Three Orange County Filmmakers Need Your $$$ Help to Kickstart Their Movies


At least three Orange County filmmakers hope to begin 2013 with enough funds to complete their projects.

All are relying on the financial kindness of strangers through Kickstarter.com–and only have days to go to make their cinematic dreams come true.
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Joe Sill, a Chapman University Film Production major, got a nice infusion of pledges over the holidays for Ten Thousand Hours, his senior thesis film. His Kickstarter.com page, as of this morning, had collected $5,162 from 78 would-be donors, but he has to reach his stated $6,500 goal within the next three days to get the money.

He writes in an email that Ten Thousand Hours is “about a young architect and the
struggle between career and love as our character becomes more
successful designing a bank tower for a prestigious client.”

Here's the video pitch by Sill and his production team:


Ten Thousands Hours is not Sill's only project, as his short film Expo was selected for the LA Shorts Film Festival and he's submitting the
sci-fi story about a mother's love for her daughter to other festivals. Watch it here: http://vimeo.com/42874024.

When I checked on Huntington Beach filmmaker Dillon Woods' Kickstarter page last week, he had only $5 toward his $37,000 goal raised. Sadly, that pledge from a single donor was all that had been tallied as of this morning, with 10 days to go. 

His untitled documentary would assess the state of senior citizens in Orange County via a quality of life survey whose results would be discussed with caregivers and their clients at senior centers, retirement homes, hospice organizations, volunteer groups, churches and more.

Besides using funds raised to make the picture, Woods vows to throw “appreciation” parties for the elderly at each location visited over an anticipated three-month shoot. But he also writes in his pitch that he will be on the lookout for groups and facilities that are violating the law when it comes to elder care. Here is his video preview:


[Unlike the previous two filmmakers, Fullerton's Todd Huffman has a well-known name attached to his project: singer and actor Lyle Lovett. Perhaps that helps explain why The John Penton Story has surpassed $100,000 in pledges with two weeks to go. As of this morning, $110,156 toward the $150,000 goal had been pledged, according to Huffman's Kickstarter page.

Huffman actually relaunched his fund-raising campaign after Lovett agreed to narrate the picture that is about, as the filmmaker put it, “an American icon and motorcycle pioneer who took on the established motorcycle industry with his Penton motorcycle brand.”

Penton, who owned a motorcycle shop with his brothers in Amherst, Ohio, helped develop lightweight bikes known as “enduros” that would go on to be raced competitively around the world. Like a motocross track, Penton's life was filled with ups and downs.

As Huffman was conducting interviews and doing research for his project, he discovered that Lovett was a big fan of the brand since as a 14-year-old he swept floors in a Texas shop that carried those motorcycles. Through friends of friends, Huffman contacted Lovett, who would not only narrate the documentary but provide music and help promote the project. That's when Huffman concluded a new financing campaign was in order.

Here is his video preview:


You can also learn more about The John Penton Story at this website: carlsbadusgpmovie.com.

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