Carbon Dating, a Dystopian Romcom

CARBON DATING, A SHORT FILM

Based on the Grand Prize Winning Script of the 2021 Roadmap Writers Short Script Competition.

In a future where humans must hibernate to conserve resources, a love-hate relationship forms between two convicts trapped on the same sleep schedule.

STORY

When the bell chimes, Adam (MATT IPPOLITO) gasps awake. For the first time in 7 days.

As he removes his hibernation mask, an Alexa-like voice tells him what he already knows: he has 90 minutes until he must return to sleep. Enjoy!

Trapped alone in a cabin in the desert, Adam pays his debt to the ecosystem as the authoritarian regime demands: with 10 years of hibernation to zero out his carbon footprint.

Adam’s 90-minute routine is well-worn. Chin-ups, nutrition pouch, change the human-waste bag under the sleeping pod. Learn a little French, play himself in chess, and whistle while he works. Turns out being a millennial in a dystopia is a lot like being a princess in a tower.

But Adam doesn’t have a prince out there waiting for him. Instead, he has an illegal payday coming from an oil executive — the felon who bribed Adam to take their place in this bizarre prison.

Sure, Adam’s hands are a little dirty, but he’s not a bad guy. Sleep for a few years and get millions when you wake up — who wouldn’t be tempted? And it’s not like Adam knew how to be part of the solution anyway.

So he chose this life. But it would be much easier if he didn’t have to do it alone.

At least that’s what he thinks, until one day he gasps awake and discovers his new roommate, Phoebe (CAROLINE KLIDONAS).

Strong and idealistic, Phoebe was sentenced for participating in the radical “Green Front” protest movement. When she discovers Adam is serving time on behalf of the guilty elite, she threatens to turn him in and make his payout disappear.

Adam begs her not to send him away, and Phoebe decides that living with a felon is better than no one. “I’ll be the best roommate you’ve ever had,” he promises. Repulsed by his selfishness and armed with a wicked sense of humor, Phoebe has no intention of returning the favor.

Each wary of the other, Adam and Phoebe’s strange relationship advances 90 minutes at a time, every sleep cycle bringing more verbal sparring, romantic tension, and bedsores.

Their differences grow only more pronounced as they grow closer – and all the more intriguing. And with Adam’s release date approaching, these roommates in purgatory must face their future in a world that might not have one.

INSPIRATION

The Romcom of Palm Springs meets Climate Dystopia of Mad Max

As the apocalypse drops new content weekly, storytelling as we know it feels futile. Do we need another film about human problems? Or should we point a camera at bleaching coral and let the story of our time tell itself?

Our pitch is: let's do both.

Not literally. We'd have to get one of those cameras that go underwater, charter a boat, and figure out where reefs are. That's a lot. Instead, we've written our short film Carbon Dating, Grand Prize Winner of the 2021 Roadmap Writers Short Script Competition. In their time-jumping, carbon-sequestering prison cell, Adam and Phoebe wage a multi-front war. The self versus the collective, justice versus fear, fighting versus kissing.

Combining the high-concept, low-optimism romance of Palm Springs, the screwball purgatory of The Good Place, and the cozy dystopia of a Black Mirror bottle episode, Carbon Dating is a micro-rom-com for the apocalypse generation. A portrait of the only species that can both trash a planet and find laughter in salvaging it.

THE TEAM

Michael Sallee, Libby Doyne and Matt Ippolito are the creators of Carbon Dating. They have been working together for 3+ years. They’ve produced many live shows including clown versions of The Glass Menagerie, The Cherry Orchard, and The Odyssey to sold out crowds in Los Angeles. With this short film, they want to reach a larger audience and bring their training in theatrical clowning to film. With ambitions to write and produce more shorts, pilots, and features, this project would serve as their inaugural film, expressing their comedic style, genre-bending sensibilities, and socially-engaged voice.

As a writing team, Libby Doyne and Michael Sallee are an LA-based comedy writing team who specialize in queer, feminist, capitalism-skeptical dick jokes. With a love of high-concept, genre-bending premises, their work explores such questions as "what if the moon landing was faked by a Meisner dropout?" and "what if Sailor Moon had devastating student debt?" Their pilot Battle Girl won the 2021 ScreenCraft Animation Screenwriting Competition.

Matt Ippolito - Actor/Producer

Ippolito is an actor and critically acclaimed producer based in Los Angeles. He will play the whimsical Groundskeeper in an upcoming whodunit comedy written by Matthew Schlissel and starring Molly Bernard (Younger), as well as the lead in Carbon Dating. As a producer, Ippolito has produced some 20+ films, including a Netflix #1 Movie, White Hot, Oscar-nominated shorts, Lifeboat and Hunger Ward as well as Sundance films Flee, On Her Shoulders, The Brink and The Disappearance of My Mother. He is currently in production on a four-part series for HBO Max and narrative feature, Best Man Dead Man, featuring Molly Bernard. He is represented by Jacqueline Wheeler and The People Store.

