About this project
Russian Doll, a Feature Film
$23,565
214
Create a feature-length movie that will entertain audiences from the opening credits right to the shocking but oh-so-satisifying conclusion. A sexy, edgy, white-knuckle crime thriller in the spirit of film noir classics, but this time our hero is a heroine -- a gorgeous lesbian detective with a dark and tragic past.
Help us realize our vision. We have the actors, we have the crew, we have the script, and we have most of the money. With your help, we can raise the balance of the budget needed to put together something that you (and we) will love. A kick-ass film with the highest quality writing, performances, and production, at a fraction of the cost of a typical Hollywood feature. No excuses, no compromises.
We are in pre-production now with filming scheduled for early July 2015, in the Boston Metrowest area. Post-production will take place into the fall of 2015, and we expect to be ready for the 2016 festival circuit, with a commercial release in late 2016.
We've done this before. Our first low-budget feature, a romantic comedy called The Perfect Wedding, achieved the holy grail of independent filmmaking: distribution. We know what it takes to succeed and we plan to do it again.
The funds we raise in this campaign will go directly to things you will see on the screen: locations, set design, stunts, additional crew and the rental of a second camera for use at our principal location, as well as a makeup and special effects specialist.
The script was donated, the producers and director are working for free, the SAG actors are working essentially for minimum wage. We appreciate anything you can do to help us, and we will treat your contributions with the care and respect they deserve.
At small or LARGE Productions, we think the world is a far more diverse and interesting place than Hollywood blockbusters would have us believe.
Our mission is to create high quality, exciting, and entertaining movies featuring a universe where:
- LGBTQ characters have leading roles that are never based on stereotypes
- The main conflicts of our LGBTQ characters aren't created by their sexual orientation
- Female characters have leading roles that go beyond mother, wife, daughter, and/or woman-in-jeopardy
- People of color have leading roles that are never based on stereotypes
- A limited budget does not mean a compromised product
Written by EDGAR Award Finalist Ed Gaffney, Russian Doll is a sexy, edgy crime thriller. The story begins when a young woman discovers a murder plot and calls 911. But moments into the phone call, she is attacked and abducted.
The investigation into her disappearance leads Police Detectives Viola Ames (Melanie Brockmann Gaffney) and Ethan Fiore (Sal Rendino) to interrogate the cast and crew of a local theater company. What the detectives don’t know is that one of the people they question is days from committing a long-planned murder.
It’s a story filled with passion, violence, and suspense, where everyone is hiding something.
- Ed Gaffney: Writer/Director/Producer (The Perfect Wedding and EDGAR Award Nominee for Enemy Combatant)
- Suzanne Brockmann: Executive Producer (The Perfect Wedding and New York Times bestselling author of 55 novels)
- Jason T. Gaffney: Producer (The Perfect Wedding, The Comedy Minute with Jason T. Gaffney)
- Nacia Schreiner: Cinematographer (Porking Mandy)
- Sylvia Batey Alcala: 1st AD (Fame Dogs)
Our production team is thrilled to be working together again to make Russian Doll after the success of The Perfect Wedding.
The Perfect Wedding premiered with sold-out screenings at the Sarasota Film Festival. It went on to screen at the Spokane International Film Festival, the Long Island Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, and the Garden State Film Festival where it won the best comedy feature film.
The Perfect Wedding is distributed by Wolfe Releasing, and is available on DVD on Amazon and streaming on iTunes, Amazon Streaming, and Netflix.
Watch the trailer for The Perfect Wedding:
To find out more about our production team please visit Russian Doll's website or follow us on Facebook and Twitter!.
We've created an eclectic mix of rewards that we hope will appeal both to fans of LGBTQ cinema, and to executive producer and New York Times bestselling author Suz Brockmann's beloved crowd of enthusiastic and voracious readers!
If you have any questions about the rewards, please contact us! As soon as our campaign launches, we'll create an FAQ page. In the meantime...
