Danielle Redford

Our journey with THE NEON KING began in February 2015, when a group of hungry and ambitious graduate students got together to embark on bringing to life a story that filled us with anticipation. 

After six months of script and story development, pre-production meetings, late nights musings, early morning locations scouts, concept designs, equipment tests, auditions.... After thousands of kilometres had been driven in our hunt for the perfect location... After we'd convinced a crew of over 30 (along with, at one point, 50 dedicated family and friends!) to make a four-hour trek to a pub in small town rural Queensland... After finding enough beds to sleep said cast and crew for a week-long production period... After finding out we were shooting in the middle of winter, in the middle of Queensland, in the middle of the coldest cold snap in over 20 years... After weeks of planning and dreaming and working our asses off... We reached the shoot.

And it was epic. One week fuelled entirely by adrenaline and next to no sleep left us reeling, our entire cast and crew having given their absolute all in July 2015 to bring THE NEON KING to life. We were proud, happy, exhausted - and spent.

Both literally and figuratively! We've poured our hearts, souls and hard-earned dollars into making this story a reality, and now, so close to releasing it for the world to inhale, we need your help.

We believe we have something special on our hands. This is a story of mateship, loyalty, bravado and those moments that will change your life forever. This is a story about the family we have and the family we make, and how much of who we are rests on the shoulders of those relationships. THE NEON KING explores life in small-town Queensland in 1979 through the perspective of young men on the brink of adulthood and independence - but this isn't a story about 1979, or one 'just for the boys'. There's something we can all learn from the choices Mick makes as his world erupts around him. We want the world to experience this story and these characters for themselves.

Ahead of us is an exciting festival circuit which will see THE NEON KING light up screens all over Australia - and all over the world. To get there, we need your support in making sure the film is completed, prepped, packaged, submitted, delivered and enjoyed. We're so thankful for the community that rallied behind our team of young, naive and ambitious filmmakers, and we thank you now for your support in the final stages of making our vision a reality.

The funds we raise will be used in the following ways...

$2500 - Festival entry fees (crazy, right? We'll explain. Festivals cost anywhere between $20-$80 to enter, with the best festivals hitting the high end of this scale. To effectively gain the momentum needed to see THE NEON KING go as far and as wide as possible, we estimate submission fees into roughly 50 festivals at $50 each. Plus, the downside to being an Australian filmmaker in a USD world = the dollar conversion. Boring, but necessary.)

$800 - Promotional material - we've got beautiful imagery from our time shooting THE NEON KING and have created a strong and effective press kit to travel with the film wherever it goes. As well, we'll be printing posters, flyers and key art material to assist the film in making an impact during its festival circuit.

$200 - Cast & Crew Private Screening - we've been helped by SO many generous individuals during our filmmaking journey and to repay their kindness, we'd love to be able to show the film in a private cast and crew screening. 

From the very beginning, we knew THE NEON KING was an ambitious project, one that would bring with it a whole set of creative and logistical hurdles. However, our team rallied hard through each day of pre-production and production and we believe we've achieved far above and beyond what any of us could have hoped for. Now, our new challenge lies ahead: navigating the complex and ever-growing world of film festivals and short film distribution to connect our film with powerful platforms and strong audiences. 

We've researched the festival landscape and have identified the strongest opportunities for our story, saving us time, money and heartache. However, all of these opportunities have costs associated, so our challenge lies in making sure we've still got enough fuel left to see this film through to the end.

We can't thank you enough for your support in making this a reality!