1) Independent filmmaker Jo Custer produced a short film called HOTCAKES on a small budget in New Orleans to hone her filmmaking skills and develop a series of short films. 2) HOTCAKES premiered locally on March 28th after a successful Kickstarter campaign raised $2,680 for post-production. 3) The production team hopes HOTCAKES is accepted to film festivals and has begun developing the next film in the series called SONUVABITCH with plans to shoot in May.

1. 534 Angela Street, Arabi, LA 70032
unclearpictures@gmail.com
(504)908-3551
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Film/Local Film/Challenges
Thursday, March 1, 2012
NEW ORLEANS, LA -- Short films don't traditionally make returns, but they sure can
cost money, especially when a production wants to build a set and pay their people.
Sometimes, independent filmmaker Jo Custer -- who drives cab for a living, despite
being a published, employable writer -- feels like producing paying shorts is robbing
Peter to pay Paul. But the ability to front all of the hard production costs with her own
money was as important to her as making a good short that people would want to see.
After moving from Pittsburgh to New Orleans primarily to find the kind of talent that had
already evacuated the crumbling, old steel town, the kind that New Orleans draws
effortlessly, Jo spent a year in the Film Production MFA program at UNO. She made
one film in that time, an unevenly directed and acted three-pager called TOLL ROAD.
Frustrated with the limitations of a film program and beginning to get published, paid
and noticed as a writer, she left school. A stint as an unpaid stringer for the Louisiana
Entertainment Reporter ended when the start-up rag stopped producing content. She
was hired to adapt short stories for literary magazine Mixer Publishing (with deferred
pay) -- and asked again to write film features as an independent contractor for Paste
Magazine -- only to be confronted with homelessness in the summer of 2011.
With no car or phone, nor job offer that didn't depend upon both, Jo turned to cab
driving and effectively killed three birds with one stone. After two months' regrouping,
she let go of her other writing aspirations temporarily and decided it was time to make
the next film. Enter HOTCAKES, a 20 minute modern, urban Western shot all on one
location in the Marigny on a moveable set and employing over 20 people, all told.
Local businesses helped the production make its paces, both in getting the film in the
can and in follow-through during post-production. Byrdie's Cafe and Art Gallery, where
the set was built and shot, provided the location for a song and The Shadowbox, a
Fringe theatre located on the same block of the St. Claude Gallery & Arts District, did
the same for the HOTCAKES test screening, a week before the production team raised
a very successful $2680 on Kickstarter to ensure proper shepherding.
The concept and follow-through were such that principal actors expressed an interest
in staying with their characters, thus giving birth to the next film concept, a comedic
Western influenced by SILVERADO and Owen Wister's "The Virginian," another short
entitled SONUVABITCH. That idea is in treatment form now and is targeted for a May
shooting schedule as the second installment in the re-imagined "Short Stack Series."

2. The series will take a look at different principals and make them protagonists in a way
that compels and completes as fully realized and executed stories, but that still fits in
with the plot and character back stories as already written and performed.
Post-production is down to final music, sound and coloring touches on HOTCAKES,
set to premiere at Cafe Istanbul in the Healing Center on St. Claude at 8 pm on March
28, the first of several local screenings and a six-month film fest game plan.
The production team hopes very much to break into the festival circuit with this first film;
but, since the series is set up to challenge multiple crew members to learn enough to
be ready to make a feature film perhaps as soon as 2013, they are willing to go back to
the drawing board with SONUVABITCH and take it to a whole, new level. Whether or
not the series will gain traction with its newly found audience regardless of film festival
success or not remains to be seen, and that's something that affects Jo's approach.
The projected budget for SONUVABITCH is currently $800, not including human
resources -- a thing for which Jo expects to stipulate a condition, contractually, on the
next round as she builds crew. "People often talk about how the best people will work
for free, for the love of the art, and that may be true. But what if, from now on, the best
people are the ones who work for fundraising with even a fraction of the same fervor?"
For more information, please visit: http://hotcakesmovie.com/