Matthew Holmes, a Melbourne writer-director who launched an ambitious crowd-funding campaign to finance his half-hour film ‘The Legend of Ben Hall’, has had his seven-year-long dream come true.
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Holmes and his team started their attempt to raise $75,000 on the crowd funding platform Kickstarter in early June and needed to reach their target by July 7.
The numbers are in and the tally has been counted to confirm that the Legend of Ben Hall movie will go ahead to be bigger and better than originally anticipated with more than $100,000 in the bank.
The fundraising campaign officially ended on Monday night, with a total of about $84,000 raised, close to $10,000 more than the original target of $75,000.
While on the Kickstarter website the final tally appears to be about $78,000, a glitch in the system at the last minute resulted in some money not being included.
However, the film’s writer and director, Matthew Holmes has revealed they have received another large sum of money towards the project, boosting the total to more than $100,000.
Holmes is thrilled with the result.
“It’s pretty amazing,” he said.
“I thought I’d be lucky to get over $75,000 – it’s very rare for films, especially Australian films, to get big budgets through Kickstarter, most only go to $20,000.
“The fact that we went to $75,000 to start with was really bold and a lot of people questioned the move but for some reason the film has just struck a chord.”
The extra money means the film can now be 50 minutes long and its production value has increased.
“It’ll be a longer experience,” Holmes said.
“We can just make the production look, sound and feel a whole lot better.
“We can expand on the characters and story and make it a richer movie.”
Now that the project is a guarantee, Holmes said pre-production has already started.
“We’ve hit the ground running with pre-production,” he said.
“We’re sourcing props, getting costumes made, casting continually, looking at locations for shooting and making deals.
“It’s going fast – the train has left the station and we’re laying down on the track ahead of it.
“There’s so much to be done, it’s quite overwhelming.”
The first day of filming has already been scheduled for August 18, so it’s all happening.
“Everyone is completely rapt,” he said.
“It’s really exciting … our cast and crew are pumped.”
The film will be shot around regional Victoria and is scheduled to be completed by early 2015, in time for the 150th anniversary of Ben Hall’s brutal death.
Once complete, Matthew’s goal is to premiere the film in Forbes for the anniversary of Hall's death and then take it on a film tour throughout the entire Central NSW district, specifically those regions where Ben Hall is such a folk hero.
