Crowdfunding campaign to make a winning movie
A new film is about to be produced in Nelson, with its director aiming for it to star in the Palm D’Or festival competition at Cannes.
Director Gwen Daly’s Nelsonbased Jo Public Nga Tangata production company has started a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter to raise funds to produce the film next month.
The 20-minute film, Late Equaliser, is about ‘‘life, death, reincarnation . . . and football.’’
‘‘It’s an original story, it’s simple, it’s human and very funny,’’ she said.
It will star Troy Warring, who was in the popular Nelson-made film Kiwi Flyer, along with Anna Burns, Ian Bowell, Gera Giorgini and Doug Brooks, and will be filmed by cinematographers Aaron Falvey and Daniel Allen.
‘‘We are working really hard towards starting shooting in April,’’ she said.
‘‘The film will be very much using Nelson locations, and we want to enter the finished film into festival competitions around the world, including the Palm D’Or at Cannes.’’
Late Equaliser is based on a play written by Mic Dover, which was staged to sell-out audiences in The Free House yurt in Nelson in 2013.
The film’s plot is about a fictitious Kiwi footballer called Billy, who played for Blackburn Rovers in the 1990s.
Billy moved back to Nelson with his family and today runs a pub called The Throw Inn.
As the film begins, Billy has three grown-up daughters and has long given up hope of ever having a son, but wife Sarah, at the mature age of 40, suddenly announces she’s pregnant.
However, she leaves Billy in no doubt that she does not want this baby.
Meanwhile, in Buenos Aries, the young Argentinian football prodigy Carlos Carlos, dies in a car crash, but still conscious, finds himself in the Celestial Recycling Centre. Carlos is informed that his only hope of ever playing football again is to be reborn as Billy and Sarah’s new baby.
Communicating via dreams, Carlos convinces Billy that the new baby will be a reincarnation of him and will grow up to be the world’s greatest footballer. Billy has to persuade Sarah to change her mind and have the baby. Does Billy achieve his goal, or does Sarah put an end to his dreams once and for all?
‘‘Nelson is full of talented people and we want to create new career opportunities in Nelson’s fledgling film industry,’’ said Daly.
‘‘Jo Public has been keen for some time to branch out into movie production, but until recently, it didn’t seem the required skills and experience existed to support serious film making in Nelson. However, the success of the Kiwi Flyer feature film, the B-Rabbit TV soap pilot and the formation of the Top of The South Filmmakers Group by Doug Brooks has made sunny Nelson the place to be for budding filmmakers.’’
Daly said donations to the Kickstarter campaign would go toward paying a professional crew.
‘‘It will help Jo Public craft a film that will be another example of the kind of professional standard filmmaking Nelson is capable of.’’
Donors can give as little as $5, and rewards are being offered for bigger donations, such as T-shirts, movie posters, screen credits or a film extra. Go online to Kickstarter and search for Late Equaliser Kickstarter.