Making feature length movies on your Iphone.

Hello, friends. Who believes in movie magic?

A few years back my friend Yaron had one piece of advice when I said I wanted to make my first feature.

Do it.

Don’t wait to do it, don’t do it when you have such and such, or when so and so is free— just do it. Now.

Like now.

It took a few years, but we did. And now we need a little help from our friends to finish FAILED STATE. We have one more day of production and most of what we have is already edited and have spent only a total of 10,887 dollars! No joke.

We will come in under 15K! A whole movie! To put that in perspective, our budget for producing a play in a seventy seat house was close to 35 K (and that was at a bargain). How have we done that? Through team work, faith, and patience. And laughter. So much laughter.

I am writing today to invite my creative family to join us. I get it, we have a bunch of emails and political ads constantly bombarding us asking for money - but I am looking to my community to help fill in a budget gap of only 5000 to get us all the way over the finish line so we can make people laugh at a reflection of the insanity we have endured the past few years.

While searching for angel investors who might be interested in financing, I was hoping to see if some of you would contribute fifty dollars. To put that in perspective, fifty bucks covers an hour of post production, or pays for 3/4 of our craft service budget for our last shooting day.

I can’t wait to share the whole of FAILED STATE with you, but for now I can give you a taste — see below for a look at OUR FIRST SCENE + a teaser that previews the whole project. (PASSWORD: failedstate)

****(password: failedstate)

So now that you hopefully watched, you might be asking “well how do I donate?” Easy. You can VENMO me @ matt-doherty-scribbler . I also have paypal and zelle, all you have to do is respond to the newsletter email and I can give you all the details you need. I am hoping to sidestep a crowdfunding campaign as it is very draining and we are under deadlines to get this film done by November (in time for the election). I have faith that we will get there together. Because we have gotten this far.

Me and Paddy R at Echo Park lake doing a scene

And why are we doing this? To do it. Simply. To make something. And not wait for permission. It is healing to make something at a time when every door and every window is locked. It makes one feel empowered. It may not be new but it is a game changing concept to tell gate keepers and trend setters simply we don’t need you. We can do it on our own. And I would love nothing more than to inspire others to do the same. I hope you’ll take two minutes and join our team today. I promise you will be among the first to see it when we are done. Stay cool out there and keep on keepin on - there is magic in the grind. And miracles in every step. And — it is possible to live in fear and courage at the same time. That’s why they call it courage.