Hey guys, this is probably the craziest thing I've ever done. I've launched a fundraising campaign online to raise money through donations to buy a RED ONE movie camera. The same digital movie camera that was used to shoot The Book of Eli, Knowing, Gamer and District 9. I could really use your support if you can donate even a few dollars toward the cause of me reaching my goal, I'd be forever grateful... http://www.indiegogo.com/help-me-buy-a-red As far as my career background, I've been a bit of a financial industry job hopper. I've worked at a lot of different places because I love to learn new things and learned early on from someone who worked at MetLife that a lot of what you know is based on your experience in actually doing it. I've worked at Ameritrade as a broker handling over 80 calls per day on all sorts of trading related stuff, placing trades, answering account questions. I was then promoted to the risk team. As a risk analyst/margin rep. I monitored risk on thousands of accounts including on option expiration. In one day I manually cleared 300 orders in review so they could go to market. We had to watch for options flowing in and out of the money and check balances, notify clients of risk, do sellouts. We also approved complex orders that went to review and handled large orders. I've worked at Fidelity as a retirement specialist, mostly dealing with 401k related stuff. I've worked at MetLife Securities as a sales manager managing a small team of outbound sales guys. Got the job because I lead my team in outbound sales so they put me in charge and let me design all the sales materials, do hiring, create scripts, etc. I've worked briefly as a personal banker. Have done some operation management stuff at an upstart investment banking firm, helping him setup registration in certain states, etc. I also worked at Intuit for a while doing tax support on their top of the line tax program. I learned a lot about taxation through helping CPAs do their returns. Have held my Life and Health, Series 7, 24, 55 and 66 licenses. I've also traded off and on in between making independent films. As far as my filmmaking background, two years ago, I was busy working on a dark comedy feature film that involved over 50 people from cast to crew to musicians. I learned a lot on that film but felt the quality could have been better so decided to not push to release it since I was the major financer behind it, I just took the loss and considered it a learning experience. I then set out to do a short film after that to improve on some technical skills before doing my next film to establish a quality standard on my work. I did a 13 minute dark comedy about what it's like doing tech support for the mafia, the concept being even the mob needs tech support. Found the script from a writer out of Australia and casted with Dallas actors. I basically dressed all the sets, produced it, locked locations, casted it, directed and edited it. You can see the short film here.. http://vimeo.com/8286280 An ongoing personal project of mine is a feature length documentary called Life: A Documentary. Basically the idea is "if you had one minute to share something from your life, what would you share?" We setup our camera and invited people out to participate and documented it. We are still working on finishing this and have had some really great stories shared. My goal with it is to submit free copies of it to hundreds of libraries. Growing up poor myself we often checked out movies for free from libraries and spent a lot of time in libraries. A lot of people don't know that libraries get their movies through donations. So I think by making it available for free at libraries around the world, it could help a lot of people out who maybe stumble upon it. That's the goal at least. 12 minute preview of "Life: A Documentary"... http://vimeo.com/8384498 Just wanted to share what I've been up to. If you know any wealthy people that would be willing to help me get the movie camera by donating, please forward it along. I've been out of the financial industry and of trading for a while now or I'd just save and buy one. But getting out has allowed me to finally shoot stuff. When I was in the industry I never had the time or nerve to pursue this dream. It really is a poor man's dream but I've never been happier. -Anthony
If I can successfully raise the funds to get the movie camera, I plan to shoot my next few feature films on it. The next one being a comedy since my main interest is in comedy films and finance related films. I've also created a website where I'll update everything that is shot on it, from my projects to others, to even charitable causes, commercials, etc. It will also be updated with where all the camera has been around the world and will help track what all it does... http://helpmebuyared.com And I have references from people who have worked with me on sets, who discuss their thoughts about me... http://helpmebuyared.com/references.html I'm looking at shooting some financial industry type movies on it. I feel like there aren't many good financial type movies made beside maybe Wall Street, Boiler Room and Rogue Trader. Given my background I feel I would also be more true to the subject matter and would show more respect for it. I will also use the movie camera to help other projects out that maybe can't afford to shoot on one. The advantage of shooting on this camera versus say 35mm film is film stock runs on average $50k-$100k+ per movie. This camera records to hard drives and can shoot numerous projects. It also projects at up to 4K and looks great on a big screen and is trusted by Hollywood. Which is why The Book of Eli was shot on it and released worldwide on thousands of screens. So anything shot on it has more of a competitive shot at getting a theatrical release as well as distribution to DVD. Which is something that is important for filmmakers like me who want to get their stuff out to a larger audience one day.
I have the perfect movie for you... The Secret... there is this kid in it that wishes really hard for a red bicycle and *poof* it just shows up one day outside his house. This probably has even better odds of happening than panhandling online for this 30K camera you want... Or just do it the old fashioned way and go into debt to get it if you really want it that bad... that works well too.
umm... I think his dream is to own the camera not make the movie... renting would only make sense if the movie was the end goal