Seven students at the TFTV department of York are inches away from their goal of raising £5000 for their final year project. These ambitious film-makers have utilised the Kickstarter fundraising website to provide the budget for their final year film ‘The Painter & the Thief’. Kickstarter is a website founded in 2009 to help up-and-coming film-makers, designers and software developers crowd-source large amounts of funding in return for various rewards. The team are about to become one of the first British independent film-makers to fund their project from Kickstarter, the website having only been available in the UK for less than a month.
According to director Jack Lawrence, ‘The Painter and the Thief’ is a film about a “feisty pick-pocket [who] persuades a failed artist to steal paintings instead of creating them”. It will be filmed in Yorkshire, with some parts being shot in the beautiful Peak District. Jack is an award-winning screenwriter, having just won the Ceeltx Seeds award for his short film, Monday. The team are planning to use top of the range equipment provided by TFTV including a Red Epic (the same camera currently being used to film The Hobbit). The money raised from the public’s pledges will go towards hiring talent, transporting equipment and staff to the various locations, renting the on-screen vehicles and hiring locations, among many other things.
So far, they’ve raised around £4,600 but they only have just two days to go until their pledge-page is closed down. Each Kickstarter page must raise the proposed budget within a set amount of time otherwise they will receive none of the money pledged. In return for pledging, people can get their name in the credits, a DVD of the film, or even have their faces featured as a prop. Jack Morrow, the producer of the film has said, “This is a chance to make something truely great that really pushes the boundaries of what can be achieved in short film. These last 3 days mean everything for our funding. If we don’t reach the target. We get nothing.”
Pledges can be given at: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jack0rlando/the-painter-and-the-thief-british-drama