Hey everybody. Even though we've reached our original monetary goal, that money will only cover the costs of production, post-production, and rewards. We still need your help in order to get our film out to festivals all over the country. All proceeds beyond the original goal will help us fund the limited distribution of the film through the festival circuit and shed light on the emerging film program at the University of Denver.

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Thanks for taking the time to look at our Kickstarter campaign. For those of you who are unfamiliar with what Kickstarter is all about, check out their FAQ here.

On Such a Winter's Day is a dramatic short film written by Robert Hardy which is being produced by Vincent De La Torre, Jonathan Feinmann, and Robert Hardy in the University of Denver's Film Studies and Production program. And we need your help to make it all happen!

THE STORY

The Basics: On Such A Winter's Day is the story of Jon and his mother, Florence, as they struggle to carry on after the death of their father/husband, but in very different ways. The disparity in their respective lifestyles creates an undeniable and destructive tension that threatens to tear apart their familial bonds and ruin what little is left of their relationship. One day, this tension builds to a violent climax, and just as it seems as if Jon and his mothers' differences are irreconcilable, one dramatic event changes everything.

The Backstory: Jon, who was very close with his father, became an alcoholic, but got himself into treatment. When we meet him in the script, Jon has been sober and living with his mother for a year and a half, and he has been holding down a low level job at a data analysis firm for roughly the same amount of time. Florence, on the other hand, deals with her grief in a much different way. After a highly depressive and destitute period, she begins to frequent a local biker bar where she develops quite the reputation as the woman who will take anybody home if she gets enough drinks in her. As one would imagine, the relationship between Jon and his mother is strained, to say the least, and this strain provides the emotional basis for the film.

The Script: The film itself takes place over the course of a day and a half in which Jon loses his job, his sobriety, and any degree of normalcy that he had built up over the past year and a half. He wakes up the next morning only to have a scathing fight with his mother in which she demands that he move out. When they walk outside, they find that the world has drastically changed around them, and, in one cathartic moment, they're forced to realize that blood is thicker than water and that, despite all of their past quarrels, all they have left is each other. 

Click here to read a scene from the script.

What It All Means: On paper this might seem like a depressing story, but in reality, it's a story of hope. It's a story about never taking for granted the people that you love because one day they will be gone from this earth, leaving you with only memories. It's a story about learning to love people in spite of their faults. And on a more societally symtomatic level, it's a story about life and its meaning in the face of the unknown and potentially frightening prospects of the future.

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS

Robert Hardy is a filmmaker, musician, and writer living and studying in Denver, Colorado. His original passion was music, but film has been his primary artistic endeavor for the past two years and will be for many years to come. He will have nearly completed his film degree at the University of Denver with the completion of this project, and then he will spend the entirety of the 2012-13 academic year in the heart of Prague studying in an intensive filmmaking program. If you're interested in his previous work, you can read one of his short stories here, watch an experimental short film here, or listen to one of his songs here.

(Note: Robert Hardy does not actually have a moustache)

Jonathan Feinmann is a student at the University of Denver who is studying film, web design, and philosophy. He has been a passionate filmmaker for the majority of his life. He dove into film at a young age and began making ski films, and by the end of high school, he had completed five ski films and worked with a professional extreme sports film company in Mt. Hood Oregon. Throughout his college years his passion for film has evolved. He now has the opportunity to make a narrative film, and is excited to be part of an enthusiastic team that has an intriguing script to work with. If you're interested in his previous work, you can watch one of his ski films here.

Vincent De La Torre is both a filmmaker and a musician currently studying at the University of Denver. Since picking up his parents' video camera back when he was seven, he has loved film. From that day forward he has found a passion in shooting anything and everything. That passion later grew into a desire to become a filmmaker. Currently, Vincent is learning stop-motion, special effects, and general cinematography. If you are interested in his previous work you can see one of his videos here.

WHERE YOUR DONATIONS WILL GO

As students, we are expected to create this film without a budget. But as the harsh realities of narrative filmmaking dictate, it just won't be possible to make this film and make it well without spending money. It's that simple. But that's not to say that we're looking to spend money, because we most definitely aren't. We are poor college students, after all. Any time that we're able to save money, we will.

So here's where your donations will go:

• Additional Production Equipment: Though the University allows us access to their equipment, we are choosing to photograph the film with both our own DSLR cameras (because of their excellent portability and beautiful depth of field imaging capabilities) and the Panasonic AF100 (because of its more advanced video and audio functions). Depending on the aesthetic choices that we make, additional stabilization and lens options will be a necessity of the production. And depending on the environments in which we're shooting, it could be a necessity to rent more advanced audio capture equipment. Furthermore, the University has good basic lighting kits and those will be used to their fullest, but additional lighting equipment will be necessary to light our compositions thoroughly and add depth to our images (in order to achieve the look of film through the use of digital video).
  
• Props and Costuming: Creating a realistic sense of character through costuming and makeup, and a realistic sense of place through props are essential elements of this film, and will require many trips to local thrift stores and specialized online retailers. Also, the script contains a dream-sequence that will require us to rent at least two or three mannequins for upwards of two days. 
  
• Catering: (because a well-fed cast and crew does a better movie make).  Although we're working with local restaurants that are willing to give us better prices on their catering services, the costs of keeping the cast and crew well fed over the course of our 2-3 weeks of production will build up.
• Unforeseen Expenses: This is for everything from gas and paying for our actor's parking at various locations to last minute expenses. This is the category of our budget that will provide the financial leeway that we need to not stress about the little expenses that build up over time, the little expenses that could potentially hinder our creative process and be detrimental to the film. 
  
• Rewards: Last, but definitely not least, your contributions to this film will partly help cover the costs of the rewards that we are producing. Even though we will be able to produce the rewards for relatively little, it will cost a pretty penny to have them shipped all over the country.

In all honesty, the amount of money that we're trying to raise will not likely cover all of the expenses that we'll come across during production, but we decided to keep our monetary goal low for this project because a little bit of funding is far better than none at all, and a limited budget will help us learn to be both resourceful and creative with the money that we do have. With that said, if we reach our goal of $750, please continue to donate as you see fit because every dollar truly does count. All money not used on the production of the film or the rewards will go to help us cover the costs of submitting our film to festivals all over the country.

OUR GOAL

Our goal with this project is to make something that we're all three proud of, something that we'll be able to use as a springboard into what will hopefully be fruitful film careers, and something that we'll be able to submit to film festivals all over the country and the world. It's a lofty goal to be most certain, but we truly believe that with hard work, dedication, and a little bit of help from our friends we can accomplish all of this and more. 

And that's why we need your help, Kickstarter. This film has the potential to be a truly meaningful piece of work. But if it's done poorly, it'll be looked at as just another mediocre student film, and in our eyes that's an unacceptable outcome. With your help, and our devotion to this project, we truly believe that we'll be able to create something beautiful, original, and tremendously meaningful that will stand the test of time. 

Really any amount that you're willing to give will help our project in many ways, but for those of you who are unfamiliar with Kickstarter, this site is built on an all or nothing platform which means that we'll only receive funding if we reach our goal of $750. For that reason, we need everyone to chip in and help make this both a successful campaign and a great short film.

Thanks so much for taking the time to look at our Kickstarter campaign, and remember, every dollar helps.

-Robert Hardy

You can stay informed with the film's progress using both our facebook page and our blog for more in depth updates.