But I Don’t Want to Make Another Short Film by Chris Ivan Cevic of Burnt Pictures

A funny thing happened after I produced my last short film, I never wanted to make another.  I thought to myself “Chris, you had a good run, you’ve made three shorts, and all of them won awards, and all of them got distributed…you are done with shorts.”  It felt good to just say that, and by all accounts, these few years since I produced my last short film “Sugartown” with writer-director JT Mollner, I had officially put making short films in my rearview and was focused entirely on making features.  And it was really a good thing to do because the time had come to challenge myself with the one aspect of filmmaking that I would not come in contact with if I never made a feature film…the business.

 

Now I am not saying that making shorts isn’t a business, it is, but it’s a business model that I felt was largely insulated from the business of making films or entertainment and selling them in the market.  I also realized that though I am good at actually making movies, as a producer and line producer, the business of “getting films made” and “selling films to the market” was still something that was foreign to me.  That fact became painfully obvious once I started to talk to people seriously about the feature films I was developing.  It didn’t matter how many awards my short films had won or whether my short films were on iTunes, people still had problems trusting whether I knew what would make a successful feature film.  While experiencing difficulty getting financiers interested, I realized that potential investors need to see more.  If we were going to raise money, investors needed to trust me and JT’s vision, and for people who have primarily made money in other ways, that can be a bit challenging because they are often not able to know whether something they like on paper is something that would make a good film.

 

 

Flash forward two years, and Outlaws and Angels is on the verge of becoming a reality as we have most of the money in the bank and are attaching lead actors.  Life is good, right?!   Short answer:  yes!  And yet for those who haven’t gone through attaching talent to a project before, it can take some time to really cast the right actor.  So we end up waiting…a lot, and so I couldn’t help but ask how long it took JT and I to get here.  Without sounding discouraging, I’ll just say…years.  Being the motivated guy that I am, I thought it would be smart of us to speed up the process on what we hope will be our second feature, so I asked around about how we could do that.  I got a response that shocked me from Rosanne Korenberg, my producing partner on Outlaws and Angels, who said “make a short film.”  What!?  But I don’t want to make a short film!  How can this be the way?  Won’t it be easier to make our second feature after we’ve made our first?  And she said…”maybe, but making a short will definitely help speed up the process.”  Well when I really thought about it, I realized that she was right. Just ask Zach Braff.  We all now know how hard it was for him to make his follow up to Garden State, which was a hit.  Being that we don’t want to crowd fund our second feature, we decided making a short was the way to go, especially since it had truly made the difference in getting what looks to be our first feature off the ground.

 

And of course, we intend on taking all the lessons we learned from all of our past shorts, and even things we learned developing our first feature, and make the best film we’ve ever made.  So we started with the cast.  We attached screen legend DEE WALLACE (who played the mom in E.T.: Extraterrestrial, also Cujo, Rob Zombie’s Halloween, Grimm) to play the lead opposite her daughter GABRIELLE STONE (Speak No Evil, Zombie Killer), and we have rounded out the cast with two total pros who you’ve seen in tons of television and films over the years, JB BLANC (The Count of Monte Christo, Breaking Bad) and ROBERT CRAIGHHEAD (It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, All My Children).  We are going to be shooting on Super 16MM film stock because JT Mollner and our Director of Photography, GAVIN KELLY…a guy whose films have won Academy Awards, felt 16MM would be the best way to get the grainy raw look JT was going for that’s similar to The Wrestler and Blue Valentine.  Though we know shooting with name actors and shooting film stock instead of digital is going to make it a more expensive project, we feel it is truly going to elevate the project to the quality of picture usually reserved for the studios.  We intend to take this similar approach to production design, locations, wardrobe, makeup, props, and all other creatives departments so that we can have a film that harkens back to the the blue collar dramas of the 70’s.

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Though I began by stating I didn’t want to do another short film, I can honestly say that I couldn’t be more excited about a film period.  It is also my hope that shorts one day become a legitimate and profitable business model for filmmakers because going through this process has taught me that just making a film, short or features, is truly a gift and not to be judged.  All films offer filmmakers great opportunities for explorations, amazing challenges, and exciting experiences on the journey to becoming the best filmmaker possible.

PLEASE HELP US

Our hope is also that in making this film, we will also be creating a community where we can find people that want to join us on this adventure, where we can share all that we are learning and experiencing with people who love films and who love to see artists pursuing their passion.  We want to share FLOWERS IN DECEMBER because we know that making films has given us so much joy, and it is our hope that others will be able to take away a bit of joy for themselves by taking part in the process.  For those who are interested in joining us on this adventure, we are crowd funding for FLOWERS IN DECEMBER on IndieGoGo.com.

We are raising $25K, which is no small feat, so we truly appreciate if you can donate and/or help spread the word through facebook or twitter.  And if you are in LA, come join us at Bootsy Bellows in Hollywood for the closing night celebration of our campaign.  Details will be posted on our IndieGoGo campaign page in the next week.   Thanks and wish us luck!