Mannequin - Post-Production

To all art-house surveyors, passion project purveyors or anyone interested in helping a friend out,

Last January, I began working on a short-film script. I say script, but it was more akin to a technical monologue written by a robot; it described in detail the images that would comprise Mannequin.

Fifteen-minutes long, dark, campy, and musical, Mannequin is definitely a strange film. Loosely, it follows a filmmaker who stores her subjects inside her head. I won't say much more than that; I fear my words may taint your first viewing of the thing.

It took two months to write, three months to plan and prepare, two months to shoot and now.... we are still going - editing started twenty days ago. It's been a slow and fragmented road; this five-person crew has been piecing this film together bit by bit whilst working other jobs. Some of us within the industry, and others in a sandwich shop. In fact, that's where I made the money to fund the project in the first place.

The initial budget was £1500. However, I didn't factor in post-production costs because we couldn't wait to raise the extra money. We needed to shoot in the summer because all locations were exterior or on a set we built in a garden.

Alas, we are now at the cross roads paved by myself those twelve months ago. Simply, we cannot finish this film without your help!

We aim to raise an additional £1580 to cover the materials cost of the film's animated sections. In particular, paints, celluloid film, rented light boxes and high-resolution scanning. These materials are somewhat niche and specialist, hence they come at a costly price. The end result, however, will be something kaleidoscopic and painterly.

If we succeed in reaching our target, I'm sure that you will appreciate what all of this time, effort and money has been for. This project has travelled beyond passion, vanity and obsession. I'm not quite sure where that leaves it, or me, but I am thrilled that its journey is coming to an end. Soon enough, we'll be watching it on a big screen somewhere. I hope that you'll be there, too!

Here is a link to the teaser: Mannequin Teaser

And, our last project: Grandma's Necklace

!! Please help support low-budget filmmaking !!

All the best,

Felix, Diana and the Mannequin team