July 17, 2008

Back lot G
New Hampshire natives like filming here, but what about Hollywood?
By Heidi Mase hmasek@hippopress.com

Dan Eckman, Meggie McFadden, Dominic Dierkes, Donald Glover and DC Pierson make up the New York-based sketch comedy troupe Derrick. A few months ago, those with day jobs quit them and they took their experience and their script for a feature-length movie north to film in Eckman and McFadden’s hometown of Manchester. They shot for about 35 days over seven weeks in May and June. Now they are back in New York for post-production.

They aren’t the only ones who choose New Hampshire. The state offers some useful advantages for filmmakers. On the other hand, New Hampshire has drawn few big-budget projects, while neighboring Massachusetts recently increased its list of credits.

Setting the scene
There was a mist that wasn’t quite rain in Manchester’s Livingston Park by 10 p.m. on Wednesday, June 4. That didn’t look like the safest setup with a parking lot full of lighting plugged into a generator, but no one looked too concerned. A machine sent a fog into the shot. A van that looked straight out of Scooby Doo had a camera hooked to its front. From the perimeter, production assistant Matt Hoffman of Connecticut echoed orders he heard on a headset, like “pictures up” and “rolling.” In the very short scene, the van rolled forward and a dummy was thrown out, hitting a stop sign. After the take, the handheld making-of camera rolled.

Here’s the Mystery Team storyline, as written for the audition notice: “The Mystery Gang is a team of Encyclopedia Brown-style kid detectives who solved child-sized mysteries in the town of Oakford. Now they’re about to graduate from high school, but they’re still acting like they’re 7-year-old town heroes. When a little girl asks them to solve her parents’ murder, the Gang takes the case as a chance to prove to the town, and themselves, that they can handle grown-up mysteries.”

Derrick is shooting with digital, not film, so when a dummy breaks during a shot, they get an instant replay.

“Stand by to go again” comes over Hoffman’s headset.

Mystery Team was filmed in the usual 12-hour shifts. There’s a lot of setup and breakdown of equipment to do, but the crew also needed to wait for darkness for night shoots. The sun returns early, so night shoots needed to end at 4:30 a.m. sometimes.

Who are these guys?
Most of the Derrick members are about 24 years old. Judging by the amount of equipment and crew they gathered, it’s clear that they are serious about their business. They won’t say what their budget was or how the movie was financed, but earlier they said they saved income from performing sketch comedy through Derrick and posting shorts on YouTube and www.derrickcomedy.com.

Eckman’s Checkout won Best College Short in the 2006 HBO U.S. Comedy Arts Festival. It was filmed at Bunny’s, and experience with that short helped prepare Derrick a little for this project. McFadden’s work for Busboy Productions (The Daily Show and The Colbert Report), and Eckman’s work for Blue Man Group, also helped as preparation. Some of the Derrick YouTube videos were made in Manchester, as well.

Checkout involves a ninja assassin working as a stock boy. It was a New York University thesis film collaboration between Eckman, Dierkes and McFadden (www.checkoutthemovie.com). Eckman, Dierkes, Pierson and Glover attended NYU; McFadden graduated from Fordham University in 2006. Glover writes for 30 Rock and has performed on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Derrick members teach sketch comedy at Upright Citizens Brigade in New York, and had a monthly show there before filming.

The Mystery Team company “really did have all their stuff together,” said Matthew W. Newton, film specialist at the New Hampshire Film and Television Office — they have “Yankee ingenuity” and “really found answers for themselves.” While the filmmakers found their own locations, Newton’s office connected them to the right people to be able to use Manchester parks, for instance. Manchester has been flexible about filming, Newton said.

Strip club
Bill Tracey of Goffstown normally works on commercial and political production work, but was line producing on a Friday night shoot in the Acting Loft basement on Pine Street. Someone came up to ask him about equipment for a shoot in a strip club.

Derrick ran into an issue with one location, Newton said. The owner of Mark’s Showplace agreed at first, then had second thoughts.

“Obviously, it’s a place that can raise a lot of eyebrows on its own,” Newton said of Mark’s. The scene called for a minor on the premises, and there were issues with having alcohol on site even though the actor’s parents would be present. The Film and Television Office spoke with the state liquor commission and learned that the alcohol would need to be removed from the site when the minor was there and they would need to use “film beer.”

