For the past year, I have been working on a secret project in my spare time with my friend Brian Joseph Ochab. We have been so excited about this for so long, that our joy can no longer be contained!
Brian and I have known each other for quite a few years. We first met when I saw him performing magic at a local Los Angeles establishment. A wonderful magician who often performs at the famed Magic Castle in Hollywood, it turned out that Brian is also a filmmaker! He came to me with this wonderful idea to make an animated short film that parodies Tim Burton’s first short called Vincent.
In Vincent (narrated by the great Vincent Price), a young boy named Vincent Malloy tries to emulate the creepy Vincent Price. Over the years since making Vincent, Tim Burton has obviously become somewhat of a name himself. Our film TIM will be about the young Timothy Todd who wishes to be just like his hero Tim Burton.
While the late Vincent Price is no longer available, last July we were very pleased to be able to work with the legendary Sir Christopher Lee who lent his wonderful distinctive voice to the role of the narrator in TIM. Brian flew to London to record Christopher who also was happy to be a part of our behind-the-scenes footage.
My involvement in this project has been as Co-producer and Art Director. I’ve been busy creating character designs and development art, and soon will be diving into storyboarding Brian’s terrific script. So far the pre-production work has been done by just me and Brian, but we will need a crew to build our sets and animate the thing, and that can be expensive.
We discovered this great website called Kickstarter.com where people can go and donate money to help fund cool projects. Basically it is like a PBS fund drive – we promise you neat gifts for your various donations. Brian put together a great little promo film showcasing what we have been doing thus far and it tells how YOU can lend a hand! Check it out….
If the film doesn’t play here for some reason, you can access it directly by clicking on TimTheMovie.com!
Since our fundraising efforts on Kickstarter will be active for the next two months, I’ll continue to talk about it here on the blog where I’ll show you some of the art and behind the scenes moments from our journey thus far!
And if you dig what we are trying to do, please pass the word along to your friends about how they can also be involved in helping us bring this cool little film to life!