Kickstarter

About the Film

"The Rose Maker" is our senior thesis film, the final project in both of our B.F.A.s in Film and New Media from the Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. We've been putzing around in various crew positions throughout our four years, and this is our first chance to get together, apply all the knowledge we've picked up during that time, and direct our own project.

This film, six years in the making, began with a real-life incident that inspired an original fairy tale. After multiple passes on it as a short story and then as a screenplay, we're finally ready to get it up on the sreen. Being a fairy tale, this story is tied to older artistic traditions that relied on wood, paint, canvas, and performance instead of green screen and Photoshop. It's a project that will allow us to indulge in our mutual love for old-fashioned effects and hand-crafted cinema, and to explore themes of love, imagination, and endurance. But to do all this, we'll need your help.

How You Can Help

Hand-crafted cinema is unfortunately rather expensive, so we have a lot of stuff to pay for. This film is going to take the full year to make, with a few different shoot dates, sets, and locations. Design-wise, this is a bigger challenge than most of us have dealt with in past film projects, and we're really excited to take that challenge on. To meet it, the money we raise will go to:

Film: With all the HD technology out there, we both still prefer working with film. It has a look and a magic to it that can't be captured any other way, and for this project, we hope to come as close as we can to the look of classic Technicolor pictures. To that end, we're shooting on the last commercially available reversal stock on the market. The cost of "film" includes buying the stock, developing it, scanning it, and transfering it to a hard-drive for editing.

Travel: We don't plan on straying too far from campus, but we do have some location shooting, and anyone who drives has seen that gas is not cheap these days.

Costumes and Props: As we said, we're doing more with design than in past films. This being a fairy tale, our costumes are outside the range of things you can pick up at a modern thrift shop. There's cost involved in renting, modifying, and making a fantasy's wardrobe.

Sets: Along with film, this is the big one. Built sets, painted flats, and glass shots may look great, but they do come in for a bigger chunk of change than green screen. But it isn't just for looks that we're going the old-fashioned route here; having sets and models gives the actors something real to interact with, and have a presence that can be felt through the screen. They make the world of the film that much more real.

Food: Shooting days can last up to 12 hours. There's a ton of hard work involved for the cast and the crew, and they work up an appetite. A well-fed team is a happy team, and one less likely to rise as an angry mob to kill their directors.  

Thank you so much for your support. This is looking to be a long but rewarding shoot, and we hope to keep you updated through the whole process!

- William Fischer (Producer, Director, Screenwriter) and Justin Richards (Producer, Director, Cinematographer)