A pair of filmmakers who graduated from the SDSU Television, Film, and New Media program have completed production of a feature film shot in Hungary. Now the filmmakers are in the final week of an online fundraiser to pay for post-production.
Filmmaking is always an adventure but when you shoot your first feature in a castle in Hungary it can be controlled chaos says Mauricio Chernovetzky.
"Because it was such a bizarre mix of elements, like here we were in another country trying to shoot with actors from all over Europe. Money was always an issue."
"Like we would have to check what the exchange rate was everyday and like oh we gotta lose 5 crew people, oh the dollar's failing a little bit," Mark Devendorf. Overall, though, he felt shooting in Hungary was a plus. "Because you're there and you walk into a castle everyday and you're excited to be there."
But even the castle posed unexpected problems.
"We discovered that Angelina Jolie decided to shoot one scene there which meant that she took the castle for two weeks to prep it," says Chernovetzky.
That meant having to redo their whole production schedule. But the filmmakers were undetered and pushed forward on their updated retelling of Carmilla.
"We didn't want to create this film where it's just the vampire and the victim, we really wanted to deal with the fantasy of vampirism as well and the idea of the pull to the darkness and of the mystery of the night," Chernovetzky says.
Most of the money for the film came from family and friends, and all that money is up on the screen. Now the filmmakers are running a Kickstarter online fundraiser to pay for the post production expenses to get the film ready for distribution.
"So the Kickstarter ends October 14 and we're trying to raise $25,000," says Devendorf, "this is the big final push and we're trying to hit up everyone who can just give a little something to make it happen.
You can view a trailer for the film here.