The club was closed during the shoot, Eckman said.

About five box trucks were being emptied into the Acting Loft basement June 13. The trucks and a generator were about all that could fit in the adjacent parking lot. Eckman used to be an Acting Loft member, and his mother co-founded the theater education company. Downstairs, most people moved about quietly with purposeful looks as they prepared for scenes in the boiler room and the men’s bathroom. Both were to represent such places in a strip club.

Everything seems to need to be run by Eckman on the shoot. One also gets the feeling that McFadden has the details and organizing under control.

Nicholas Lareau, 27, of Manchester, joined the art department after seeing a craiglist.org posting. He’d attended school for special effects in Pittsburgh. He pointed out a film prop he’d worked on, a lemonade stand with a sign that says, “Mysteries solved, 10 cents.” The men’s bathroom in the Acting Loft basement was entirely redone to look like a strip club men’s room, he said. There are piles of wet-looking toilet paper stuck to the floor, and bathroom graffiti of varying levels of offensiveness. Someone added, “Matt is sexy” to the scribblings — Matthew Janson being the sound designer.

Lisa Myers is in charge of production design in the four-person art department. Joe James is the prop master.

(If you were wondering, although the Acting Loft is in the basement of a former church, it has not been sanctified as a church for a few years.)

On average, Derrick had about 30 people employed in their cast and crew. The number depended on the needs for the day.

They found many of the extra cast members through the Acting Loft and its producing artistic director, John Sefel, “who was really great,” Eckman said. Some roles were written specifically for comedians or actors they know from New York. They also had a casting agent in New York.

About half the crew came from New England, while the other half was from New York and California. Department heads like to bring a lot of their own people, Eckman said. Sound was from New York, lighting was from Los Angeles. Grips were from New England.

Filming and digitizing
Afton Grant, 30, set up his Steadicam. It’s an apparatus he wears which a camera is attached to. The Steadicam keeps the shot smooth while the operator walks places a dolly can’t go, he said. Grant is based in New York but also works in his native New Hampshire. He owns his own equipment except for the camera.

It’s not cheap. It’s either a Steadicam or a house, basically, he said. The principles of how the Steadicam works haven’t changed much since the 1970s, he said. It’s mechanical and has to do with reduction of friction. It allows the camera to move as it wants to, he said. Grant said he knew he wanted to be a Steadicam operator after seeing one in action. He went to high school in Hanover and studied art at UNH.

There aren’t many Steadicam operators around New Hampshire, Grant said. Grant previously worked with the movie’s director of photography, Austin Schmidt.

From New York’s Offhollywood, the Red Digital Cinema camera specialist Jay Cleary, 25, transferred the digital media files from New Hampshire to New York. The 4K-format digital footage is transferred to other external storage and shipped to New York by snail mail. The data files must be processed and are so big that shipping a drive is probably faster than electronic transfer, Cleary said.

Lucas Loureiro of New York is a camera assistant and makes sure all the parts of a camera are kept together and organized. There are different types of batteries to keep track of. It’s not a good thing for the batteries to be dead when it’s time to film.

Cleary said it’s good that they were doing night shoots, not day shoots, during the heat wave in June. It was still 80 degrees, but the camera can act differently in humid heat.

Offhollywood crew work with both film and digital. “Still, people’s first choice is film,” Loureiro said. Film still looks better overall, at this point in digital’s development, Eckman said. The good side of digital is that it lets you play back the take immediately. “Unfortunately, with film, you don’t know if there was hair in the gate or light came through and ruined film” until a few days later, Eckman said. Still, the new digital format they used took longer to process for editing than developing film takes.

Using film is more expensive, especially if a director wants to shoot several takes. “I tend to do a lot,” Eckman said. In his directing style, each shot has its own beginning, middle and end, he said.

With a small budget and lots of takes, it was better not to be worrying about how much film they would use, since it’s a costly product, and digital is “just zeros and ones,” Eckman said.

Having a dozen or so versions of a scene sounds confusing, but Eckman said he likes having those options. Normally, he knows on set which takes were good, anyway. Eckman watches everything again for a fresh view, though. He started as an editor out of film school, so he’s used to going through lots of footage.

Eckman does start editing before finishing filming. “I’m a little bit crazy like that. I get antsy and I want to look at stuff. I pretty much had the first 20 minutes edited by the time we finished,” Eckman said.

