The Astronomer

The Story

The Astronomer is a simply told, but substance rich story. Our central character has a definite goal in sight, which is deliberately kept from the audience.  Slowly, through small glimpses of character, the audience begins unwrap the motive as the story unfolds.The story to this film is a lot more engaging having not read the screenplay. That being said, before someone may want to donate their hard earned money to it, they may want to know for sure what the outcome of the story will be. For this reason, the screenplay for The Astronomer is available to download as a PDF file. (email demiapictures@gmail.com to request screenplay)

The Crew

The director, Cory James, and the editor, Michael Henry, have been working together for a year now on various projects. They are the base of the film crew that will be responsible for the production of the film. They are the primary camera operators on all shoots. Also onboard as locations, media, costume, food, etc… manager (basically all around crew MOM) is Bianca Versteeg, a post graduate of business at Vancouver Film School. Ben Tryon, a Vancouver based musical composer from all varieties, handles most of the score work. We are also very lucky to have Matt Gionet on board as our sound engineer, check out his IMDB credit list, it's a mile long!! There are many other positions to hire out as things move along but this solid base of people have already proved with the last film "FAWN" that with the right mindset and creative consolidation, the project will succeed!

From The Director:

"My goal as a director is to release work that always includes elements that have not yet been seen before. I wish to expand storytelling and cinematography to new levels, and explore ideas and boundaries of all aspects within the medium. Film making is my ballast."

"I will also be contributing all funds that I earn over my basic living costs into the campaign, in attempt to show you all how dedicated I am to the project."

The Budget

The budget is of course an amalgamation of everything from pre production costs, to equipment rentals, to the final export of the film. The calculated amount is however whittled down to the bare minimum for the cast and crew, to live and produce. A few of the things that we get a budget break on, as we have dedicated crew who we do not need to hire out for, are: Camera Operators, Editor, and Score design. Not having to hire out for these positions saves a lot of money in the long run.

The Secondary Goal

The $22,000 budget encompasses everything in the picture except for one detail that we would love so much to be able to do. The ending scene has aerial shots of the city and its surroundings, that with the current budget we could shoot from still points at the tops of whatever building we could possibly gain access to. However, the way we REALLY want to shoot it is from up in the air, that's right! From a helicopter. This, now amazingly puts our $22,000 budget to a $32,000 budget (apparently helicopters are expensive machines… haha). The reason we set our budget as so, is because the film is still possible without that extra $10,000, and we realize it may be just a dream right now… but hey, you never know… sometimes dreams come true!

Budget General Overview

• Helicopter shoot
• Set Building
• Astronaut Suit
• Equiptment rentals:
• 2 Canon 5d mkii
• Shoulder stabilizer rig
• Body mounted stedicam rig
• Follow focus
• External monitor
• Dolly
• Cast & crew living expenses
• Post production sound engineering 
• Modest pay for actors (mostly to componsate lost wages

The Gameplan

The plan is to be relocated and situated in Vancouver by  February 1st  2013. From there we will begin casting calls and location hunting/confirming. Once our cast and crew are fully ensembled, we will begin acting rehearsals and storyboards. This picture is going to have very precise and controlled cinematography so a lot of setup time and location control will be implemented. I can assure you we will be working on this project day and night. 

Previous Project

The last big project produced by Demia, was a short film called FAWN (which will be released to you all as a christmas gift via Vimeo on December 25th) A lot of people put in an amazing amount time and effort into making it a reality. The director, Cory James, produced almost the entire $10,000 budget(swinging a hammer for $20/hour) with the help of one $500 donation. This felt like a necessary challenge to start from the ground up, and now that the film is complete, the hope is that it can stand to show the ambition of this crew and allow for bigger projects and aid in funding so as to eventually allow for complete focus on film making.