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Inspired by the works of Alfred Hitchcock, the HOUSE ON RODEO GULCH is going to be a full length feature movie that will appeal to both teenagers and adults alike as a thought provoking and intellectual thriller. 

The storyline -

A teenager and her step-mother move into their new house on the California Coast. Complications arise when things start going wrong leading them to think the house is possessed... or so they are led to believe. Unbeknownst to them their only neighbor, a minister, is trying his best to get them to abandon the house, never to return--

The story-

A young teenage girl and her step-mother move into their new house located in the secluded redwoods.  The house seems almost too perfect along with the kind minister living next door. As the days unfold, the house begins to reveal it’s dark secrets throwing the women into a frenzy. Each day the women face new challenges both real and unreal until one night they escape vowing never to return. The minister next door can only celebrate... because their leaving means more money for him and his church. The celebration is cut short when the teenage daughter returns to seek answers--

As our women get beaten down with everything real and not real, they develop a special bond that becomes truly heartwarming. At the end, they learn to respect and love each other and the foundation for a new family begins. 

Director's Note-

Moving across country is trying enough but to move into a new house with a new mother can really put the strain on the life of a young teenage girl. Throw in the fact that things start going wrong with the house sets the stage for a giant pressure cooker that gets bigger and bigger as the story goes on. This story has conflict. The script also starts the audience in one direction only to show they were fooled when it leads them into another one.  Throw in few selected special effects and we have the making of a memorable movie.

DONATIONS:

Please keep in mind that your credit card will not be charged unless we reach our final goal within our given time period. This Kickstarter fund raising campaign is an all or nothing venture!

In return for your donations, you get the "thank you gifts" or "rewards" on the right side of this page. To learn more about our rewards please go to -HouseonRodeoGulch.com 

Just two of our rewards!

Our business plan is in place, our script re-written five times, we are now casting and soon will be ready to go. Your donations will be going towards the crew and actors salaries, editing, post production, music, special effects, legal team, permits, E&O insurance, promotions, travel, advertising, and festival entry fees. 

Our bare minimum budget to make HRG an outstanding film is $100,000. After we pay our Kickstarter fees which is about 8% we are left with only $80,000. The rest of the money needed is coming out of our own pockets. Please help us out with your Pledge today. Also to remember to check with your CPA or accountant on possible tax deductions with your pledge. 

Please remember that your credit card will not be charged unless we reach our goal within our given time period!

Any donations received over our goal will only make our project that much better. Please spread the word to your friends and co-workers that HRG is going to be one of the best psychological thrillers to come to your movie theater in a long time. Also please remember to hit the "Liked" Facebook button underneath the video at the top of this page to tell your friends about this exciting project. Thank you for your support and your belief in us. Help us put 30 people to work in this economy. For more information go to HouseonRodeoGulch.com  

Budget-

A lot of people are probably wondering about our budget which is understandable. A low budget movie in Hollywood is considered 10 million dollars or more. We are making what is called a “microbudget” movie. After you start with our goal of $88,750 and then cut out the Amazon fee of 5% and subtract credit card fees of 2-3%, you are looking at a budget of $80,000. If one were making a “slasher”,”straight to DVD” movie that relied solely on blood, screams and scantily dressed girls... the ability of your actors to know how to act is secondary. That is where you can rely on friends to work free or for very little money. The House on Rodeo Gulch is an intellectual thriller that requires excellent acting. The characters in this script are very real and three dimensional. That requries seasoned professional actors coming most likely from San Francisco and Los Angeles. It is our hope that because of the quality of this script we will be able to bring in top actors that are more interested in challenging three dimensional roles than earning a few extra dollars in smaller less demanding parts. 

Common among many low budget movies to work and to create teamwork is to is pay actors and crewmembers $100/day. This isn't a lot of money, given shoots run 12 hours a day (or longer), so it works out to be about minimum wage. You try to get good people to work on your movie for a lower than normal pay because they believe in the project, or they believe in you. A director of photography, for example, can easily fetch 10 times this amount. The single largest expense is going to be the shoot -- to pay everyone to show up, act, shoot, crew, and otherwise work for 12 hours a day.
Let's say the average cast and crew size on any given day will be 10 (some days will be 15, others will be 8. A reasonable estimate to shoot the whole film is 25 days. Average cast and crew of 10 people X $100/day each X 25 days = $25,000. And note that we're drastically underpaying most people, especially the crew (Director of Photography, Camera operators, Line producer, Sound operators, Assistant Director, Data Wrangler, etc). Hopefully we can catch seasoned professionals that believe in this outstanding project and work for less than they normally do. I believe I can get talented people to work for below what they're used to so we come out to a total of $25,000. Now we have to feed everyone so figuring -- $20/day per person X 10 people X 25 days = $5,000. Although we have some professional equipment we will need to rent more and sometimes that means hiring the people that come with it. 

Sound and lighting are two of the most important elements in filmmaking. A lot of this movie will be shot at night and correct lighting is paramount. In addition, we need to rent a jib and crane. Typically sound and lighting equipment and the crews that come with it are $300 a day. We also have to build three sets which should cost us around $3,500. Together, the cost of building our sets and the rental of this equipment over a 25 day shoot is $18,300. Of course there is Insurance, transportation, legal, public relations and location fees. Included in the insurance is E & O insurance to make sure a film maker has the rights to all the music, actor releases and any other copyright issues that may arise. Lets figure $4,500 for insurance, $2,500 for location fees, $5,000 for legal. That amounts add up to - $12,000. So now we have the movie “in the can” and we have spent - $60,300. 

Now that brings us to Post-production- Now that we have hours of footage, both good and bad, we need to spend days and days of putting the film together. As we are talking about 1080 footage we are talking about heavy computer use. At least five big drives and a more powerful computer will allow us to keep the editing on location thus saving us thousands of dollars. I'd like to hire an experienced editor to do the work along with an assistant. If we run out of money, I'll do it myself.  For editing- $12,000. Once editing is done which takes several months, we will need to take the final product and have it color corrected. Along with color correcting will we need to have it color graded to give our film that certain look. Both of these processes should cost us approximately $7,900. After dealing with color there is that all important sound mix. Most people don’t realize that sound is half your movie. It can make or break a movie. Beside tweaking your character’s dialogue, you are also dealing with sound effects which are vitaly important in this particular movie. Throw in outstanding music and the copyrights that come with it, we are looking at another $12,000 and that is being very optimistic. And we must not forget our special effects. We don’t have many but they are very important so we are figuring on $3,500. And like in all good planning, we need to throw in a 10% contigency fee in case something goes wrong, get’s broken or we miscalculate something in our budget. 

As you can see, if you add up all the numbers we now a budget of - $105,270. Obviously this is a worst case senario and we will have to make cuts. As the writer/director of this project I would cut my salary but then again, I didn’t plan on getting any salary. I already know that money will be coming out of my own pocket but I am counting on that in order to make this an exciting, professional film. This project is a labor of love. 

After all, nothing worthwhile every comes easy.

Thank you!

The HRG team-

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