. But you’ve got to keep your head high and stay positive because once the crowdfunding is over you have to keep your promise to your patrons and make the best damn movie possible. Which we know we can and we’re ready for it… we just hate waiting.