Reality Check
Project Type: Short Film (Sci-Fi)
Funding Goal: $10,000
End Date: August 23, 2013

Chris Buchal is an independent film maker taking on the insurance industry. Sure, ok, pretty cool. Only, he’s not making an intrepid, expose documentary; he’s making a sci-fi-heavy, time traveling short … way more awesome, right?

The world of Reality Check gives insurance claim adjusters the ability to travel back in time and investigate claims as they happened. The short focuses on Elion (Cora Benesh) as she’s investigating her final claim, which will grant her an opportunity to time travel into her own past. Her path leads her down a bad trip where she’ll confront violence, love, relationships, and deceit.

Buchal, who cites Christopher Nolan, Darren Aronofsky, and David Fincher as major influences, when asked about what he wanted to bring to the time travel sub-genre, he responded: “I like that time-travel in 12 Monkeys has a loop. Looper has a loop with a twist at the end. Primer has… options. Then Looper has characters I like, and 12 Monkeys‘ plot actually makes sense. What makes Primer cool is…well… we don’t actually really know…or do we?

“So for this piece, I’d like to do a loopitdy loop within a loop, add a strong female lead, have moral decisions, and cover corporate accountability. Corporations, while made of large groups of people, are in the end composed of individuals. This is a story about an individual, and how corruption begins on a personal level.”

Women in time travel movies have been at the center of an interesting pop-culture controversy recently, for those in the know. When asked about working on Reality Check, the film’s lead, Cora Benesh, who along with multiple appearances on IFCs Portlandia, recently had a starred in City Baby which she co-wrote, had this to say:

“A lot of filmmaking right now is about thinking outside the box, breaking the rules, and working with a patient, passionate group of friends towards calculated goals. As an actress that doesn’t work often in this genre it is exciting to come into such an energetic project that has already had so much time and care put into it – really I get to step into the action packed production part of things.”

And on creating a big sci-fi production on a lo-fi budget, Buchal adds: “The sets have to look right. The VFX have to be tested. A world has to be real enough for us to believe it, and with today’s culture, if it doesn’t grab us right away, we tend to have a reason to get side-tracked. So… we’ve taken our time with this one. Done tests, Extensive re-writes of the script, really tackled this material.

“Most of our primary crew has been involved for over a year. Now that we are ready, we are delighted to take on the the challenge and are aware of the great risk/reward factor. With crowd-funding support, we can promise a short sci-fi universe with a feature length story packed into 15 min… It’s a wild ride.”

You can find a VFX test / Teaser here. And a Behind-the-Scenes on its sound design here.

The Kickstarter campaign, which as of this writing is roughly 50% funded with 10 days to go, can be found here.