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Tomato Tomato Pictures is a production company founded by and for women who intend to use their platform to employ, uplift, and give voices to fellow women artists. -Sara Demetree & Emma Crockett.
We are raising funds for Post-Production of our already shot & edited pilot episode of our web-series, Mid-20s Crisis. Please check out our first fundraiser, what we used for pre-production and shooting!
Mid-20s Crisis
Writer and star: Grace Rucci
Director: Yael Grunseit
Cinematographer: Isa Furtado
Producers: Sara Demetree & Emma Claire Crockett
These funds will go to our editors, sound mixers, colorists, and film festival applications.
Iris just turned 25. She has no career prospects, she doesn’t have a credit card, but the thing that is freaking her out the most is that she has never been in love. She’s always had this idea of who she would be when she grew up, but now, she is grown-up, and her life looks nothing like what she imagined. Thus ensues the existential crisis. Luckily, Iris has great friends, who remind her she’s not the only one struggling with these missed milestones. They all have something that eats away at them, that keeps them up at night. Mid-20’s Crisis is a story of adulthood, of being in your 20’s in New York City, of failures and friendships. This is a story for all those that still feel they’re coming of age.
What makes this story different from “Girls” or “Sex and the City” is the time in which we are making this and the generation we are making it with: Gen Z’s in post-pandemic New York City. We want to make people laugh and feel seen! They say you should make the kind of art that you would watch yourself, and "Mid-20s Crisis" is the kind of show we've been craving. We want to bring a voice to the challenges, mistakes, and aspirations women face in their mid-20s. As woman in our twenties, we feel the weight of so many unmet goals. Constantly seeing people succeed around us and feel a step (or two) behind. We’re all just trying to figure out who we are and where we fit into this world. While some of us are just learning how to pay our own taxes and apply for a credit card, others are buying a house and getting married.
"Mid-20s Crisis" is a project that speaks on the struggles of our generation, told straight from the horse’s mouth. A majority of our cast and crew is made up of women who have been drawn to this project because they feel represented within the story. Your involvement is not only an investment in this series, but also in a shared experience that resonates with many.
When I moved to NYC at twenty, I was determined to be an actor. I was in a great acting school, meeting people, and getting better every day. The day after graduation I woke up with a pit in my stomach. I realized I no longer had any excuse. The amount of cold emails I sent in that first month out of acting school was enough to set some sort of record. The amount of responses I got back…. I can count on one hand. I truly felt a lack of control. To be an actor is to be at the mercy of other people’s opinions of you.
When I turned 23 I thought I was a failure. My eight-year old self who would recite her Oscar speech at night to help her fall asleep definitely thought she would have won an Oscar (or five) at this point. As laughable as that sounds to my grown-up self now, I still manifest those dreams. That's when I started writing. If no one would cast me, then I would cast myself! I wrote a short film about an influencer and filmed it with my friend's DSLR camera, guerilla filmmaking style. No budget with a five-person cast and crew, and it actually made people laugh!!? Writing finally allowed me to control my own narrative.
I'm a year out of school now, and most days, I feel like I know what I’m doing and the direction I am going. Other days, I look around at people my age who have a yearly salary, healthcare, and can afford to pay their own rent, and I panic. I don’t even want that life, but a part of me wonders if I should want it? I feel like I’m behind again. Should I be traveling? Should I be saving? Should I be dating? Should I be alone? This is how “Mid-20s Crisis” was born.
As we head into post-production of "Mid-20s Crisis," this campaign is crucial. Reaching this goal will be a dream come true. We have big plans for this series, we want to make the whole thing. Once we finish filming and editing, we plan to submit the pilot to festivals in hopes to find a distributor that will help fund the rest of our series which will consist of six episodes. We want to eventually be able to compensate everyone who worked on and devoted their time to this project. If we happen to surpass our goal, that’s where the money will be going first; paying our people. Then festival submissions, and finally, saving for the making of the rest of the episodes in the series. Your support is an integral part of this journey, and we are committed to keeping our supporters updated throughout our process.
Schedule for 2024:
Principal photography in NYC: January 4th - 8th DONE!
Post production: January 9th - March/April
Submission to festivals: April onward
Please check out our Instagram! We post a lot of content on there that relates to this project and what we have already accomplished. Tomato Tomato Pictures
Co-organizers (2)
Sara Demetree
Organizer
New York, NY
Emma Crockett
Co-organizer