TODD, a 60-something loner with a twitch, follows young JESSICA (7) and her MUM home from school. He waits for nightfall and breaks into the house. While Mum's distracted in the bathroom, Todd creeps into Jessica's bedroom, where events take an unexpected turn...
DUST stars Golden Globe, BAFTA and Emmy winning actor, Alan Rickman, alongside the critically acclaimed Jodie Whittaker (Attack The Block, St Trinians, Venus), and introduces 7 year old Lola Albert.
DUST is a 6-7 minute short film, written and directed by us, Ben Ockrent and Jake Russell. We met at secondary school and have remained friends since, in which time Ben has become an established scriptwriter while Jake has created video content for brands and online.
The funding we hope to raise with your help will go cover the final costs of post-production (including visual effects and colour grading), while anything left over will help us with festival submissions and publicity for the completed film.
Your financial support, in return for some fantastic rewards, will help us put the finishing touches to a project that began as an exciting and determined idea, and has since gathered a wonderful momentum that has helped us team up with Alan Rickman and Jodie Whittaker along with an incredibly talented production team and crew.
While we are both life-long film fans (and both gained early experience as runners on set and location), DUST will mark our directorial debuts for fiction and is the fruition of over 12 months development, refining and hard graft.
Dear All,
Thank you so much for your understanding and patience. We know it's been a while since you made your very generous contributions and allowed us to make this film. Without you we genuinely couldn't have done it. It's a long, long road to getting a project like this off the ground, let alone seeing it soar through the air afterwards, but, we're pretty much there and ready to send everyone their long awaited and well deserved rewards.
What with it being Christmas and everything, we're going to wait until the new year to send everything out, so expect deliveries by the end of January at the latest (depening on where you are in the world of course).
It's been an honour and pleasure to have come together with you all on this and Ben, myself and everyone on the crew thanks you deeply for your help.
Happy Christmas and an even happier 2013 to you all.
Jake & Ben
Hi Everyone, we realise we haven't checked in for a while to let you know what's been going on, so here's the latest. We're incredibly proud and excited to have the truly world class post-production house The Mill on board to do all our visual effects and colour grading. They're in the final 3 weeks or so of work and we're hoping to have a completed film by the second week of September (perhaps in time for Sundance!). We really, really appreciate your patience and understanding because as we all know these things need to take as long as they end up taking (naturally), which is perhaps a little longer than we'd have liked, but so be it.
We'll send another update in a couple of weeks, but rest assured the project you have all made a reality, is fast becoming the very best it could possibly be.
Thank you and speak soon!
Jake and Ben x
To everyone who so generously supported us and helped make DUST a reality, we'd like to say thanks again for getting behind us, we really couldn't have come this far without you.
We're aware we haven't made any updates recently and this has left some people wondering what's happened, and we're sorry for the radio silence, but please know it's only temporary.
The edit of the film is almost done. We've got a final day booked in with our tremendous editor Mark, in 10 days time, where we'll be laying down the music. At that point the film will be ready to go into Post-Production where all the CGI, compositing, colour grading and other such technical wizadry takes place. This will take 5 weeks to complete, but unfortunately, due to the schedules of the people involved at this stage, those 5 weeks will take about 8 weeks in total to complete (if that makes sense).
So, while we know you're all probably eager to see the finished film (believe me, we're very, very eager too!) and to receieve the rewards you're all entitled to, we ask for a tiny bit more patience while we work with the schedules of the various artists and technicians involved at this stage. It really is the final push and we're so close to the finish line, but there's still a little while to go yet.
We promise to keep upating you as we go, but for now please rest assured that everything's happening as it should, but these things can't be rushed.
We'll check in again soon.
Thanks a lot for your understanding.
Jake & Ben
Thank you so much for your contribution and for continuing to support us. It's been an unbelievable journey so far and we genuinely couldn't have done it without you.
