Agency tech Marchetti is Kickstarting a second film

Jack Marchetti

Jack Marchetti, Energy BBDO’s tech lead and software programmer by day and screenwriter by night, is back on Kickstarter to raise development money for his second film, a feature.

“Compatibility” is about a Facebook tech who writes an algorithm to determine romantic compatibility that was a 2015 Nicholl Fellowship quarter finalist in 2015.

The budget is $2 million, he says, and his new Kickstarter campaign is aiming for $25,000 to use for development. And it’s coming on the heels of Marchetti’s first and recent hit that led to the new production.  

The agency IT expert has been writing screenplays for 10 or 12 years and had no luck with contests (excepting the Nicholl Fellowship), although one of his scripts did place high with “Project Greenlight.”

So last year Marchetti determined he would write and produce his own film.  An 8-minute short, “Evolution of a Gen-X Music Purchaser,” a biopic, so to speak, was about GenXer “Zach” and his changing music buying habits, from the mid-90s Walkman days to the present when the internet took over music sales “and I didn’t have to pirate music anymore,” he says.

When it came to producing, however, he’d never been on a movie set “and didn’t know what to expect,” he says.  By asking around the agency and people he knew for referrals, Marchetti connected  with producer/director John Xidas, co-owner of Pink Hippo Productions to partner on the short.

A Kickstarter campaign yielded $25,000 and the small crew shot for three days last summer in Marchetti’s old Southwest Side neighborhood where he once bought albums and tape from the Kroozin’ Music store. 

Marchetti directed, Xidas produced. The DP was Mitch Martinez from Philadelphia, a Kickstarter contributor, who jumped in when the original DP bailed a week before production.  Brian Levin of Touchvision.TV handled the edit and visual effects and Steve Aguilar of Particle did the sound design. 

In the cast were Matt Pratt as Zach Christina Rose, Hannah Duncan and Grayson Hodgekiss.

“Evolution” had barely finished editing in April when it was accepted for its world premiere at the 2015 Tribeca Festival gave it a world premiere.

 

And it was at Tribeca that Marchetti met the New York producer who has taken “Compatibility” on as a film project. 

Since Tribeca, “Evolution” has been a selection in seven other festivals, including BFI London, Raindance, New York and LA Shorts with more to come.