It’s Friday!  And for many, that means payday!  If I may be so bold, I encourage you to use some of that hard-earned cash to support a pair of filmmakers, Ben DeLoose and Matt Chilelli.  Full disclosure: these guys are my friends.  But they’re also expert cookie bakers, wielders of puns, and talented filmmakers.

Those of you who’ve been following the blog since the beginning might remember that Ben and I have known each other for over seven years.  We met through an internship program in Los Angeles.  Matt and I both went to Ithaca College, but we didn’t connect until I moved to L.A. in 2009.  I’ve helped them out on a number of sketches and shorts, and we collaborate on a Youtube channel, 3byThree.

Ben and Matt are making their first feature…provided they meet their fundraising goal.  The premise is an intriguing spin on the haunted house genre.  While working on their Kickstarter video, I remarked that their apartment was ideal for a horror film.  There are so many corners and hallways.  Standing in one room, you can’t see into the next.  Their response: “We wrote our script around that!”  And of course they did.  Like any good low-budget filmmaker, they’ve designed this project with the resources already at their disposal.  (Why write the splitting of the Red Sea if you can’t afford a bathtub?)

I don’t want to spoil the intricacies of their plot, but you can get a taste of what they’re after in the Kickstarter video itself:

By the number of set ups and lighting conditions, it’s clear Ben and Matt don’t do anything half-assed.  I can tell you first hand that this video took a lot of man hours.  These guys set the bar high.  The pitch is a great sampling of their humor, sensibilities and how they construct a scare.  You can see that they’re dedicated to using the properties of moviemaking — frame and camera movement, light, sound, etc. — to tell a story.  It’s an exciting project, and I’m really looking forward to the full feature.

I hope you’ll consider donating…$5 or $125, it all helps!