I've been following the off-again/on-again production of my Flickr pal Mr. Sable™'s film noir period crime drama, Five Bullets, Five Names, for a few years now via updates on Flickr. Mr. Sable™ (aka Jeff Hänni) began the project probably ten or a dozen years ago, shooting on 16mm film in the years before high quality, low-cost video was an option. Over the past several months, after reviewing the film footage and calculating the costs of finishing the project on film or re-shooting from the start on HD video, this long-mothballed project began rolling in earnest with a screenplay revised for shooting on digital video with full audio as opposed to post-production narration.

While the cost of film stock and processing has been eliminated, shooting even a short film in the modern era results in expenses that weren't a significant issue several years ago, like insurance requirements when shooting on private property. Additionally, the overall quality of the production has been stepped up a notch or three with the move to video, including the addition of professional and semi-professional actors to the cast and a desire for cleaner audio editing.

Mr. Sable™ has started a fundraising campaign on the crowdsourcing site Indiegogo in an effort to finance the final stages of production. He is trying to raise $3,000 (Canadian), and in less than a week has raised nearly 20% of the goal. If you're interested in film noir, independent film-making, or Canadian artists, take a look at his film trailer, glance through the production stills, and consider Paypalling (is that a verb?) the cost of a fancy latte or two his way.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/five-bullets-five-names