When an up-and-coming indie film production company tries to shoot a short film, a web series, a documentary, anything, we often feel like this guy... asking complete strangers for money, for purposes truly unknown except for what we tell you. Is our mother really in the hospital? Did our car really just break down? Do we really even have a credit card that, for some mysterious reason, has inaccessable funds which we would, under any other circumstance, use rather than asking strangers for money??? Well, this is how I feel... and I'm a horrible beggar!
My name is T.J. Buckner, co-founder of Dream, Pierre! Productions and 5th Wall Productions in Shreveport, LA. I'm a screenwriter/actor/director, and a man with a dream which exceeds my grasp by a great deal more than even I realize. My co-founder and fiance', Donnie Pierre Buckner is an amazing actress/model/editor. Our production company has produced 5 short films in the past two years, all on much less than a "shoestring" budget, one of which is currently under consideration in the Phenom Film Festival in Bossier City, LA. We are now working on a web series which I hope will find its way to the television screen.
This web series is titled "Into the Abyss". It's a gritty, dark, serial drama about life and death, love and hate, wealth and poverty... in short, it's about the world in which we live and the people who live in it with us. It's a study in the human psyche, why we do the things we do, the decisions we make and the events that happen around us that change us to the very core.
It is my intention to introduce these characters during the course of the first season, allow the audience to learn who they are, what they are, why they are, to develop "relationships" with these characters, and then, in the second season, to thrust them all into an abyss darker and more violent than any of them would ever have imagined. New alliances will be formed, old friendships dissolved, and the characters will do things to survive that they would not have done before.
I've created a cast of very interesting characters to interact with one another through the course of this series, and more will come along as the story develops. All of my characters have their own back story, their own history, their own conflicts which come into play during the run of the show. The wealthy surgeon who's had to venture into the dark side of medicine to make ends meet... his daughter who is in love with the young man from the "other side of the tracks", and refuses to follow in her fathers footsteps and become a surgeon, rather than stay by her young lovers side... the young man who struggles to find a job to support her, only to slip into alcohol and drug abuse, and even crime, as things become more and more bleak... his mother, who has suffered from the same substance abuse since her husband left her fifteen years ago, struggling to raise a family alone, in a run-down trailer park just miles from the wealthy surgeon who was almost hers... her brother, the police detective, who must protect her and her son while dealing with gang related crimes on the streets of New Orleans... the social worker at the employment agency... the old-school gangsta boss... the young Russian mob boss... the surgeon's wife... the preacher... the head of security with his own dark habits... the "college professor" with a bloody secret... the list goes on and on. The characters are bold, vibrant, three-dimensional "people", none of them completely good, none completely evil. They are as real as you and I. And when the second season begins, they must all come together to survive in the darkest abyss of all.
To this end, however, we're going to need a bit of help... and here's where the begging comes in. I feel that after we get through the first three or four episodes, the show will carry itself. But, successfully shooting those first episodes will either make or break this series. We can't do it on the zero budget we had for our short films. We must have the right locations, many of which will come with a price. We must feed our actors, and many of them don't care for ramen noodles!... I've asked them. We need extras, props and costumes, all the trappings that come with any production, and we simply can't do this alone.
We have set up a promotional page on Indiegogo. You can read about the series there, see clips from myself and some of the performers, and see the list of perks we're offering to those who donate to our cause. The perks aren't much... all we can afford, really. If we could offer more, we probably wouldn't need to beg for contributions!! And, the clips... especially the "scenes from the series" clips... are not shot on location, are not shot with a good quality camera, are not what our audience will be seeing in the actual episodes. So, don't judge us based on these... please!
Also, you can check out our website, which you can access from the Indiegogo page, or check us out on Facebook, under "Into the Abyss", "Dream, Pierre! Productions" and "5th Wall Productions".
To sum up... finally... we would be eternally grateful for any help you can offer us in the production of this series. It's going to be a fantastic show! And, with a little luck, some television network bigshot will see it and put it on the screen, a real live tv show!! If we get no funding at all, the show WILL go on. It will suffer by comparison to what it might have been, but it will be shot nonetheless. These actors want to act, and they will get that opportunity! And with your help, it will be an acting experience worthy of their acting reel, and something neither they, nor you as a contributor and viewer, will ever forget.
Thank you so much for your time and consideration!
T.J. Buckner
Dream, Pierre! Productions
5th Wall Productions
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