Caroline Klidonas - Actor/Producer

Caroline Klidonas is an actor, writer, and content creator, known for her serialized parody videos, including "Rune", her sci-fi/fantasy series that spans four seasons and has even inspired fan art! Recent TV credits include the Showtime pilot Queen Fur and the Netflix limited series Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story premiering in 2022. She's also a member of Open Fist Theatre Company and has done several mainstage shows there, including the Ovation-recommended Southern California Premiere of All Night Long. She is represented by Rob D'Avola and Associates and has a BFA in Acting from Elon University.

Michael Sallee - Writer/Producer

Michael is a writer and theater performer in Los Angeles. He is a founding member of the Electric House theater company and performs regularly with The Highland Park Clowns in LA. He was a winner of the 2021 ScreenCraft Animation Screenwriting Competition and the 2021 Roadmap Writers Shorts Competition. He also works as a tutor, if you need help passing Algebra II.

Libby Doyne - Writer/Producer

Doyne has been a writers’ assistant and showrunner's assistant for HBO Max, WB Animation, and Netflix. Her scripts have won the Screencraft Animation Screenwriting Competition, The Roadmap Shorts Competition and advanced in Austin Film Fest and Final Draft’s Big Break. She was a writer for the 2017 CBS Diversity Showcase and recipient of the Thomas Angel Foundation Scholarship to the Upright Citizens Brigade and the UCLA Writers’ Extension Scholarship for comedy television writing. She lives in Los Angeles and has a pet rabbit named Juniper.

Jasia Kaulbach - Director

Jasia Kaulbach is a New York Emmy and Telly award-winning director working in documentary, commercials, brand content, music videos & scripted. Jasia grew up an all-american runner and dancer in downtown Philadelphia, a city that David Lynch described as a place where his imagination exploded, "fantastical...beautiful if you see it the right way". Her passion for visual narrative was inspired by a similar desire to explore and illuminate transformation in unexpected places. Jasia studied literature and performance at Amherst College and film directing in London at Met Film/Ealing Studios. She currently lives in NYC.

Richard Yeagley - Producer/Editor

Richard is an east coast-based producer and editor. His award-winning work has been shown on Vice, The New Yorker, Hulu, Tubi, PBS, NPR, and theatrically throughout the US. He is currently producing his fourth documentary feature and was a producer for the Vice docu-series “The Deep End.”

Cole Ellet - Director of Photography

LA born and raised. Received BA in Cinema Arts and Sciences from Columbia College Chicago. Likes long walks on the beach, and makes a mean Coq Au Vin.

SecondNature - Production Company

BUDGET BREAKDOWN

We’ve dedicated over a year into Carbon Dating, we’re calling a lot of favors and putting our own money into the film too. If we can get some help, it not only lets us make the film we want to make but also takes a bit of the burden off the people helping us along the way.

Making this happen will take 4 days at 12 hours per day. Below is a breakdown of how we plan to use the donations. Thank YOU for the help!

GO FUND ME GOAL – $11,280

CREW: $4,000

We’re asking five people to work 4 days each in the desert in August!

Equipment: $1,440

Camera, lighting and sound equipment in order to capture reality and turn it into pixels.

Location: $1,440

Cabin in the desert (yeah, we’re going to Joshua Tree in August!)

Props & Wardrobe: $900

You know…

Meals: $2,400

10 people working long days are food motivated!

Travel: $1,100

Our director lives in NYC, so we need to transport her to LA.

We know we have something special with Carbon Dating - an award-winning script, a stellar cast, a director with a vision and a seasoned production team behind her. All we need now is the funding to get it across the finish line.

We want to prove that a story can touch on climate issues without feeling like a lecture and that genres we love - romance, comedy, sci-fi - can help us not only escape the world, but engage with it.

Carbon Dating is the kind of film we’d want to watch ourselves, and with your help, we’ll be able to share it with the world. We sincerely appreciate any donation you are able to make at this time.

WHERE CAN I SEE THIS?

Our goal is to premiere Carbon Dating at a film festival (film festivals are great for building awareness and get people excited about a project) and then release it digitally in the coming year. We will keep everyone in the loop as we have updates. You are just as much a part of this as we are!

"No raffles, sweepstakes, giveaways, or returns on investment are offered in exchange for any donations made to our GoFundMe."