Jay Rathore remembers his reaction when he first heard about the CineCoup film accelerator and its pledge to grant one Canadian independent film $1-million in financing and a theatrical release in early 2014. I thought it was a too good to be true situation, admits the Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»writer-director. I was pretty skeptical.
However, after investigating the track record of CineCoup founder/media entrepreneur J. Joly, Rathore and his collaborators took a leap of faith and uploaded their concept trailer for Grade Nine a coming-of-age tale in which three Dungeon & Dragons geeks confront the realities of violence to CineCoup.com. They immediately began building an audience for their project through the social web platform.
Several months later, Grade Nine is one of the final 15 projects still in contention for financing and distribution. In the process, Rathore has learned precisely what an accelerator involves. The workload was pretty crushing, he says of the CineCoup-assigned missions that have required new content to be created on a weekly basis. But, weve managed to survive and weve managed to be creative. I guess we tested ourselves as filmmakers.
These assignments which included proving their resourcefulness and creating hooks to lure media attention have also allowed the filmmakers to reassess and rework their project while its still in a formative stage. As Rathore explains, The missions helped us take a cold, hard look at certain aspects of our film and really help us crystallize our vision.
That sentiment is echoed by Sean Horlor, writer and co-director of The Mill and the Mountain, another of six Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»films looking to emerge as CineCoups chosen one. We did the Speechless mission where we shot a scene (from our script) without dialogue... After getting feedback from fans, we changed that scene to have it work better, he shares. It was a collaborative filmmaking approach that Ive never actually seen before. Where you can really crowdsource an idea with people who really love mystery thrillers.
Whereas Grade Nine draws on a universal experience suffering through the most awkward stage in your life The Mill and the Mountain is inspired by very specific events. Fans of thrillers like Insomnia and Winters Bone in which the geography factors heavily, Horlor and his collaborators wondered, Why hasnt there been a Canadian equivalent? Especially in BC, where the landscape is so immense? And then, you have a story like Highway 16... The Highway of Tears.
Further inspiration came from the fact co-director Steve Adams once babysat Cody Legebokoff, whos accused of committing four murders along that infamous highway. Horlor asserts, When CineCoup rolled out, we thought we had the perfect movie. Its made headlines around the world already, so it has a built in audience.
This belief has been reinforced by the fact Horlors team has received significant media coverage and met with potential investors for their film. Should The Mill make it through to CineCoups top ten, it will join the other nine projects in being showcased and shopped at the Cannes Film Festival next week.
Horlor laughs, Another moment that we could never visualize last December before we entered this.
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