Short Summary

Frisco is a live action narrative short film about Mandy, a small town lawyer in her 40s.  Mandy and her husband, Geoff, are the loving parents of two great boys, Pim and Peter, whom they adopted following a years long battle with infertility and recurrent miscarriages.  Our story begins when Mandy discovers that she is pregnant, years after having given up on her hopes of having a baby of her own.  But Geoff has just lost his job and decided to go back to school, leaving Mandy to support the family on her own.  Additionally, Mandy’s doctor warns that her age and previous complications make this pregnancy extremely risky.  Now, Mandy must decide whether or not to carry on with her pregnancy, knowing that she could be putting hers and her family’s safety at risk.

Impact

The short explores the complex and layered conditions under which someone may choose to seek an abortion, especially when, from the outside, an abortion doesn’t seem like the likely choice.  

Oftentimes, abortions and those who seek them, are misunderstood and unfairly judged.  It’s easy to make assumptions and imagine extreme scenarios, when in reality, these decisions are rarely ever black and white.  All the factors and circumstances are oftentimes much more murky, making a pregnant person’s ultimate decision that much more complicated.

Through telling this story, we hope to bring kindness, compassion, and understanding to the conversation surrounding abortion and reproductive health.

Our Goal

We are looking at filming for 3 days in upstate New York and are hoping to raise about 60K.  Those funds will cover the following.

-Paying our cast and crew

-Housing our cast and crew near set

-Paying for the location

-Insurance

-Gear rentals and purchases

-Food and transportation while we film

-Post production

The majority of our funds will go to paying our cast and crew, as well as providing housing and transportation since we are looking to film about 2-3 hours outside of NYC, where we are all based.

The remainder of our fundraising will go to renting our location, buying production insurance, gear rentals/purchases, food, and post production. 

Although 60K sounds like a lot, it goes by pretty fast in the film world.  There are hard costs that we simply can’t avoid, such as insurance, gear rentals, hotels, and coffee.  Unfortunately, there are some necessities that we simply can’t avoid.

The easiest place to save is labor.  We are incredibly lucky to be working with a talented and generous crew, who will be working at reduced rates.   Although we may not be able to pay them much, or even close to what they would normally make on a bigger project, we want to make sure that everyone is paid something, as a heartfelt thank you for their time, dedication, and talent.  It never feels good to ask people to work for free or basically that, especially when the industry has been on strike since May and slow since last winter.  We value our team and the craftsmanship that they are bringing to this project.

If you are able to give, your contributions will be incredibly helpful in our collective effort to bring this story to life.  We want to do right by this narrative, the people working on it, and the people it represents.  No amount is too small and every contributor amplifies the message that this story is worth telling.  

If you are not able to give monetarily, but would still like to be involved in this project, please consider sharing this campaign with those who might be interested in donating.  Additionally, if you are a film person interested in helping out, please let us know.

Thank you so much for your consideration!