Eckman said he knows how he wants a shot to look, but doesn’t act. The other Derrick members tease him that when he does demonstrate, he commits fully. “You’re the Peter Sellers of readings,” DC said.

A different kind of movie
“I wouldn’t be so pretentious [as] to say we’re coming up with a new genre. But it is unlike a lot of other films ... I couldn’t point to another film that’s like it,” Eckman said. Mystery Team is both a comedy and a mystery with some action, he said. The show is rated R, and there’s one very raunchy scene, meant to contrast with the innocence of the protagonists. Part of the premise is that the 18-year-old main characters are “kind of pure” and humor comes out of how uncomfortable they get in adult situations, Eckman and Derrick members explained.

Most of the movie could be put on television with a few edits, Eckman said.

The story follows the pattern of most mysteries, with the characters going from clue to clue, finding “red herrings,” suspects and “the whole deal,” Pierson said.

Derrick’s style is to ground comedy in a reality. For the movie, absurd things are played on a realistic backdrop, Dierkes said.

Donald, DC and Dominic starred in the film and wrote it. Glover is composing the score. There were a few rewrites during the shoot for logistical reasons — or sometimes because they just came up with a better idea, Eckman said.

When Eckman had an outburst July 13 when he found out an actor shaved, the other four members of Derrick were quick to try to calm him down. They discussed scenes the actor was in to try to determine if any were being cut that would help the situation.

Smells of make-up and perfume wafted out of the dressing room. Grant played piano while he waited. Crew members continued to go in and out of the boiler room and men’s room. Bags of cereal and chips arrived for snacks. Meals were catered. Once people started arriving with suitcases, the Derrick members relaxed and greeted their friends.

McFadden said she produced a number of short films, and Derrick’s Internet videos, but this project is bigger than anything else she’s produced. “Even housing and feeding all those people ... just needed to be coordinated,” she said.

More than the extra to-do lists, McFadden was concerned about the Derrick members. Her goal was to make sure “the four boys’ creative vision could really be played out,” she said. At the same time, she needed to be mindful of their budget. It’s a balance, “but I love it,” McFadden said. She knew she wanted to work in the entertainment industry and found herself drawn to the production end of things during college internships. “I was more interested in the people that sort of made it happen,” she said.

Eckman said he has no idea when the film will be released, but they are looking to have it finished by mid-September. Creative Artists Agency out of Los Angeles is representing Mystery Team (there’s an IMDb entry for the movie already) and is handling distribution and festival submissions. “I don’t think we would have ever been able to make it if we didn’t have their backing,” Eckman said.

The Derrick members are now back in New York. Eckman and McFadden are working full time on post-production. The two got engaged at the wrap party. They met when she stage-managed a play he directed while they were both at Central High School.

“If you can make it through making a film together, you can make it through everything,” Eckman said.

On location
Local contacts were one reason Mystery Team shot in New Hampshire.

Dan Eckman’s cousin John Eckman’s family owns Reeds Ferry Lumber in Merrimack. Derrick shot some scenes there, John Eckman said. He’s excited to see the result.

Dan Eckman’s brother had helped in the past with Derrick videos and was a production assistant and shot behind-the-scenes footage for Mystery Team.

Mystery Team was also filmed at various homes, including one on Wellesley Street and one on Union, behind the courthouse, at Derryfield Park, Livingston Park, Stadium Ten Pin and Bunny’s. Derrick temporarily shut down part of DW Highway; they also shut down part of Wellesley and Heather streets in the North End. But they tried to keep that to a minimum, Eckman said.

Charles DePrima, interim director of Manchester Parks and Recreation, said at Livingston the city provided an overtime employee to open the restroom building — and charged Derrick. “They were fun. We don’t get to do that very often,” DePrima said. The producers didn’t make any special requests for the locations, but did need to work with sports leagues to fit filming around game schedules at Derryfield. “I’m definitely interested to see what the movie’s about,” DiPrima said.

Jessica Kinsey, director of development at New Hampshire Institute of Art, said the school was connected with Mystery Gang because a former board member’s son was involved. The school’s dorms housed about 26 people working on the movie for about a month.

