The Big Plan – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
There are three protagonists in every campaign, the GOOD, that’s the enthusiasm it generates that equals to cash that equals to the advancement of the project. The Bad, that’s the silent response for a long time, that crashes the enthusiasm, and The Ugly, kind of the nowhere land, not here, not there.
Our very first campaign was for Olalla, Amy’s fourth feature film, based in the story by Robert Louis Stevenson, Olalla, tells the story of a gothic and decadent family of genetic vampires who need human blood to survive, and where incest is the only way to maintain the family line.
A very challenging film.
We started on the heels of Dead But Dreaming, having accomplished a lot in terms of locations, costumes and big cast, different periods of time… all of that.
The next adventure had to be as amazing. The story takes place in two periods in time, separated by a couple of hundred years, there was the need for a big cast in a few scenes, period costumes, lots of costumes… and a chapel, and a cross, a very particular cross, not to mention a great location that has the feeling of 1800s Spain, which we found in the old city of Potosi. And this time it involved TRAVELING!
Taking the cast, crew, equipment, large props to a different city was a huge task.
During that time, Amy went to Las Vegas, to a film festival, to present Barbazul.
We posted back in October 2013 the following.
Amy launched her IndieGoGo campaign to raise some of the funds she needs for a fantastic BATS scene. Here’s the link. Her goal is to raise 10,000 USD to shoot a large scale scene of Olalla whipped, chained to a cross and burn in front of angry villagers.
There are some great perks for those who would like to contribute to the production of that scene. The plan is to shoot it in November. She explains it better in the pitch video below.
Another point in the education of Amy in Las Vegas. Insist!
So… I do. Our IndieGoGo campaign is in full force. Visit us, share our link, do what you must to help her make the scene the best GIMP scene in the history of GIMP. (Only to be beaten by our next movie, we’d love to make our GIMP scenes better all the time.) We’re over 60% of our goal, even tough it doesn’t appear as such in the site. We received a direct deposit in our bank account of 3,000 towards the campaign. That makes the total as of today of 6,040. We hope to reach 10 grand. Are you game?
Amy arrived, took a break and on we went into the production of Olalla again. 80% of the contemporary scenes are already in the can. 5 more days of shooting and we have this part done. We’ll take a week to shoot the fiery sequence. I’ll have a production date soon.
Amy’s impression from her experience in Las Vegas is interesting. All the filmmakers, some of the distributors, people in the business, mostly from LA, the mecca of the film industry, repeatedly said to her: “you’re living the dream!”
What do they mean by that? Simply put we’re doing what we love and only what we love. We can pay salaries to our people, make a living with our films, make the films with grand production values, that’s something everyone at PollyGrind appreciated a lot, our production values.
Amy saw lots of the films, she saw what others are doing and how they are doing it. Her conclusion is that what we’re doing is totally unique, original and great. She also learned that we’re not working with low budgets but rather micro-budgets. Low budgets are those films made with over 100,000 USD. We’re far below that so, we make micro budget productions with class, style and amazing production values. That’s what Dead But Dreaming represents. Amy took copies of the vampire film and showed it to some select people and they were in awe. The word used frequently was Genius.
As I was saying, Olalla was our first film made with money raised in a campaign, not just one offer of cash. The film itself came out great, it had a great and crowded premiere in January 2015, the year we produced TWO films, Justine and Pygmalion.
After the premiere it was released theatrically, it did well, and then it went to festivals. One of those festivals brought about big changes to all of us, specially to Amy who was asked to design the film department at a US university, an offer she couldn’t refuse. She now heads the department and that’s another story.
After Olalla was ready to go out in the world, we started a campaign to raised money again, this time for Justine, but that’s a subject for my next post.
There were a few questions at the Crux Forum, which I’ll expand on a little here.
Cruxlover24 Will you guys be shooting Maleficarum in a short future?
I don’t know what you mean by short future. In a few months? A year? April ended and we’re entering a new month, getting closer to half of 2025… and that, sometimes, seems short, very short, to me.
Maleficarum Excruciati is in the plans of future productions; however, it’s a very expensive proposition. We have FOUR films to worry about, the CRUCIFIED FOUR series, which we are planning to shoot in August/September of this year.
After those four films are done, we’ll begin seriously thinking about Maleficarum Excruciati if we have everything we need, like a cast, props, locations, crew… and if the director is willing to go through that again so soon and if our big plan works and we have enough resources to do it.
It could happen that one of the behind the scenes work we’re doing gets results and we embark for the next two years in the TV series and the documentaries that go with it.
One way of getting the resources for the films we want to make is by selling our work in great quantities. Our APRIL SALE is over, there will be other opportunities for discounts in the future, but you can get any or all of our films at our store.
Cruxlover24 Thanks for your fast answer. I have a question won’t be easier to raise funds for Maleficarum? Considering that it is one of the most popular films you guys have.
It’s never easy to raise funds, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, like now. The campaign for Crucified Four is closed for now. We might resume it, we might not. If we do, it will be in different terms, maybe just a pre sale of all films at once. In the other hand we might not resume the campaign at all. We’re working on the BIG PLAN (Not a big production) with the intention of have access to the funds we need for Crucified Four and another production. Right now Jac is concentrating in that work at hand.
Cruxlover24 Have you finished your latest film with Mila and Dani? When is it gonna be available?
There are a few films with Mila and Dani, at least four of them are in post production and two of them in production, the one that is going through the excruciating pains of cutting and cutting and more cutting right now is Agent Honey Trap. I don’t know when it will be available, but I’ll be promoting it as soon as I get the word.
