If each member of a serious faith acquired raptured tomorrow morning, it might in all probability nonetheless be fairly inconceivable to get funding for an authentic screenplay thought in Hollywood. Filmmakers have been turning to crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter or Seed&Spark for years as a partial or full different to go round studio and streamer “mandates” for content material, in fact. However because the trade beats on, borne again ceaselessly into the previous, filmmakers like Rekha Shankar are discovering an increasing number of established friends standing prepared to assist them do it themselves.
Shankar is the host of Dropout’s “Smartypants,” a UCB LA common, former head author at CollegeHumor, a author on “Animaniacs” and “Digman!” and screenwriter of “Vidhya’s Information to the Afterlife,” which she is now crowdfunding on Kickstarter in partnership with manufacturing firm EffinFunny (“Legend of Neil,” “Code 5”). The movie follows the 2 leftovers of a Hindu-specific rapture, during which a shady priest (Dhruv Singh) and an expert chef (Shankar) with an advanced relationship to her roots however a deep love for her grandparents attempt to stage a 13-day grief ceremony with a purpose to get her household again.
The specificity of the story, which pulls on Shankar’s expertise rising up together with her personal grandparents in Philadelphia even because it threads a sci-fi tinged buddy comedy needle between “The Farewell” and “Palm Springs,” will solely make the movie richer and extra significant and but are precisely the form of factor that will make main studios cautious. Which is silly — and a minimum of one Duplass brother agrees.
“Now and again you meet somebody who’s on the excellent time and place of their life to interrupt via. Rekha has been writing, directing, and performing in comedy shorts and dwell theater for years, and this mission looks as if the right end result of all of her ability units,” Mark Duplass advised IndieWire. “Couldn’t be happier to lop off a few of my ‘The Morning Present’ paycheck to help this movie.”
Duplass has pledged a match grant of $20,000 to Shankar and her crew’s crowdfunding whole on Kickstarter. “Vidhya’s Information to the Afterlife” has already soared previous that quantity on its means in the direction of a $180,000 stretch aim. It appears greater than a good commerce for “The Morning Present” going to area in Season 3, and can hopefully open the door wider for folk who wish to inform tales with the identical unabashed specificity as Shankar’s.
“Illustration is a lot extra than simply seeing a brown individual with frizzy hair on TV — though that will DEFINITELY HELP,” stated Shankar. “I wish to see somebody half-raised by her grandparents, who speaks toddler-level Tamil, who cried as a result of as a child light-eyed North Indians made her really feel unhealthy although she was attempting REALLY exhausting to study the tradition, and who loves baking. And I needed to see all this particular stuff so badly I needed to write it myself.”
Now, with a bit of luck, all of us will.
The Kickstarter marketing campaign for “Vidya’s Information to the Afterlife” ends on March twentieth.