Kickstarter

                   “Life is never as bad as it seems…it’s always worse.”

In life we are given numerous difficulties that we must overcome, how they are handled are entirely up to us. “Astro[not],” a short film by Doug Helmick, follows the story of a man in his late forties named Jonathon Star. His whole life he aspired to be an astronaut, but never achieved his goal. Instead, he ran away from home at the young age of eleven in hopes of a better life from a broken home. What he found was a life full of lonesomeness and unwanted solitude. Diving deeper into a medicated depression, Jonathon finds himself slipping further from reality and entering a surreal dystopia. No longer able to distinguish what is real or fake, he gets lost in limbo. Hoping still to find a better life, he is left with the impression that a better life will never exist.

This short film is my senior thesis project and honestly, the most important film I will make during my stay at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. I need your help to make this vision become a reality. Without the help of all my friends and family, this film will not happen. It has so much potential, yet the limitations of a budget could hold it back. I consider this to be my most personal film that I’ve ever written. Influenced by reflections, personal thoughts, situations I’ve endured, situations I’ve witnessed, and overall imagination, “Astro[not]” is a script that I hold very close to my heart. Now, I understand this is a concept that is hard to explain with words, so below I have included an illustration from the opening scene of the film.

This is the highest budget film that I've had to work with so far and I don't want that to be the reason why this film isn't created. It's unfortunate that some arts get looked over due to underfunding. I really want to try to avoid that. Below, I've broke down the budget so you can see where the money is going, what we are doing with it and how it will be used. As you can see though, the budget is higher than the specified goal of the Kickstarter. Well, that's because we are trying to use our resources to the fullest advantages, which means only using each at the maximum level. The rest of the money for the project we hope to raise through freelance work and DVD sales of past films.

Budget Breakdown:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/97145095/Budget

Finally, time for the most important part, the rewards! For this type of project, my goal when choosing rewards was to make them as personal and memorable as possible. I've come up with some really interesting ideas that I hope you'll like. Here's a short list of some of the great rewards we have to offer.

Rewards:

- Limited Edition Prints of past and present posters. (Delivery Day; Astro[not]). The great thing about this is that there is only a small amount printed, insuring every poster that leaves is more personal.

- A disposable camera with photos from the shoot of Astro[not]. This is one of my favorite gifts because this is the truest form of a personalized gift. What happens is on set we snap photos with a disposal camera. Once the camera is filled, we drop it in the mail and send it to you. The next part is entirely up to you. If you wish, which we hope, you can get the roll developed, making you have the ONLY copy of those photos from the shoot. That's right, we won't even have them!

- Props from the set of Astro[not]. This gift is really cool. There are items in the film, such as the handcrafted box of cereal Astro O's, that are beautifully crafted. We will only have a small amount of these to give out, so get them while you can!

That's only a small segment of the rewards available. All the others are listed on the side of the page. Well, thank you for stopping by and I hope that would will help us make this film a reality. Thanks again.

Sincerely,

      Doug Helmick