Filming on location instead of in a studio has positives and negatives. In theory, it can be easier if you don’t have to build sets or do much art direction, but “it can be somewhat less efficient in terms of time,” Eckman said. The crew tried to stick to the typical 12-hour day, but usually it took about two hours to load in equipment and two hours to load it back out. “Most of the process is a lot of hurry up and wait,” Eckman said. They have to block out the scene and light it, and design the shots around the space. On a sound stage, the equipment could just stay there.

Shooting on location was cost-effective for Mystery Team, Eckman said.

New Hampshire doesn’t require general filming permits like other states. But the state does require permits for filming at state governmental or historic sites. It’s just a one-page application, Newton said. Cities might have their own requirements.

Since there is no general permit, it can be hard for Newton to track what is actually filmed in state. “More often than not, they’ll give [a] courtesy call,” Newton said.

Newton’s office has a production guide on its Web site, which lists about 400 sources that can provide anything from camera operators to payroll service to helicopter flights.

McFadden said everyone she worked with in Manchester was “really, really helpful and excited about the project.”

Competing for shoots
Derrick might have had logistical reasons to shoot in New Hampshire, but other states have been luring Hollywood with tax breaks.

Boston especially has been “a huge place for filming lately,” Eckman said. There were three of four major productions going on there when Derrick started filming.

Newton said he’s seen an increase in inquiries to the New Hampshire film office, but he’s not sure how that will translate to actual film shoots. It can be difficult to find the right production people after filming to assess local economic impact.

The New Hampshire film community is “trying really hard,” Grant said, and he thinks they are doing a good job promoting filming in state.

The shoot for Live Free or Die was “relatively small,” Newton said. New Hampshire doesn’t usually see Hollywood productions — instead it usually gets smaller independent ones. Live Free or Die was shot in Claremont in November 2004 and there was some re-shooting in July 2005. The film office had linked the Live Free or Die producers to a location scout who had lived in Claremont his entire life.

The Sensation of Sight was shot in Peterborough in October 2005, and for a few weeks “everywhere you looked there would be a film crew setting up for a shot,” Newton said.

Massachusetts overhauled its movie tax credit a few years ago, so that if a project does half its shooting in the Commonwealth, or spends half its budget there, the movie is eligible for a tax credit equal to 25 percent of spending in state. The filmmakers can use 90 percent of it as a rebate or sell the credits to other businesses. They can also get a sales tax exemption (www.mafilm.org/tax-credits/).

New Hampshire doesn’t have such incentives, but then again it has no sales tax and frequently no permits required.

Granite State native Mark Constance was a producer on Sensation of Sight, which is set to be released again in theaters in the coming months, with special screenings July 18 through 31 at Putnam Theatre in Keene. The new distributor, Monterey Media, said locations will be posted at www.montereymedia.com. Constance now lives in Brentwood, N.H., but spent much of his career in California, where he held jobs like second assistant director on titles including Terminator 3, Be Cool, Mission Impossible: II and Bad Boys II. He also worked on films with Boston locations, including Fever Pitch and 21.

“I hate to say it ... when you deal with anything that has to do with government ... to help you come up with certain things like tax incentives it becomes a wild card,” Constance said about the outlook for bringing more filming to New Hampshire.

Eight films have already been filmed in Massachusetts this year and another is starting this month, and one more in August, Constance said. There were more films shooting in Boston at the beginning of the year than were in Los Angeles proper, he said.

Massachusetts can offer Boston for city scenes. Rhode Island offers tax incentives and has a variety of locales — an airport, historic mansions, beaches and lakes.

“I really believe that things can happen here,” Constance said. He and some colleagues have been trying to get a film called Losing Jerry produced here for about two years. They need to find backers to cover a budget of about $6.5 million.

It’s “a movie about three friends who are Deadheads,” Constance said. The Grateful Dead have licensed 25 songs for use in the Seacoast-based film. Shoots were planned for the Verizon Wireless Arena, Manchester Airport and a Manchester record store.

Constance moved back to New Hampshire in 2001 and served on the state’s film commission through 2006. Films and books set in New Hampshire should be filmed in New Hampshire, he said. However, Weight of Water, Affliction and To Die For were all shot in Canada, he said.

Constance thinks New Hampshire needs to get just one decent-sized movie with a budget of $5 to $10 million to show those in California that “you can make films here.” There’s already quality crew around. Most work on anything from commercials and industrial film to TV pilots and movie, he said.

