About this project

"The There There" is the feature length film debut from Seattle based filmmaker Jason Ryan ("Ugly (Is A Movie)", "There's Going To Be A Beating Tonight").

In the lead role is Malaki Stahl, playing the owner of a small repertory film house who is trying to support his family. He was once a promising up and coming filmmaker in his youth but set aside his artistic goals once his girlfriend, Olivia became pregnant with their child. Playing Malaki’s wife in the film is his real life spouse, Olivia Mendez.

The counter balance to Malaki and Olivia’s “married-with-children” couple is Brittany Lee and Eric Sanders as a young couple, fresh out of college. Brittany is hired on at Malaki’s theater (after much insistence from Olivia that Malaki “stops working so much”) and a large portion of the film will focus on the relationship between her, her supportive but sometimes hard to read boyfriend Eric and Malaki, who leeches onto the couple in an attempt to recapture some of his lost youth, reliving the glory days, before changing diapers and carpools to school was the norm for him and Olivia. He perhaps even sees echoes of his former self in Eric, a young man with an artistic spirit who endears himself to Malaki by professing a deep admiration for his old films.

Production:

"The There There" is being shot in HD on a Canon DSLR in and around the Seattle area over most of 2011. We are shooting on nights and weekends and whenever we have a free moment, with the "year in the life of the characters" storyline helping keep a realism with the sporadic and piecemealed workflow. Currently about 20% of the script has been shot. Our goal is to finish principal photography by mid October of 2011. The editing process will begin in November with a finished cut projected for January.

Budget and What Exactly Your Donations Are For:

The "shoot whenever we can" model for this film lends itself to a fairly small budget. However, we still do need a modest amount for production equipment, transportation costs, food and caffeine for a cast and crew otherwise working for free and post-production costs, the majority of the funds being set aside for color correction, file storage, a meager stipend for our editor and a transfer to digi-beta (for submitting to festivals).