Sandy Collora is a longtime special effects artist who
helped create some of the more renowned and revered creatures in modern
cinema. He produced and directed the fan film
Batman: Dead End,
hailed by filmmaker Kevin Smith as "possibly the truest, best Batman
movie ever made". Collora has announced his long-awaited return behind
the camera with an anthology of "long shorts" - 20 to 30-minute original
genre films. His first entry in the anthology is
Shallow Water,
a gritty and intense film that unleashes a new cinema creature unlike
anything seen before. To help fund it, Collora has launched a
Kickstarter campaign.
Shallow Water combines Collora's three greatest loves - horror, the ocean, and the environment. "The underlying theme of Shallow Water
is simple. Humans repeatedly disturb the ecosystem, and the planet
gets pissed off." In the film, Collora introduces the Tiburonera - "he
who hunts sharks", which he promises will be "terrifying and different".
Shallow Water will be the first of a series that he plans to combine and release as an anthology feature, in the vein of Creepshow and Heavy Metal.
Collora believes Hollywood has dropped the ball in introducing fresh
new genre concepts. While he attributes it to pressures faced by studios
to prioritize safety in meeting their bottom lines, he also feels
sequels and remakes are now excessive, and have compromised the art.
Laments Collora: "I love genre films. I grew up on the original Alien and Predator, and they are awesome. But it's too long since we had something new, unique and powerful in that space."
After producing the feature film Hunter Prey, and
publishing three volumes of The Art of Creature and Character Design,
which he funded with the help of Kickstarter, Collora now returns to
short film and to crowdfunding.
Shallow Water proved too costly to finance as a feature
with crowd funding, and that started Collora on the path of the
anthology. He seeks $85K from fans to help him make it happen. "With
Kickstarter, I can stay independent, and not compromise my vision. That
was a big factor in the success of Batman: Dead End. But Shallow Water
is longer, with more effects - more ambitious, if you will - so I hope
to augment the cost with monies from Kickstarter. For this reason, I
went to town on the Rewards for people who back it - great value at a
low cost, and for those with more to pledge, some pretty intense limited
edition collectibles. I was proud Kickstarter designated this campaign
as a "Project we Love" on its very first day, and I think it was because
of the cool Rewards."
T-shirts, art books, production maquettes and busts/suits from the film are just a few of the available rewards.
Shallow Water
tells the story of a small group of fishermen who embark on a fishing
trip to find a remote and mythical fishing hole deep in the Sea of
Cortez. They scour the Baja peninsula, find it, but encounter unexpected
sea life. Adds Collora: "It's Mother Nature versus Human Nature."
"I
love Sandy's work. This is a great story, the creature is fantastic,
and I love the reliance on practical effects. This is what the
independent film movement is all about.." adds Steve Johnson, an Academy
Award-winning special FX guru.
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