DJ Girl

I've been hinting at it a bit here and there but it's time to let the cat out of the bag.

Here's the email I recently sent out to announce the project...

Hello-

I'm writing to you, my loving friends and family, with a request for assistance, an opportunity for involvement, and a potential for investment.

As you know, I graduated from film school at Boston University nearly nine years ago. Shortly thereafter, I crossed the country seeking opportunities in the movie capital of the world--Los Angeles. Well...as luck and fate would have it, I never got that deep of a foothold in the entertainment industry and my path eventually carried me elsewhere. I continued to write but started to feel that maybe it wasn’t meant to be.

Fortunately, it seems my pessimism may have been unjustified.

As many of you know, I wrote a screenplay three years ago called, DJ Girl. It’s a fun, light hearted, romantic comedy that centers on a nightlife princess who becomes enchanted by life behind the turntables. Despite the clublife backdrop, at the core it’s a very commercial, accessible, and funny girl-power “against-the-odds” story.

Aside from some tinkering and tweaking here and there, the script has essentially sat on my shelf for the past couple years because I didn’t have the experience or connections to do anything more with it.

Enter Marc Gottlieb. After reading the script a couple months ago, he expressed interest in trying to help me develop it as an independent feature shot in High Definition. Marc has what I don’t…the experience, know-how, and connections to get the job done. He has previously produced, directed, and co-wrote a feature, and he’s currently a creative executive for Capitol Films ( http://www.capitolfilms.com ). While Marc knows the kinds of people to approach for the $2 Million it will take to shoot DJ Girl, we have a hurdle to cross first, and that’s the reason for this letter.

With the commercial nature of the script, we have little doubt that we’ll find the backing, but no investor wants to drop cash into a project by script alone. Even with a personal pitch, most won’t even bother to read the whole thing. So, we need to shoot a trailer—or promo reel—to screen for investors, present our vision for the project, and convince them to come on board.

Shooting the trailer will cost a tiny fraction of the eventual feature. We’ll be pulling in every favor possible from the actors, cinematographers, editors, and venue owners that we know to minimize expenses. But in order to ensure that it looks, sounds, and feels professional, we’ll need to rent cameras and lights. I wish that Marc or I were independently wealthy and could fully cover these expenses ourselves. Unfortunately that’s not the case, so we need to become indie filmmaker clichés and turn to our loving friends and family to make it happen. You’ve heard the stories about local writer/director making it big. That’s what we’re talking about here.

It’s hard for me to ask for help, but this has been a lifelong dream of mine. And to have an opportunity present itself, I must figure out a way to do it now, because in six months or in a year or much longer the cards may be reshuffled proving it once again impossible. In the nine years since I graduated, this has been the first realistic possibility I’ve seen of a script I wrote being produced, so I must try. I can’t let it pass.

For all those angels who invest at this early stage to get the process started, should the project sell, Marc and I will not take a single penny of profit until you’ve doubled your investment. We’ll also strive to, at minimum, return your investment should the feature receive ample financing.

Please feel no obligation here. I expect nothing from a single person I’m sending this to, but as this is so very important to me, I must at least ask because I know some of you might want to help. No investment is too small, be it $25, $50, $100, $500, or more…every dollar helps.

We’re aiming to shoot the trailer over three weekends in February or March.

If you have any questions about the project, drop me an email or call me @ 310.936.1352. A pdf of the current script is also available if you’d like to see what this is all about.

If you wish to invest (and help make a dream a reality!) there are two options:

Paypal:
contribute AT djgirl DOT net

Mail:
James Beirne
832 15th Place
Hermosa Beach, CA 90254


Thank you!

-James

So that's the crux of it. After we shoot the trailer we'll have a full site up at djgirl.net. Until then, I'll probably blog about the process here. It's all beyond exciting. If you want to be involved, please let me know.