Help Finish The Diminished!

The campaign you're looking at was initially set up in November to help finish a feature film called The Diminished, a horror movie about a girl whose love for a musician leads her towards a shocking discovery about his strange brother, who may have been involved with the disappearance of a missing teenager.

Specifically, the purpose of this campaign was to help raise money to help pay the enormous cast and crew involved in the project. I was trying to make a feature film on a $5000 budget, shooting only on weekends, with a cast of almost 20 people.




Unfortunately, a lot of things went wrong both with the production of the film and the management of this campaign, the launch of which coincided with the tragic Carr Fire.

While this movie project is by no means more tragic than a natural disaster — and thankfully no one was seriously injured during filming — this project was definitely one of the worst experiences in my personal life. Friendships were tested and some were lost, cameras were broken, people were jumping ship left and right, and I think I lost about thirty pounds or so just from sheer stress. Over and over again throughout the process, I lost faith in myself as a director, filmmaker, or worthwhile human being.

At the end of November, a few weeks after this campaign was launched, one of the lead actors quit the film mid-way through filming the necessary scenes for their character, upon whom the climax of the film basically hinged. This forced me to rethink the film in its entirety. At that point, I had gone massively over-budget, massively over-schedule, and was about to lose other actors due to scheduling conflicts. It was a mess. I had a hysterical nervous breakdown and cried so much that my eyes became very big and puffy.




To my surprise, the crew-members who had not yet quit the film wanted to have a production meeting the next morning. Instead of roasting me alive, they encouraged me to take what we had already shot and complete the film as a short.

We decided to move forward with this plan, and have a plan in place to complete The Diminished as a short film. It has been a challenge. Over a dozen actors were let go. Some actors who had shot material are no longer going to be in the movie. Locations I’d arranged and musicians I’d coordinated did prep work for no reason. It’s all very sad, but also part of filmmaking.

I learned a lot over this process, and one thing that I am continually learning is how people can surprise you. People I thought were ride-or-die turned out to be ride-off-in-the-middle-of-the-night. And other people I wouldn’t have expected to come through dug me out of the dirt and helped in more ways than I could imagine.




That brings me to this campaign. Because GoFundMe doesn’t put a time limit on campaigns, and because people are (to my humbled amazement) continuing to donate to it, I am leaving it up for now.

If you are at all inspired by this tale and want to help me pay those brave cast and crew members who continued to work on the project despite its less-than-Hollywood standards, then please feel free to do so. The money will go directly towards people who deserve to be compensated for their time and hard work.



Despite everything, I'm really excited for The Diminished to be finished as a short film. It isn't exactly what I was hoping to make, but there's some really great stuff in there that will ultimately make all of the hardships worth it.

And who knows, maybe someday I'll have the resources to complete the entire film as written. 

Thanks for reading, and remember, if you want to make an indie movie of your own... Follow these four rules:

1. Get a Production Manager and First AD before you shoot anything at all
2. Make sure that your cast and crew sign contracts
3. The smaller your budget, the smaller your cast/crew should be
4. Don’t cast your friends unless you’re okay with the possibility of losing them.

Best,

Mig Windows
Writer/Director/Reluctant Actress/Etc.
The Diminished