The Truth About "Miranda."

So here's the real deal on Miranda:

A lot of people don't know this, but Miranda actually started off as a work for hire type of gig. Director Kent Sutton reached out to me after writing a short screenplay and he wanted me to produce it for him. He had saved a little money for a budget (if you want to call it that), and he persuaded me to help him. My partner Cassandra was around, and she was going to serve as director of photography. The plan was to make the short, then Kent would explore the festival circuit with it.

When I read the first draft of the script I hated it. It wasn't "edgy" enough for my taste at the time, and I spotted a lot of Hollywood cliche's in the first draft. Just to make sure, as I usually do I got second opinions, including one from my other producing partner Brian Ackley took a look and felt the same way about it. We conferenced in Kent, then had him go re-work the script.

Kent is one determined guy - thats what I like most about him. He has what it takes to be a filmmaker, which is that stubborn, relentless drive that gets him up time and time again after he's been kicked down. I spotted these qualities in him right away and was immediately drawn to working with him because of it. He re-wrote the screenplay, then we made the decision to shorten what he had written and shoot it as a short for him to learn with. He had never directed a film before, and despite that sensitive, social issue he was tackling, I still was the typical producer jerk that treated it only as a learning tool. "Oh you want to tell this girl's story, huh? Very admirable. Domestic violence sucks, I feel bad for her character. Good for you for taking this subject on. Now use it to learn how to be a better filmmaker and be done with it." No humor added, that was nearly my exact reaction (I feel brave enough to admit this here).

I remember being on set and watching and listening to Kent direct his actors. I still can't forget how thoroughly surprised and impressed I was with what he was doing. His shorthand communication techniques. His disarmingly calm, understated, psychological approach to giving his actors objectives and adjustments. The way his actors almost immediately came out of their resistances, suddenly unleashed with vigor and fearlessness (it helps that Kent is a trained actor himself). I remember taking mental notes on a couple of his techniques, ones that I will definitely, unashamedly be stealing for my next directorial effort. We wrapped the film, and I sent Kent into an editing room to learn while cutting his first short.

That's not all I remember from the Miranda shoot. I also remember meeting the real girl that Miranda is based on. A sweet, soft-spoken, fragile young lady, I remember asking her if it was weird to watch us making a movie based on her story. Without a trace of dishonesty she smiled and whispered, "Yes. But its okay."

See, she never asked us to tell her story. Kent chose to tell it. And he chose to risk never getting a chance to make another film again by doing such risky, emotionally charged material - material that if executed wrong could have been a cinematic disaster, as well as totally misrepresent the feelings that came with the true-life circumstances. Miranda is about a girl who is hiding her abusive relationship from those closest to her.

Fast forward to September '09, as I am preparing to fly to Idaho for Cookies & Cream to premiere in Boise for IIFF. Kent gives me a call and lets me know in no uncertain terms that he has completed writing the feature length version of Miranda. To my surprise, he gets me a copy in time for my flight. On the plane, I'm holding a stack of scripts to take passes on (a couple of those feature scripts have already been made). Miranda is in this stack and I went through it in about 45 minutes. The script still needed work, but it seemed Kent and I were finally on the same page about story, about approach, about the reverence to the real life "Miranda."

Our company has recently completed developing a slate of upcoming feature films, all with larger budgets than we've had before (finally!). The pros of a slate deal are that once it's funded, you don't have to keep going out looking for money. You get to make what you make and that's it. The cons of a slate deal are that it takes forever to compile, scrutinize, and approve all of the necessary paperwork (welcome to my nightmare). On top of this, once in a while you get an investor who loves all of your projects except for this one or that one. And it can be for the stupidest reason.

Most of the investors we spoke to were in fact the kind who actually looked at each and every film's packaging down to the cinematographer. Which is fine, we're prepared for that anyway. But there were two films that we kept getting resistance on. One of the films was Miranda, the other was another film dealing with a controversial social issue. Here is an exact quote from an email I sent out recently to some of our friends about the fundraiser:

"Several investors have made it clear to us time and time again, that of the films included in our next slate of productions, this one's subject matter had 'the least commercial potential.' In other words, the taboo subject matter of domestic abuse was too touchy for them, and that basically when it comes to social issues with real consequences, we're pretty much on our own."

Production slates have now become the identity of our company. In order to move forward with the momentum of this particular slate deal, we finally had to "unload" Miranda, or risk it taking forever to make, or worse, never getting made.

As a company, our plan going forward never included crowd-funding. The budgets are a little too high, the lawyers are a little too many. Also nearly all of our next films have names attached to them (could you imagine a Kickstarter campaign for a film starring mostly name actors for a budget of, say over 250k? Even if I could, I would be reading their campaign pitch and saying to myself, "You guys got ____ and ____ attached. You'll find an investor somewhere").

However, what I love about this new world we live in is that options like this even exist. We have also partnered with some social organizations that help support victims of domestic violence both male and female, who are very excited and enthusiastic about this project and our approach to addressing the issue. We will be announcing those exciting partnerships very soon. Between grants, local fundraisers, and most of all this thing called crowd-funding we are confident that although it will be rough at times, we will meet our goal.

Every little bit helps, even if its $1. Our perks are also being updated, and if you are interested in helping Kent tell this personal story, or helping us address this issue through cinema, please visit the IndieGoGo campaign site HERE, and check out the VIP perks you can get as backers of our film.

Thank you for reading.

- Princeton