Danger Word stars Frankie Faison and Saoirse Scott
The good news: Danger Word is going into syndication via African American Short Films, where it will tour local TV and cable channels around the country for 90 days. Click HERE every Thursday to see when it might be playing where you live.
The bad news: we have agreed to disable our YouTube link until the end of the run, so you can’t see the full film online until the end of September.
Danger Word was nominated for Best Narrative Short at the BronzeLens Film Festival and Pan African Film Festival in L.A., and it is also a selection of the Pan African Film Festival in Atlanta August 7-10.
The novel it’s based on, DEVIL’S WAKE, has been optioned by Tonya Lewis Lee. (See our previous post!)
Check back here for Danger Word’s relaunch online–just a month before Halloween!
Missed the film? Here’s the trailer. Full film back online September 28th.
Danger Word is directed by Luchina Fisher. Co-written by Steven Barnes and Tananarive Due. See our Cast & Crew page to learn more about our great team!
We’re very picky about horror movies, but Danger Word is in good company with other zombie shorts on YouTube. Here are the top six zombie short picks you should watch in bite-sized morsels. The best zombie stories are about people, after all. You won’t be disappointed! (More to come! This list will grow. Feel free to suggest other links.)
1–Danger Word. Don’t take our word for it: Geek Tyrant just called Danger Word “a great zombie short” and “fantastic and intense.” www.dangerword.com (Directed by Luchina Fisher. Written by Steven Barnes and Tananarive Due)
2–Cargo. If you haven’t seen this zombie short about a man and a baby, watch it now. It doesn’t have 6.1 million views for nothing. As good as it gets, and it’s only 7 minutes long. You’ll want to watch it more than once. Watch it HERE. (Directed by Ben Howling and Yolanda Ramke)
3–Gory Ridge–Parts I & II. This is a well-done, touching and realistic mockumentary in the style of The History Channel. What World War Z looked like in your head while you were reading the novel. Riveting. Watch it HERE. (Directed by Alek Gearhart)
4–Infected. A young man is pushed to the brink in his quest to survive. Stylish and well-acted. Watch it HERE. (Written and directed by Mikey D’Amico)
5– Perished. This looks like a lost chapter from 28 Days Later. For hard-core zombie lovers. Mature content. Watch it HERE. (Written and directed by Stefan A. Radanovich and Aaron McCann)
6–Prey. Solid premise and acting. And no, the zombies aren’t shamblers. They’re runners. Watch it HERE. (Directed by Cal O’Connell)
Writers and co-producers Steven Barnes and Tananarive Due have optioned their YA+ zombie novel DEVIL’S WAKE to Tonya Lewis Lee, Spike Lee’s wife and a producer at ToniK Productions. ToniK wants to produce a feature version of DEVIL’S WAKE! Lee first saw our short film adapated from DEVIL’S WAKE after Due met her at Atlanta’s Bronze Lens film festival last fall. She read both DEVIL’S WAKE and the sequel, DOMINO FALLS. Here’s ToniK’s mission statement: “ToniK focuses on diversity and women, developing original projects and adapting some of today’s top novels and biographies. At ToniK we believe in telling great stories that need to be told, with an eye towards authenticity. We are women. We are mothers. We are diverse.” So excited!!! Check out the ToniK website here: http://tonikproductions.com/home/ Let’s see what happens next!
Danger Word’s online release is AT MIDNIGHT Monday, 4/28/14. The URL www.dangerword.com will take you to the actual film instead of to the blog. You may continue checking the blog here at http://www.dangerwordfilm.wordpress.com.
We have been busy. We had a great time at the BronzeLens Film Festival in Atlanta, where we were nominated for Best Short–and now we have been selected for the Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles (Feb. 6-17). We will also have more news soon about “Danger Word” and the YA horror novel it was adapted from, Devil’s Wake.
Thank you so much for your patience. I know you are eager to see the film, but we are submitting it to film festivals before we can make it available to the public. You definitely will have a chance to see it in 2014!
For now, in case you missed it, here’s our trailer:
IT’S OFFICIAL: We’re still racing to finish the sound edit and final cut, but Danger Word is an official selection of the BronzeLens Film Festival of AtlantaNov. 7-10. THIS WILL BE OUR WORLD PREMIERE.
