I watched 22 short films at last year’s Fantastic Fest. Of those 22, THE MAN FROM DEATH was the slickest and least likely (in my mind) to be extended into a feature film. It was not that co-writer/producer/director Stephen Reedy lacked the chops or that co-writer/producer/star Eric Raymond Lim lacked talent—they are both polished and ready to take big steps forward. No, it was the fact that the stylish, excessive film (I described it in my quick review as leaving me, “alternately entertained, exhilarated, annoyed, and confused.”) was so visually ambitious and stuffed to the gills with ideas, I did not see any way that a feature film of the material could be made on an indie budget. Apparently Reedy and Lim agree and are taking a shot at knocking down the studio doors.
Having commissioned a screenplay for the feature length version of THE MAN FROM DEATH from the screenwriting duo of Justin Giddings and Ryan Welsh, Reedy and Lim have planned an elaborate staged reading of the script in order to attract a name producer to their project. This may seem odd to folks who feel if you have a script, you should just go shoot it, but if you watch the full short film above, you will see why it is necessary for the production to attempt to go the studio route.
In order to stage that reading, the filmmakers have launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise the necessary funds.
What I like about this campaign is not just that Reedy and Lim are thinking big with their film, but that they are doing their reading in a way that will actually employ actors and technicians to do the best possible presentation. There are seventeen days left in the campaign and they are roughly about halfway to their goal. At the very least, watch the short film and enjoy the sugar rush of martial arts mayhem, violence to eyeballs, and absurd comedy.
Tags: Eric Raymond Lim, Fantastic Fest, Justin Giddings, Ryan Welsh, Stephen Reedy, The Man From Death
Thanks so much for screencapping the pride and joy of my visual effects I did on this film 🙂
– Linc