We’re making a movie!

 

tl;dr — We’re making a movie and crowdfunding for production! [AS OF APRIL 2024, COMPLETE! SUCCESS!] If you’re able, we’d greatly appreciate your financial support and have some super cool incentives to offer in thanks. You can learn all about the film, project, team, and vision on Seed & Spark

 
 

Life is moving fast… we’ve just launched our crowdfunding campaign, and we’re less than a month away from filming the Lavender Fields Forever proof-of-concept short film.

We could’ve just said short film, but proof-of-concept means something — and to us, as filmmakers from outside the major markets trying to DIY our film careers, it means A LOT. 

What is a proof-of-concept? 

A typical short film is a story that stands alone and is told in under 40 minutes, whereas a proof-of-concept is a portion, sample, scene, or other segment that represents or introduces a feature film. 

A proof-of-concept gives a stylistic and technical peek into the storyteller’s vision for a feature film and can be a valuable part of a feature film package. It’s not quite a pitch deck, but it accompanies a pitch deck to show potential producing partners, cast members, investors, and distributors what’s possible for the feature film. 

In Hollywood, proof-of-concepts have fallen out of fashion in recent years. Recently, however, Academy Award-winning actress Cate Blanchett and a truly staggering team of high-caliber female filmmakers have launched Proof of Concept accelerator, giving genuine recognition to the value of smaller-concept storytelling to advance filmmakers’ careers. 

So, why make a proof-of-concept? 

Moviemaking is BIG business with BIG budgets, even on the “low budget” scale. If a low budget movie still costs over a million dollars to make, how can filmmakers — especially those in underrepresented groups and regions — get started without, say, winning the lottery? 

In business, entrepreneurs create a “prototype” for their product, service, or vision as a means of testing it in the market without breaking the bank on full scale production. It’s a way to socialize the idea, the team behind it, and to start gauging market readiness for the product itself. 

We have a plan to bring the Lavender Fields Forever feature film to the American Film Market, the premiere US movie-buying conference where $1 billion in film buying & distribution deals get made over the span of just five days. We’re learning everything we can about how to get into and make the most of this event, and one thing we’ve learned is that having a killer film package is the best asset you can bring! 

Showcasing that we can not only write and package a good story, but that we can actually make a MOVIE (even a 10 minute one), is the proof we need to open the doors to our dream producing partners’ offices at the American Film Market. 

This is where YOU come in! 

We need YOUR help to bring Lavender Fields Forever to the big screen! Our crowdfunding campaign is gaining momentum and we would love for you to join us! You can learn so much more about the project, the team, and the vision by visiting our Seed & Spark campaign page

There, you can contribute financially and access some super cool incentives we’ve designed as thank you gifts for your pledge. 

And, if you know philanthropically-minded folks who are interested in helping female creatives or who would be excited to be a part of a movie, please reach out and make an introduction! Fundraising isn’t the most comfortable activity, but it’s made so much easier by the support y’all have shown me in this community.

 

P.S. — Teknovation covered the a/b studios launch of Lavender Fields Forever and gave us our first press, as did Inside of Knoxville and Living East Tennessee!

 
 
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Investing vs Crowdfunding & why I chose the latter for a/b studios

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What is a “story-to-cinema pipeline,” and why does it matter?