“I love it here. I think for me, when I got to produce Sensation of Sight was like a dream come true,” Constance said. Filming Losing Jerry would be more so, “because I can drive home at night and sleep in my own bed,” Constance said.

Constance said Talladega Nights scouted Loudon a few years ago but chose to film in North Carolina, where “there’s racetracks everywhere.” North Carolina told the producers they could have money back on taxes. New Hampshire Cultural Resources Commissioner Van McLeod explained that they would save up front in New Hampshire, because of the lack of sales tax and such. But people just don’t understand that, Constance said. “A lot of things are run by the accountants now,” Constance said.

Constance said he’s working on a budget comparison showing New Hampshire and Massachusetts costs, to present to the state legislature. He hopes it will show that attracting filmmaking brings in money.

DIY distribution
The age of the digital movie camera means that “everybody wants to be the next George Lucas now.... Technology has reached a point when anybody can pick up a camera, edit [images] on their own computer, burn it onto DVDs and get them shown,” Newton said. The formula for success used to involve making a movie, trying to get it into a festival like Sundance and then getting it picked up by Miramax, he said.

People like Bill Millios, head of Back Lot Films in Fremont (www.backlotfilm.com), are “breaking the mold,” Newton said. Rather than waiting for festivals, Millios rents theaters to show his work, and sells tickets and DVDs himself. Millios said shooting in state is easier these days. “Matt’s done a wonderful job with the film office. For a while, the film office wasn’t too active,” Millios said. He said Newton is trying to help make it a resource for small filmmakers. Back Lot wants to start shooting Death and Glory in the fall.

Millios is interested in people perceiving films here as an art form. “Not everyone has to like them, but we take chances,” he said.

“I really think filmmakers really have to work hard on self-distribution,” Millios said. Many people still think they will bring their low-budget film to Sundance or Cannes, which is unrealistic, he said. Unless the film has name actors or you have a cousin in the industry, finding a distributor is a long shot, Millios said.

To self-promote, people can sell DVDs, show at local festivals, or, as he does, rent a theater and make money from ticket and DVD sales. That approach means the filmmakers need to keep working once the movie is finished — sending out press releases, making posters and working with theater owners. Back Lot’s Dangerous Crossing had about 20 screenings and was shown at the Palace Theatre, Capitol Center for the Arts, Ioka and Wilton Town Hall Theater. Frequently, Back Lot tries to make a screening a larger event by bringing in live musicians before the show or inviting the public to question-and-answer sessions with cast or crew.

Millios said it’s nice to see more films being made in the state, but he’s not sure how many are actually making their money back. Dangerous Crosswinds did.

McFadden said they have to see what the plan is for Mystery Team after the final cut, but she would like to do some kind of screening in Manchester.

New Hampshire is scary
Grave Situations went that route and premiered D.I.D. at the Palace Theatre in Manchester on June 15. The thriller (or slasher) was shot in New Hampshire towns — McGuire is from Mont Vernon. He said he has a laid-back set and likes to use unknown actors, particularly for a psychological thriller because it means that no one is already pinned as a suspect. A lot of the cast members were stage actors in D.I.D., he said.

After the screening, McGuire and others from D.I.D. took questions from the audience. DVDs were stacked on a table next to the theater entrance for sale.

In D.I.D., a teenage boy is moving to a small New Hampshire town where his mother and stepfather have settled. His mother dies in an accident the day before he gets there and a high school student thinks he can help find her runaway sister.

Each August, low-budget filmmakers start calling the state’s film office looking for a cabin by a lake where they can shoot a horror movie. Newton’s guess is that it’s the environment. People apparently see woodlands here as a “prime back lot for horror films.” Newton gets to call town officials to warn them an actor will be running around with a chainsaw at 2 a.m., and ask them not to worry — it’s just a slasher shoot.

He’s still waiting for another On Golden Pond.

Getting a distribution deal is hard enough, but with a specific genre like horror, it can be harder, Newton said. Some filmmakers are putting their work on the Web now, and apparently there’s a big DVD market.

On the other hand, “you never know who that filmmaker is going to turn out to be,” Newton said. The next Wes Craven or George Romero could be filming his first slasher in New Hampshire this summer.

