A man trapped in a building with a thousand clones of himself, begs the question ‘Who are you, if you’re not the only you?’
Brace yourself, Mouse-X is about to vigorously blow your mind, or at least attempt to bend it a little. In a narrative that has the main protagonist question his own existence, when he wakes up in a building with multiple clones of himself intwined into an infinite loop. Director Justin Tagg created a brilliant mind-trap that kept tricking us along with the main character.
Creatively we wanted to craft a short we were proud of, that we had not compromised on and we felt was a strong expression of the stories that we wanted to tell. However, professionally we had to build a solid foundation that meant we would be in a stronger position after making it than we had started in. We’d all known people who had put themselves deep into debt to make their dreams come true. We had to build an audience, find finance and not spend our own money. We had to get to a point where we had both a film and a company. A future.
In creating such a film it can be easy to lose focus and adrift from its main purpose, or simply lose track of the finest details that in turn hold the film together. But Justin and his team held incredibly strong and true to the last detail which enriches the entire experience to a whole new level.
We crowd funded for our first £5,000 and then hustled our way to another £10,000 of in-kind support from businesses across Europe. We built our own set and used the wild, wild, west of the internet to promote the film when it was complete. It’s been a truly independent project from the word go, we really have had no resources other than those we could get with our basic budget or make ourselves.
Justin and his team have created a strong core portfolio piece and can now look at the future with their heads way up high.
And now? We have been humbled by the response online and have just started a new company, Hyperreal films. We’re not suddenly rich, we’re still in the same position as before except now we have an audience of people who are as excited as we are to see a feature based on Mouse-X! The next project will not be started by just me, a script and a video camera… it’ll be started by a small army. We have a phrase in our team that we’ve been using a lot lately.
Here’s to a future we create ourselves.
