#Funniest action movie fx how to

you get to keep the money even if you don’t hit your goal). Most of our filmmaker friends have moved away from Kickstarter to leverage IndieGoGo or Seed&Spark, which have flexible funding options (i.e. Our goal: $22,000 to be raised in four weeks.įilmmakers and artists are savvier about crowdsourcing platforms now than we were back in 2015. We pitched the concept (“The World’s First Two-Person Action Movie”) and our plan to prove that a no-budget movie with only two actors could be just as fun and entertaining as a $200MM FX-driven blockbuster by focusing on a strong story and core action genre techniques: rapid-fire editing, great sound design, a pulse-pounding score, and practical effects. So, we turned to Kickstarter in Summer 2015.

How do you raise money for a movie starring two people that nobody has ever heard of and a head-scratching premise? Turns out it’s kinda impossible. This part of pre-production made it clear that the only way to succeed with this idea was to make some mistakes, learn from them, adjust, and move forward. The revised draft, evolved concept, and prototype trailer were enough to excite some core crew members to join the production (met through friends of friends). Also, we’d include a small number of actors, but they’d be used as props-the audience would never see their faces. However, we revised the script to show more, tell less, and pinpointed sections that could use mixed media (animation, hand-drawings, etc.) to enhance action sequences. Two actors in limited locations on a tiny budget was still the goal. The vision had to evolve into something bigger, more cinematic. The prototype taught us that for the Two-Person Action Movie premise to work, we couldn’t just sit in chairs describing the action. Alex was instrumental in getting the film made, the consigliere throughout the production process. While he hadn’t produced movies, he was a producer at an ad agency and understood the intricacies of production, shoots, and the creative process. However, the trailer, combined with our excitement, convinced an associate producer and our producer, Alex Nordenson, to jump on board.

Or rather, Sean and I are not very good in it. Sean cut a short trailer from those moments. Turns out, it didn’t fully work… but there were a few scenes where the idea truly coalesced. Over a single day, and using two camera operators and a sound person, we shot the original premise: An Action Movie with Two People Sitting in Chairs in One Room. We then decided to film a reading of the script as a prototype to prove the idea played. We made strong revisions based on the audience feedback, but no producer fully committed. We also hoped to entice potential producers we invited during these sessions (and by producers, we mean a grad school classmate who produced a short film, and someone who worked at an ad agency). We wrote for several months, and once satisfied with a draft, performed live table reads in my apartment to understand what did and didn’t work. Two idiots writing an action screenplay get flagged by the government based on the content of their emailed plot ideas. Thus began a six-year journey to make the roughly $30K-budgeted In Action-while working full-time careers not in entertainment/film and raising families-that culminated in an award-winning film festival run, distribution acquisition by Gravitas Ventures in December 2020, and release in May 2021. If the camera was constantly moving, roving around the chairs, and there was quick cutting, strong sound design, and we took the scene seriously, maybe it could feel like a car chase. Let’s make something that can’t be ignored.” Credit: Eric Silvera & Sean Kenealy Later, I walked through the East Village and kept picturing a car chase with two people sitting in chairs. You do stand-up so you can perform, I act, we both write, and you studied film in college.

Then Sean added, “We have no Hollywood connections, and any other script we write is just going to sit in the slush pile.

#Funniest action movie fx how to

We’ll call it How To Write and Star in Your Own Action Movie.' “We can use fast-paced dialogue, and descriptions of what’s happening, and quick cutting to make it feel like it’s action-packed, even though it’s just us sitting in chairs.