Gillian Fritzsche’s new project: “Sonny”
Back in February, I featured this Q&A with Gillian Fritzsche, one of the producers of the independent movie The Rock ’n’ Roll Dreams of Duncan Christopher. In that interview, Gillian mentioned this:
To date, I’ve completed three treatments, three screenplays, and a short film. I’ve not yet sold any spec scripts; but my husband and I are moving forward with plans to produce the short film I’ve written and we’ve got two other feature scripts in development that we’d love to produce together.
Duncan and her husband producer-cinematographer-editor Ryan Fritzsche are, indeed, moving forward with their short film. It’s titled “Sonny” and they have a unique pitch for the project:
“Sonny” fits squarely in Gillian and Ryan’s vision for the type of stories they want to create as this excerpt from the Q&A demonstrates:
We spent the first few months of the year writing a business plan and putting a team together — a creative team and a production team — and searching for ways in which the project could give back to the community in terms of artistic renewal, environmental stewardship, and community development. Also, we were engaged in figuring out ways in which our project could be executed in a “green” sustainable fashion, instead of the giant trash-generating, use and abuse of typical film productions.
This sentiment reminds me of Participant Media, producers of a host of socially relevant movies including Good Night and Good Luck (2005), North Country (2005), Syriana (2005), An Inconvenient Truth (2006), Fast Food Nation (2006), The Visitor (2007), The Kite Runner (2007), and Charlie Wilson’s War (2007). Their company’s guiding philosophy:
Participant believes that a good story well told can truly make a difference in how one sees the world. Whether it is a feature film, documentary or other form of media, Participant exists to tell compelling, entertaining stories that also create awareness of the real issues that shape our lives.
We seek to entertain our audiences first, then to invite them to participate in making a difference next. Participant believes that people are basically good and that everyone deserves the chance to be a participant!
I guess you can think of Gillian and Ryan’s company this way: They are like Participant Media only without founder Jeff Skoll’s billions of dollars (he was the “second employee at eBay”).
Here are some additional thoughts from Gillian about “Sonny”:
- This short film is about a generous homeless man who loses his only connection to his past and finds a future he could not have imagined. It connects to the themes of identity and redemption. It elevates recycling as a practice and raises awareness for the plight of the invisible homeless in our major cites.
- For our feature film “…Duncan Christopher”, we received financing through investors and tax credits from the state of Oklahoma as well as a few donations through a non-profit arm of the company. However, as most people know it’s next to impossible to find investors for short films because they rarely make money (I think that might change soon given the current digital distribution climate and the preference for short form content; but investors are still currently reluctant); so most short film producers must finance the projects themselves.
- IndieGoGo is one of several online crowd-sourced funding websites. Kickstarter is another funding platform. Both of them run rather similarly but have different fee structures. Kickstarter is more popular and includes non-profit and for-profit endeavors that are not films or music, whereas IndieGoGo is limited to creative projects like music albums or films.
If you’re interested in contributing to the movie project “Sonny,” you can go here. And what about Duncan? Here’s some news from Gillian:
On Saturday night (June 12th) we won a major award! We won Best Oklahoma Feature Film at the deadCENTER Film Festival in Oklahoma City, OK!! Yay! At the same time, we screened at a film fest in San Francisco (literally the same night) to a happy crowd. That fest is currently still going. :) So we’ve been in four festivals (Method Fest, Los Angeles United, San Fran United, and deadCENTER) with three more coming up (unofficially). We also won a Marketing award at the festival we premiered at, The Method Fest 2010.
Good luck, Gillian, with “Sonny”!
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