NEAR HIT

Building Contractor Dave Jackson checks into a San Francisco hotel for his second honeymoon... without his wife. She's just begun divorce proceedings against him. He's alone in the city. A knock at the door. When Jackson answers, no one there. Just a manila envelope. Inside the envelope: A man's photo, several bundles of twenty dollar bills, and a 357 Magnum. Jackson realizes the envelope has been delivered to the wrong room... And the hit man is after him! Caught between hitman and victim, regular guy Dave Jackson must fight to survive.

Our second project is also being designed as a web-serial, 12 segments at 7 minutes each, with 11 cliff-hangers. That adds up to 84 minutes, which gives us a feature to sell on DVD once the serial has run online. The plan is to give away the first couple of episodes, then go subscription for the rest. This project will shoot in the San Francisco Bay Area, using my friends and contacts from when I was a film student (I grew up there). I have access to some interesting locations, and plan to guerrilla shoot at a bunch of landmark locations (which I did when I was making student films on 16mm).

Cast and crew: will be locals with award winning film makers John Allred and Jan Van Tassell as co-directors (Mr. Van Tassell's documentary SHIPS is continuously shown at the U,S. Navy Museum).

San Francisco is the home of the American Conservatory Theater, and I have connections with local acting groups and theater directors (Mr. Allred is not only an award winning filmmaker, he is one of the founders of the Onstage Theater Group). By using the SAG ultra-low-budget contract, we can mix local non-SAG actors with an inexpensive name or two in "confined cameos" that will be shot in Los Angeles. These roles are designed to be threaded throughout the serial, so it seems as if they are in the entire film, when their roles were filmed in a single day.

The story concept is a chase thriller, much like the TV show 24 - and for production value on a budget, we plan to use stock footage of an office building implosion combined with digital explosion FX to make this a small project that looks like a big studio film. Other stock footage will also be used to augment the San Francisco locations and give this shot-on-digital film the feel of a big Hollywood summer film. Part of enticing people to subscribe will be a great trailer and an amazing first couple of episodes - with major cliff hangers at the end, so that they *must* find out what happens next. And once the film goes from online serial to DVD (with bonus scenes shot specifically for the DVD release) we will reach a new audience *plus* make sales to those who have already seen (most of) the film online.

This is a *very* affordable project to become involved with, and we plan to shoot in 2011. Send me an e-mail for details.

e-mail:
wcmartell@ScriptSecrets.net

MOTION PICTURE PRODUCTION

From Script To Screen And Everything In Between

copyright 2009 by William C. Martell