Fundraising Leads to Auditions for CRAP!

Karen Covey (my producer and general partner in crime) and I, have been struggling with how to raise the $30,000 it will take to make the movie CRAP!.  Obviously we need to use kickstarter.com but how to do so effectively was our issue.  Lot's of people beg for money on kickstarter but only about half of them succeed.

We decided that it was important to create an entertaining pitch (a commercial on kickstarter.com in which we beg for money) and the best way to do that is with a movie trailer.  The problem with that is it means we have to cast the movie.  We hadn't planned to do casting until we had the funds in place to secure the location and the crew.  Never the less, it became obvious that we needed to cast the movie now in order to make the trailer/pitch.

To that end, I placed an ad in Backstage magazine last night. and we will take submissions until March 11th.  Then we will hold auditions March 16th and 17th.  The bummer about that is that by the time we finish the trailer/pitch we will have lost almost two months.  Figure another six weeks of actual fundraising and we are not looking at shooting the actual movie until May.

On the upside, the trailer/pitch I wrote is going to be fun!  I wrote a kind of spoof of the movie that accomplishes the following goals:
1.) It is funny so people will actually watch it.
2.) It is a microcosm of the movie so if you like the trailer/pitch you will like the movie.
3.) It addresses and dispels the notion that this movie is just a bunch of adolescent poop humor.
4.) It demonstrates my competence as a Director
5.) It introduces the lead actor and demonstrates his comedic skills.
6.) It asks for money in a way that isn't the usual, pathetic, "we can't do this without you" sort of pitch.
7.) Because the trailer/pitch is basically a two minute version of the movie, shooting it will give us a very clear picture of what the actual shoot will be like.  So, if there are any issues that have not occurred to us yet, they will become clear during the shooting of the trailer/pitch, allowing us to correct them before shooting the actual movie.

Now that the auditions have been announced it will be exciting to see the actors who submit for it.