We’re so excited to be a part of a festival that will include work from Nelson George, Steve Harvey, Whoopi Goldberg as Moms Mabley and a talk-back with Alice Walker!
And what could possibly compare to seeing Danger Word on a big screen? More details about the screening schedule TBA.
Co-screenwriters Steven Barnes and Tananarive Due will also give a talk on writing horror.
Hope you can come see the film you helped us make! Check back here for more details.
We’re days away from the deadline for our post-production fundraising drive on Indiegogo–and by last week, we were worried.
But now two guardian angels stepped in with back-to-back $5,000 contributions–and we can finish the film you helped us get started.
Meet Alma Greer and Allo Greer, our new co-producers. They are mother-daughter book lovers from Detroit. As the opening credits roll, after Dark Dream Productions and This Little Light Productions, a card will read In Association With…and the company names of their choice. We are so thrilled to have them aboard!
It feels almost as if we conjured the Greer ladies. Here’s why:
Last Friday, our Indiegogo total sat stubbornly below $2,500 and we needed to raise $10,000 more. Our campaign had started strong, but slowed. (We’re told that July is not a good month for fundraising.) And we had raised our production budget to shoot the film ($15,000) through Facebook and social media–before we began our post-production campaign on Indiegogo. Maybe our friends, readers and family had given us all they could. It was already a miracle we had come so far.
But we knew potential contributors would be discouraged by the gap to our goal. Had we reached the end of the line?
At noon Friday, July 12, the producers had a conference call–director Luchina Fisher, screenwriters Steven Barnes and Tananarive Due, and producer Zainab Ali. We needed a strategy. Oscar-winning screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher, visiting Spelman College last fall, told students: “You have to have a Plan B and Plan C to make Plan A jealous.” It was time to come up with a Plan B.
The result felt like a prayer meeting. Steve, a life coach as well as a writer, walked us through a four-step process that was like The Secret on steroids. Instead of feeling fear, we chose to feel gratitude. We had plans to submit the film to Sundance, but we decided to create our own schedule. We could compose our own music. (Tananarive plays piano and keyboard.) We would have a rougher version to exhibit and “clean it up” when more funds were available. The list went on. We would do the best with what we had. We were blessed to have received so much already. By the end of the call, we felt re-energized and excited. Empowered. “Amen!”
Twenty minutes after we hung up, Allo Greer contributed $5,000 to Indiegogo. We were stunned.
Two days later, her 80-year-old mother, Alma Greer, donated another $5,000 to match her daughter’s contribution. Suddenly, we had the $10,000 we needed. We were speechless. We still are.
Read the novel where Danger Word appears
Why doesn’t the total show up on Indiegogo? Because for a very large contribution–so we have learned–Indiegogo has a rigid verification procedure. The first $5,000 was temporarily withheld from our account. Monday, the hold still was not resolved. Tuesday, Allo Greer decided to contribute to Danger Word through PayPal instead. Thursday, her mother followed suit.
So the fundraising total you see to the right is our actual total. The total on our Indiegogo page is only a fraction of that. Thanks to you and Alma and Allo Greer, we have come so far!
And you still have a chance to be a part of this community-funded film! We have more than a week left on our Indiegogo campaign. We’re still asking you to spread the dangerword.com link so we can climb as high as possible. We have 50 Indiegogo backers and counting! For a $25 contribution, backers receive a pdf of the screenplay. (Though if you want to contribute $5,000, you might want to visit our CONTRIBUTE page through PayPayl instead. Just saying.)
Some Indiegogo visitors will see our low total and believe our post-production campaign is failing. Or that we won’t be able to finish the film. Not true at all!
We will finish Danger Word. Every dollar we raise now will be used for marketing and publicity, film festival fees and to establish production offices for a feature film version of the novel Devil’s Wake, where Kendra’s story first appeared.
We already have invitations to the Charlotte Black Film Festival and Atlanta’s BronzeLens Film festival. Next stop…Sundance?
We are moved and grateful beyond words. Thanks to all of you–and our new co-producers, Alma and Allo Greer–for helping us make a beautiful film together.
Want a T-shirt? Or to be a producer? Click on the photo to go to Indiegogo!
Since March, more than 200 contributors have visited this site to give between $1 and $1,000 toward the filming of Danger Word, which was shot over Memorial Day weekend (2013). Primarily using Facebook and social media, we pulled off a tiny miracle through “community funding”–thanks to you!
