“It’s kind of like the world is closing in on you,” aspiring filmmaker Jack Marchetti says, “until it’s like you’re looking through a very tiny straw.”
Marchetti has until Aug. 25 to raise $100,000 for his crime drama 4 of a Kind. Kickstarter’s all-or-nothing funding model carries an inherent sense of urgency, but this is different. It really could be his only shot.
Marchetti and his older brother both have cone rod dystrophy, a degenerative condition which progresses from loss of color vision, to night blindness, to severe tunnel vision.
Marchetti was diagnosed when he was six. First there were headaches and extra sensitivity to light. In high school he started experiencing a loss of vision in dark environments. He still drives, but rarely at night.
In the space of a few years, Marchetti’s brother’s vision has deteriorated enough that he now walks with a cane and attends a school for the blind. Marchetti’s own sight is relatively stable, but he doesn’t know for how long.
So now’s the time to make his movie, “seeing how quickly my brother’s vision started to deteriorate and then realizing that this would probably be the only chance I’d have to direct, as I’m not sure how much longer I’ll have usable vision——hopefully a long time——and if I’m raising the funds myself and producing, well then I can direct it too.”
4 of a Kind was Marchetti’s first screenplay, written fresh out of college. It was chosen from among 4,000 entries as a semifinalist for Project Greenlight’s third season in 2005, but didn’t make it to the finals.
He’s had other work optioned since then, but never produced, periodically returning to revise 4 of a Kind. A later draft was a 2010 quarterfinalist BlueCat Screenplay Competition.
Marchetti kept getting positive notes, but no traction with financiers. “When I finally got a set of creative notes which had contradicted everything I had been doing for about a year based off other notes,” he says, “I realized if I wanted to make this movie, I’d need to make it myself.”
As of Aug. 15 at noon, he’d raised $20,000 from 365 backers. “I had hoped or even thought that random strangers on the Internet will give you $1,000 or $2,000, or hell, $10,000,” Marchetti says. “They don’t. Most film campaigns that get those amounts are from people who were already going to invest. We’re getting plenty of $5, $10 and $50 backers but in order to get to $100,000 we’re going to need some heavy hitters.”
He’s hoping to not only make the Kickstarter goal, of course, but also to raise additional financing, with an eye toward shooting next February, “even though I’m sure no one is looking forward to shooting in the winter.”
4 of a Kind follows a military veteran going undercover to take down his former partners in crime. “The story is about these four friends and how they ultimately betray one another, not necessarily on purpose,” Marchetti says.
Dan DiStefano, a forner development executive at the Weinstein Company, now at Gerber Films, is producing 4 of a Kind independently. Brian Levin (Nate & Margaret) is DP.
Marchetti has lived with this story long enough that he figures he knows it inside out. He just has a few extra concerns beyond the learning curve of any first-time director.
“For night shoots I’d need to make sure that someone was there to drive me to the set and walk me around,” he says. “If we shoot in bars or restaurants I’d also need help getting around. My main concern is making sure we’re getting what I want, as is the case with any director. However, with a vision handicap it might not always be clear to me when we ‘got it.’ I’m sure I’ll be glued to the monitor the entire time.”
