About this project

WHAT WE WANT TO DO:
Our goal is to produce a dramatic feature film on a micro budget that is engaging and thought provoking enough to compete with films produced for much larger budgets. Creatively we would like to draw viewers into a deeper sense of self awareness through their identification with the ethical and psychological struggles which the characters in the film are experiencing.

HOW WE PLAN TO DO IT:
The fact that JOURNEY takes place almost entirely on a sailboat will help us create a very visually pleasing film despite our limited budget. The film will also be shot in a documentary style with a very high ratio of improvised material which will allow the actors time to live their parts and provide a high level of latitude in post production.

WHAT THE MONEY IS FOR:
The funds raised on Kickstarter will go to the most basic necessities of the production such as: Food and transportation for the talent and crew, tape stock, legal costs, mastering, equipment and promotion costs. These funds will not cover the entire production budget and we will be seeking investors and various types of donations and in-kind contributions through private channels as well.

LOG LINE

A chain reaction of self examination is triggered when a former government agent turned sailing recluse decides to write his memoir and re-connect with his estranged son to relieve his conscience.

SYNOPSIS

Sydney is a retired economic adviser to third world leaders who also acted as a covert operative for the State Department and CIA. His ties to this world have been severed, however, due to a crisis of conscience, which has unfolded over the course of many years. The story begins as Sydney, disheveled and sporting a small hip flask, ties his small sailboat to a dock next to a train station where he is scheduled to pick up his estranged son, Garrett, a jaded New York lawyer who has reluctantly agreed to the meeting with the hope of healing old wounds.

Garrett never believed the wild stories Sydney told of back room deals between government officials and corporate power brokers - where schemes to foster third world corruption were hatched and the spoils divided. Garrett assumed, with the help of his mother’s tirades against Sydney, that his father exaggerated his experiences in order to inflate his own sense of self-importance.

While onboard Garrett starts reading the early draft of Sydney’s memoir and is forced to re-evaluate not just his father’s past but also his own career and future. He is caught of guard when he meets Sydney's young, attractive girlfriend Emma, who assures Garrett that his father has changed and that the stories are all true. Facing the truth about his father’s past while experiencing the rigors of sailing helps to strip away the years of cultural programming that had always given structure to his life.

After Emma departs, an intimidating character from Sydney’s past named John, who has been sent to convince Sydney not to finish his book, shows up in a small inflatable boat. John suggests that Sydney would be a fool to turn down the riches being offered him for his silence. But before Sydney has a chance to respond Garrett invites John to go sailing with them knowing that this will help ease the mounting tension and buy Sydney some time.

That night Sydney and Garrett reveal a level of vulnerability that John simply cannot handle and his ability to think rationally suddenly evaporates. The sudden emergence of John’s long repressed emotions, aggravated by the stress of trying to give up smoking, awakens in him something deep and uncontrollable that Sydney and Garrett are not at all prepared for.

THEMES

Journey focuses on the impact career choices and corruption can have on our lives and the lives of those closest to us. The story attempts to portray the guilt and desire for redemption that years of tolerating unethical activity can produce. Journey explores the nature and psychology of our most tragic compromises and suggests that transformation is possible at any moment.

LEAD ACTOR / CO-PRODUCER

Andrew Belcher has spent over ten years with a dynamic range of students sharing the experience of focused observation, action, and expression. He has taught language and performing arts at both regional theaters and public and independent schools in Louisiana, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. Andrew is a professional performance artist inspired by human connection. He is a graduate of The Taft School and Tulane University where he received a BA in English and Spanish and minored in Theater.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

With the large cultural shifts that accompany economic and political crisis comes the death of old assumptions and the abandonment of old patterns. It is within this context that the characters in Journey awaken to the transformative power of embracing humility and personal growth. Journey addresses the identity crisis that America, and all of her imitators, are currently experiencing as we undergo the painful yet liberating experience of rediscovering lost values after a long and tragic moral slumber.

The script was inspired by the current surge in tell-all exposé’s and inside accounts of government and corporate wrong doing by whistle blowers reinventing themselves as beacons of truth and accountability. Despite their occasionally dubious motives, these insider testimonies offer a revealing glimpse into the prevailing cynicism afflicting so many in positions of power and the enforced apathy of those who serve them.

At the center of the story are the characters’ humble attempts to elevate their consciousness to adjust to the rapid changes taking place around them. The success of our individual struggles, the script implies, helps mitigate the severity and consequences of our environmental and militaristic transgressions as a community. As Buckminster Fuller once wrote: “today the world is too dangerous for anything less than utopia.”

Spending long periods of time on the water can have a pleasantly disorienting effect. Exposure to the sun, wind, cramped quarters, and physical work draws people toward a less a self-centered and more care free frame of mind. In Journey, the healing aspects of sailing help catalyze a more rapid evolution in the characters than they might have otherwise been capable of. But the greatest agent of change portrayed in the script is our particular moment in history as we re-evaluate our integrity as a species and search for a path that will ensure our survival and future well being.