Jamie Fessenden wrote and directed Boundaries of Attraction for Dover-based Dunkirk Studios (www.dunkirkstudios.com). The 45-minute film takes place at a party in one evening. It’s Dunkirk’s first gay romantic drama. They did a feature-length gay-themed horror film called The Sacrifice in 2005 and are working on a sequel, Resurrection. They submitted The Sacrifice to festivals and now sell the DVD through Amazon. Fessenden thinks Boundaries will be more marketable.

“I lived here most of my life, of course, but I think New Hampshire and New England in general is very good for horror films,” Fessenden said. One reason is that there are more old, creepy buildings in this area, because it was settled earlier than other parts of the country, he said.

Local actor, filmmaker and musician Matthew C. Dumond was recently working as a stunt double for Mark Ruffalo on the Martin Scorsese film Ashecliffe, also known as Shutter Island. Adapted from a Dennis Lehane novel, it was filming in Massachusetts. Dumond was also planning to start work on an independent feature called The ID Proxy with Jeremiah Cheries (www.myspace.com/theidproxy). Both are from New Hampshire. It’s to be filmed in New Hampshire and they describe it as a psychological horror film.

Newton’s other favorites are those who call wanting to know exactly when fall foliage happens. It’s between the last two weeks in September and first two weeks in October and moves from the northwest to the southeast over those four weeks, he tells people. “Then we get filmmakers up here who are really upset that the White Mountains peaked early,” he said. He also gets filmmakers who want to create snow scenes in the summer, rather than come while it’s snowing.

Zeros and ones
Grant said he thinks the reduction in the price of equipment since the dawn of digital video has prompted an increase in film projects not only in New Hampshire, but everywhere.

“There’s a lot more people making film, because the tools are finally affordable so it’s comparable to the other artistic fields,” like painting or music, Millios said. In some ways it’s now more difficult to get into film festivals, he said.

Millios noted that often with digital video, fewer crew members are needed because there’s less equipment. Back Lot has produced video for New Hampshire Veterans Home, Southern New Hampshire University and the Workforce Opportunity Council, among others.

The sound stage
Like Mystery Team, Stagewright used digital, but they took advantage of a new sound stage in Tilton called Granite Media Center. Bill Humphreys said they were “deep into post-production” a few weeks ago, and that the “footage is beautiful.”

“It’s a very interesting project because it’s so different in its presentational style. Putting stage on film is tricky. But what we’re finding immediately is that the story line is translating exceptionally well. Almost slightly better than it usually does in a live stage production,” Humphreys said.

He and regional playwright David Mauriello shot Mauriello’s script Just Say Love as an experiment for a new style of making movies from stage plays.

“There’s been two standard methods to make the transfer from theatrical material to the screen,” Humphreys said. One is to place scenes in real-world settings, and the other is to stage the play in a proscenium arch in front of a live audience. “Both seem to come up short in some ways,” Humphreys said. They planned to mount a black box production and “impose the cameras into it,” Humphreys said.

They are looking to send it out for music in August and have a final cut in September. They’ve had an encouraging response from their L.A. distributors, Funny Boy Films, on what’s been sent there, Humphreys said. Their distributors will handle film festivals, he said.

Granite Media was “absolutely terrific” for their purposes, Humphreys said. They were able to finish a day and a half early.

The second project in this format is set in a bed and breakfast on the coast of Maine, for which they will use one platform and move cameras around it. There are two more scripts that they want to do after that.

Much of the crew was from New Hampshire or New England, but there were members from elsewhere. Stagewright Films auditioned in Los Angeles and cast Matthew Jaeger as Guy, a sensitive vegetarian gay artist, and Robert Mammana as Doug, a straight carpenter.

Humphreys has spent the last 35 years working in film, television and radio, 25 of those in Los Angeles.

Just Say Love is a “beautifully written story, about the evolution of a relationship,” Humphreys said. It premiered at the Players Ring in Portsmouth and has also been staged in Chicago and at the BCA in Boston.

Humphreys said initially he wanted to film in New Hampshire because this is his home. Mauriello also lives in the region.

Also, it’s a lot more “cost-effective” to shoot in New Hampshire than in California or even Boston. Even though Massachusetts offers a tax credit to shoot within the state, sound stage rates can be about four times higher. And New Hampshire has no sales tax.

In addition, the Lakes Region is a “very conducive place to do creative work.”

For more about the project, visit www.justsaylovemovie.com or www.stagewrightfilms.com.