Sometimes featuring a crowdfunding project on Film Threat isn’t just about focusing on a film we’d like to see, but focusing on a film that we feel absolutely must be made. It is in this second category that Gregory Bayne’s documentary Bloodsworth: An Innocent Man resides. Bayne is in the final week of crowdfunding the campaign on Kickstarter, and we wanted to give it a featured look, just in case you haven’t heard about this important project yet.
Bloodsworth: An Innocent Man is a documentary about Kirk Noble Bloodsworth, a man who, in 1985, was convicted and sentenced to death for the brutal rape and murder of 9 year old Dawn Hamilton. Nevermind that police at the time were looking for a 6’5″, skinny, mustache-wearing, blonde-haired man, and Bloodsworth was none of these things, nor even a resident of the area; he was still tried and convicted on the flimsiest of accounts, with no physical evidence pointing in his direction. Bloodsworth never stopped proclaiming his innocence, however, and in 1992 became the first death row inmate in the United States to be exonerated by DNA evidence.
Filmmaker Gregory Bayne should not be a new name to those of you who read Film Threat. We featured him on the site as a tale of crowdfunding success in the past, and his latest project has us more than intrigued. The tale of Kirk Noble Bloodsworth is one of the ultimate wrongdoing being overturned; the innocent escaping an unjust death sentence.
In order for this project to find its much-deserved feature film voice, Bayne is raising funds to cover:
“production and completion of a 25-35 minute work-in-progress video that captures the overall story, tone and scope of the film, –a required element needed to court further funding and support from institutions such as Sundance, PBS and the Ford Foundation.”
Those production funds will allow Bayne to travel to Maryland to conduct interviews, shoot footage and collect the various elements he’ll need to flesh out the full story. Funds will also go towards launching the film’s website and covering lead animator Matthew Wade and composer Patrick Benolkin as they assist in the finishing of the in-progress piece.
Beyond just archival footage and interviews, filmmaker Bayne states:
“Drawing inspiration from films such as CHICAGO 10 and WALTZ WITH BASHIR, BLOODSWORTH will incorporate sophisticated animated segments based on our own interviews, court records, police reports, and Kirk’s own subjective memories about his arrest, his time in court, and his very real internal and external struggle to survive behind bars when branded, even by the worst of the worst, a monster.
The reasoning behind the use of animation is predicated on this medium’s inherent ability to take us deeper into Kirk’s emotional journey by bringing to life the un-recorded moments of his passage through the criminal justice system to create a rich cinematic experience that will ultimately connect us to Kirk and his ordeal in a much more meaningful way.
By a careful interweaving of these animated segments with the live action and archival footage, we will work to unfold a fully realized picture of Kirk’s harrowing story told through the point of view of his individual experience.”
Gregory Bayne’s Kickstarter campaign for Bloodsworth: An Innocent Man has a final crowdfunding deadline of 3pm MST on December 5, 2011. If you’re unfamiliar with Kickstarter, that’s the crowdfunding site that utilizes the all-or-nothing approach to crowdfunding. In other words, if Bayne does not raise the total goal of $25,000, the project gets nothing. And with the campaign at 31% funding as of this writing, it could use all the help it can get, whether it be via a donation or via sharing the campaign around.
If you’d like to know more about Bloodsworth: An Innocent Man, head over to the Bloodsworth: An Innocent Man Kickstarter page. Time is running out!
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DISCLAIMER: Donating or investing in a film or film-related project is always a risky endeavor, so it is important to keep that in mind before deciding to get financially involved with any film project. Film Threat, FilmThreat.com and our parent company, Hamster Stampede, LLC hold no liability or responsibility regarding any of the projects showcased on our site, their content or performance or the content or performance of any of the sites linked to in this article. Our involvement with the featured project is strictly what you see here: we find a work-in-progress project that sounds interesting to us, we ask all the questions we’d like to know the answers to and then we share that information with you, the audience. This should not be considered as personalized investment advice. What happens after you read this is your decision, and, again, before parting with any money for any film, think it through and BE CAREFUL.