Frankie Faison (Grandpa Joe) and Saoirse Scott (Kendra) face the zombie plague
Now we’ve moved our fundraising effort to the crowd funding platform Indiegogo for Phase II: post-production. That’s the phase where we improve the images and sound to create a film that can be exhibited in the company of quality films. (Who knows? Maybe even at Sundance!) Right now, all we have is raw footage of great performances from our stars Frankie Faison and Saoirse Scott.
Technical experts will take Danger Word the rest of the way.
Check out our short Indiegogo pitch (and a sneak peek at the trailer!):
Even if you can’t give now, or have already given, please SHARE the site with your friends and family. Can you help us spread the word about Danger Word?
We will have an exciting new gift to offer soon! And we have added a free PDF of the screenplay for contributors who give $25 or more.
Presenting…the first public footage from Danger Word, which we shot with community funding over Memorial Day weekend.
Check it out!
Danger Word co-stars veteran actor Frankie Faison (The Wire, Banshee, The Silence of the Lambs) and promising newcomer Saoirse Scott (One Life to Live) as a grandfather and granddaughter who have survived the zombie plague in his wooded cabin…and how her birthday goes awry.
This trailer was created by our talented editor, Terence Taylor (also a horror writer!). We think it captures the character-driven nature of our scary little movie.
Our backers include groundbreaking film director Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust), Oscar nominee Josh Olson (Best Adapted Screenplay, A History of Violence), Tony nominee Stephanie D’Abruzzo (Avenue Q), and bestselling novelists Larry Niven, Connie Briscoe and Bernice L. McFadden, as well as nearly 200 other friends, family, readers and strangers who are ready to create a short horror film we can all be proud of. (And we want to do a feature next!)
We wanted to make a short horror film, and we believed we could fund it within our own community of friends and strangers who shared our dream of creating a story and characters we could be proud of.
We met our Phase I goal!
Thanks to you, Danger Word has been shot, is being edited, and will have a trailer online soon! We are grateful beyond words for the support of our backers. Thanks to you, this story of a grandfather and his granddaughter who have survived the zombie plague in his wooded cabin is a reality, not just a dream. (To learn more about Danger Word, click ABOUT.)
Phase I of our fundraising campaign–which relied mostly on Facebook and social media to spread the word–has been a success. We wanted to raise $15,000, and we surpassed our goal! (Even minus $442 in PayPal fees.)
Now we have moved to Phase II. Phase I was for preproduction/production, and Phase II will be for post-production. (Until our Indiegogo campaign is set up, we will continue to raise funds on this website.) Our Phase II campaign will be for $12,500–not quite as much, but still costly to pay for the professional technicians and editors who will make this short film look and sound as good as any you would see in a movie theater. Click here to contribute to the post-production campaign.
For a longer explanation of how production costs work, read on. For now, we just wanted to say thank you!!!!
Danger Word stars Frankie Faison (Grandpa Joe) and Kendra (Saoirse Scott)
FUNDING OUR FILM:
The first $15,000–what we called Phase I–went to cast, crew, equipment rental, location rental, makeup and F/X, transportation, and maintaining the set during production. That is “pre-production” and “production” expense, and it came to about a thousand dollars a minute! (By contrast, a Hollywood movie averages a million dollars a minute!) Our director/co-producer Luchina Fisher stretched ever last dollar to the breaking point, and wrung every last scrap of value from every last penny.
Now we move to Phase II, known as “post production”—color correction, sound balancing, music, editing, ADR (dialogue replacement often used, for example, in moving vehicles), deferred travel expenses and the like. This is where we take the raw footage and assemble it into a trailer, and then a movie. These two phases were designed to be “crowd funded” (or, as we like to call it, “community funded”). Phase II will soon shift to a more “public” vehicle, Indiegogo, where the strength of our trailer will help us move beyond the circle of our friends, fans, and family to show our newborn child to the world. Those who have contributed already—bless and thank you. We ask only that you keep us in your hearts, and share the Indiegogo link with your friends, Twitter streams and Facebook friends when we launch.
The trailer will be ready soon! Can’t wait to share it. Thank you again for making this magical journey possible for all of us.
Danger Word 