Please note:
- Some of our rewards include meetings-for-coffee and on-set visits, but they're nearly all part of bundles that include a DVD of Russian Doll. Still, we've followed Kickstarter's suggestion and made "Nov. 2016" our official "Estimated delivery," since that's our guess for when we'll have the DVD of Russian Doll ready to ship to you.
- With the exception of the collector's print edition of Ready to Roll, we'll be shipping all "Thing" rewards to you in a single package, so if your reward includes a Russian Doll DVD, you'll receive everything on or around November 2016. If post-production moves more quickly, of course we'll ship earlier! (We'll be in regular touch via our updates!)
- The print edition of Ready to Roll will ship separately, as soon as it is finished, well before November 2016! Again, we'll keep you posted via our updates!
- Signed material (other than Suz's books & short stories) will be autographed by Suz Brockmann, Ed Gaffney, and as many members of the cast & production team as humanly possible, given logistics of where we all are during post-production and festival season! (We'll do our best to make sure you have plenty of fun signatures!)
- Find out more about Suz's new Troubleshooters short story, Ready to Roll, on her website.
- U.S. backers: The shipping costs for your rewards are included!
- International backers: We are happy to fill out customs forms and ship (nearly all of) our backer rewards anywhere in the world, but because international shipping costs are steep, we've added additional fees for postage to all internationally shipped rewards. Those shipping fees will appear when you click through to pay.
There are many ways you can help bring RUSSIAN DOLL to life...
- Back the project (check out our cool rewards!)
- Back the project for a friend (signed books and DVDs make great gifts!)
- Spread the word about our Kickstarter campaign! Share, tweet, post, email, blog, shout, sing, interpretive dance…
Love,
Ed, Jason, & Suz
small or LARGE Productions
small or LARGE Productions is a family-owned, LGBTQ-focused entertainment business, run by New York Times best-selling author Suzanne Brockmann, her husband, Ed Gaffney, and their son, Jason T. Gaffney.
Suz is the multi-award winning author of fifty-five novels, including All Through the Night, the first mainstream genre romance novel with a hero and a hero to hit the New York Times hardcover bestseller list. She has donated all of her proceeds from that book, plus much more, to support equal marriage rights in her home state of Massachusetts, as well as all over the country. Her blogs about LGBTQ equality can be found on Huffington Post's Gay Voices.
Ed is a critically acclaimed writer of legal thrillers, and his last novel, Enemy Combatant, was a finalist for the Mystery Writers of America EDGAR Award. He was lead producer of the award-winning LGBTQ romantic comedy The Perfect Wedding, and he has served on the Board of Directors of MassEquality, the political organization that successfully defended equal marriage rights over a decade ago in Massachusetts.
Jason is an out and proud director, producer, writer, and actor. In addition to writing, producing, and starring in The Perfect Wedding, Jason is the creator of the webseries The Comedy Minute with Jason T. Gaffney, and with his father, Ed, he will co-direct Russian Doll.
Russian Doll will be an especially rewarding family experience, because the final member of the Brockmann-Gaffney quartet, Suz and Ed’s daughter, Melanie Brockmann Gaffney, will be portraying Detective Viola Ames. In addition to acting and modeling, Mel is a personal trainer, as well as a published author. (The second young adult novel she co-authored with Suz, Wild Sky, will be released by Sourcebooks Fire in October, 2015.) Mel is the proud mother of seven-year-old Aidan, who thinks his mom is very strong.
Risks and challenges
Any project with as many moving parts as the production of a feature film is subject to risk. One of our actors could get sick, one of our locations might get damaged, one of our crew members could become unavailable. Still, we have contingency plans for all but the most extreme disasters. (Let's face it -- a Massachusetts tornado could really mess us up.) But we've got back up cast and crew available. And low-budget filmmaking, by its nature, requires the ability to think on your feet. When we made The Perfect Wedding, we handled several last minute challenges successfully, and if similar problems arise in Russian Doll, we expect to do the same.
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