MEMOIR

ABOUT THE FILM

Memories, in a sense, drive and fuel our existence. A smell takes us back to childhood, a song reminds us of a school dance or a long road trip with the family. Memories can also gnaw at us like a disease. "I wish I would have..." or "Given a second chance, I would..."

Enter Ted Maine. Our protagonist who has created an extraordinary machine called the "Memoir" which recreates memories by engaging the five senses. His mission: get back to his mother on her death bed the night that she passed away. Like I said, regret sometimes drives us, and when working towards time travel, it can be the fuel to make the extraordinary possible. However, Ted's late nights and extra hours on his side project, the "Memoir," have detracted from his work at Janus Sciences, where he and his co-workers are making important developments towards curing Alzheimers. The "Memoir," however, still isn't working properly and it's taking away from Ted's research, putting him on thin ice at work. Head of security, Marcus, begins to question Ted's trustworthiness when it comes to certain information, so in a last ditch effort to make the "Memoir" work before security measures become too tight, Ted uses his connections to get a vital piece for his machine. That is, until an unlikely visitor from the future shows up...

ABOUT THE TEAM

We have an amazing group of people committed to working on this film project! Recently, Alexander Jeffery and Paul Petersen made a film called The Bespoke Tailoring of Mister Bellamy which won the Louisiana Film Prize and has gone on to receive accolades across the festival circuit, including Audience Choice for Best Short Film at the Omaha Film Festival and the Programmer's Choice Award at the Cleveland International Film Festival. MTV called it: "An acutely relevant, achingly human film."

View the trailer here:

We are making Memoir for this year's Louisiana Film Prize competition. In the featured image on the page, you can see our artwork for the film. This set piece is being built by the multi-talented Jim Hayes whose design work includes big movies like Austin Powers, The Rock, and Zoolander. He currently lives in Shreveport, Louisiana and is excited to help us out! We have also enlisted a talented group of visual effects artists from Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) to make the magical effects happen in post-production! These artists have worked on films such as Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Captain America.

Perhaps the most exciting news is that Cailey Fleming, Young Rey from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, has agreed to play the lead character of Obee: the visitor from the future. Cailey is incredibly excited about the project and is an amazing young actress.

ABOUT THE FUNDRAISING

We are currently seeking $12,000 towards making the film. We have already raised $17,000 towards the project and will be supplementing the rest of the costs with our own income. Any help you can offer would be a tremendous help to the project. Additionally, we love to be as inclusive in the process as possible! If you've never been on a film set and would like to come to Louisiana to see the magic happen, we would love to have you there! Don't feel like making the trip? We will share stills, footage, and exclusive behind-the-scenes videos with you! We very much appreciate the support and can promise that we will do everything in our power to make a film that everyone involved can feel proud of. We are incredibly passionate about this idea and think that it has a life beyond the short film, perhaps as a feature film or TV series. All the proceeds will go to Bespoke Works, LLC towards production of the short film, Memoir.

WHY DOES IT COST SO MUCH?

Memoir is a sci-fi action movie grounded with human characters, interactions, and emotion. In order to pull off the spectacle of the action and science fiction, however, we do have to spend more money than we typically would on a short film. The talented Jim Hayes is building our set for the cost of material and labor, leaving out all design and personal costs on his end. A set of this magnitude would cost a normal film production double, if not triple, what we are paying for it. The crew is working for pennies, but in order to keep them happy, we must feed them two hearty meals for each 6 days of filming. Some of the crew are flying in from New York and Mississippi, so travel costs and lodging are included in our budget. Additionally, the script calls for several security costumes to be purchased and a futuristic costume to be made for Obee. Lastly, this film requires some pretty cool visual effects (VFX) and we have enlisted some of the industry's top artists who have worked on Star Wars, Captain America, and Harry Potter, to pull off the hefty task of completing the film in post-production. Without the favors we have been able to receive and the passion to work on this project from so many people, it would be a much more expensive endeavor.