As the film continues to take shape we are now able to start looking ahead to the future. We so want people to enjoy DUST when they see it and for it to make the biggest impact possible, especially at film festivals. And for that to happen, people MUST NOT KNOW HOW IT ENDS! We wanted you all to know the full story when considering contributing to the project because the twist at the end is what makes it so special. But what's absolutely key to it achieving its full potential is that people are surprised. Now we've completed our fundraising journey we really need you all to keep it a secret. Please do tell people about the film and about your particular contribution to it, but please don't tell them the twist in the tail! If they can see it for themselves it will be that much more special and making something special is the whole point. So please enjoy being in on the secret. And keep it a secret!
We'll continue to keep everyone involved in the film's progress. Thank you so much for your continued support.
Ben and Jake
We are staggered to have reached out fundraising goal, with just over a week still to go. Thank you so, so much to all of you who have helped us achieve our target. We are so humbled by everyone's generosity and so excited to have you all onboard during this adventure.
To anyone else out there still considering getting involved... despite having met our target, any futher contributions really will be invaluable. We now have enough to finish the film. But any extra will help us make it that much better!!
Thank you everybody. It's so heartening to know that together we can make things happen!
Hey people, so Ben and I are sitting in the edit with Mark, our beast of an editor (stand by for a photo or two of Mark coming soon....) and we're arguing over which of Alan Rickman's roles was his best....I'm saying the Sherrif of Nottingham, Ben says Hans Gruber, Mark's a hardnut romcom man and loves him in Truly Madly Deeply. What do you all think???? So many incredible performances to choose from and just wait till you see how he honoured us with his performance in DUST...We can't wait for you all to see the film when it's finished, still so much to do, but already it's looking amazing.
They say a film is made three times over: in pre-production (script), production (cast and crew) and post. We're entering the third stage and it's all still to play for. And with that in mind... an enormous shout-out to our new Editor, Mark Burnett, at our new home for the next few days, Speade!
Mark's already pushing DUST into unbelievably exciting new directions. But the edit's just the start. We've still got the CGI, compositing, grading, sound design and score to do! So please keep spreading the word and helping out in whatever way you can. We're on the way to creating a truly amazing film. But we need your help!
And thank you so much if you've alread got involved. We really wouldn't be able to look ahead to the coming months without you!!!
After a phenomenal two days filming, DUST is officially in the can!! We were battling the weather at every step, but unlike our boom mic, our spirits were never dampened!
Low point? When the heavens opened up on us beside a hectic duel carraige way during an all-important shot of Alan's pursuit of Jodie and Lola. High point? Far, FAR too many to mention!
As we look ahead to the edit next week, all that's left to say is an enormous thank you to everyone in our cast and crew. But also to all of you unbelievably generous supporters. We're only able to start planning post-production thanks to you. Please do keep spreading the word!! We've still so far to go! Watch this spot for production photos and stills in the coming days!
Our fantastic 1st Assistant Director's juggling a bank holiday visit from the folks with the epic job of drawing up our schedule. Between night shoots, CGI green screens and a real life ice-cream van, that's no mean feat... But she's only gone and done it!
It's been an action-packed week for DUST! The final members of the crew are falling into place. And what an insanely talented bunch they are. We've even managed to defeat a major international corporation to hold on to our Director of Photography! Go DUST!!
A huge shout out to S+O Media near Ladbroke Grove for providing us with our camera kit. You guys are amazing. Anyone looking for the very best camera /grip equipment going, look no further than http://www.somedia.tv/
The formidable, formidably talented and all round super-star Andrew Palmer (Production/Costume Designer extraordinaire) is working closely with Alan Rickman as we speak, putting the finishing touches to his costume for Todd. All very exciting and we promise to give you a glimpse of the updates here as soon as they're ready. Stay posted!
...to our incredible friend Billy for your contribution - it means the world to us. Thank you. I do expect to be paid back for laying out though! Seriously. And while we're here, thank you again to everyone who has pledged money, we're genuinely touched by your generosity. Jake and Ben x
We've had requests for more sneak previews of the storyboard for DUST...so check out the latest few frames. Keep the requests coming and we'll keep putting them up!
Thank you to everyone who's got involved so far, your generosity (both monetary and helping to spread the word) is a huge source of joy and excitement to us. Let's make this happen!!!!
