To potential financiers:
The lifeblood of filmed entertainment is new and entertaining stories from independent filmmakers, financing, marketing and distribution. Due the current hierarchy and structure of the film and television industries, it is difficult for these novel stories to break through the monopoly that exists in the entertainment industries with its network of agents, managers and their direct and exclusive pipeline to distribution and exhibition channels.
There has always been a wealth of independent storytelling talent in the non-traditional regions, not the least of which is the DMV. There is not a wealth of financial support for this DMV talent base.
Howard University’s School of Film has produced award-winning director/cinematographers, Bradford Young, Arthur Jafa, Ernest Dickerson, Malik Sayeed and Alonzo Crawford, the writer/producer/director and longstanding Howard University professor who taught them. Alonzo Crawford will be integrally involved in the planning and execution of this vision.
The Howard University Chadwick A. Boseman School of Fine Arts has produced a long list of film and television industry icons. The list is too long for this email, but includes the late great Chadwick A. Boseman, whose name adorns the school, Ossie Davis, Debbie Allen, Phylicia Rashad (the current Dean), Lynn Whitfield, Roxie Roker, Taraji P. Henson, Marlon Wayans and Anthony Anderson.
Howard University and at least four additional well regarded university film and drama programs in the DMV produce talented storytellers every year, who are compelled to relocate to other regions, N.Y., Los Angeles, Atlanta, Vancouver, B.C., to pursue their careers because of the relative dearth of filmmaking activity at home. Major productions, based in the “film centers”, occasionally send second unit crews to pick up B-roll using federal landmarks as backdrop for establishing shots. While a limited number of local crew professionals and some extras pick up a couple of weeks of work on these productions, this is not the career sustaining work that would be available on productions that are initiated and shot locally.
What if we were able to pool these resources to create a consortium of our local talent to create a virtual film production studio (without walls for now) that would allow established under-represented storytellers in our region to collaborate and tell their stories in their own backyard with our financial support? We would like to develop and produce high quality motion pictures, television pilots and series, web series for commercial theatrical distribution and streaming exhibition.
For the enhanced marketability of our projects, we will tap into our network, some of whom have been identified above, to cast big name acting talent to collaborate with our very talented and experienced DMV-resident actors in these projects.
Some of our projects will be signatory to the SAG Diversity in Casting Low Budget Incentive with budgets at or below $3M. Other, higher budgeted projects will follow in the pipeline as the initial projects achieve distribution.
Established storytellers like Barry Levinson (Diner, Avalon, Tin Men), David Simon (The Corner, The Wire, Homicide) and others, through their Baltimore production activities, have created the genesis of a film production infrastructure in Baltimore. The “House of Cards” production availed itself of this infrastructure. We will also avail ourselves of these local equipment, production and post-production resources to build upon with increased and consistent production activity.
Our projects will provide “Each One Teach One” opportunities for young, aspiring, at risk, local filmmakers to learn about the many trades that collaborate in the development, pre-production, production and post-production of films. They will also be introduced to the film business.
Eventually our scope will expand to the acquisition of an existing commercial building that can be converted into a self-financed and self-sustaining urban production facility to include classrooms, meeting spaces for rent, production offices for lease, rental production sets and sound stages, an equipment rental house and post-production facility with a theatrical exhibition space for rent.
We would like to discuss your potential equity investment in our projects. Thank you again, for your interest!