Cambridge filmmaker’s Kickstarter bid for Five Cars movie on track
Cambridge-based actor and filmmaker Mark Hampton – who recently attended the premiere in London of his latest film The Impact – is raising funds for his upcoming project, Five Cars, and it’s going rather well.
The Kickstarter campaign for Five Cars, which New Zealand-born Mark is to act in and direct, ends tomorrow (June 30). Described as a “high-octane, low budget feature film”, Five Cars is set to be filmed in and around Cambridge.
“We’ve got over £12,000,” said Mark, speaking to the Cambridge Independent last Friday (June 24), “so 82 per cent funded, and 81 backers so it’s on target and that’s obviously fantastic.”
Five Cars – with its tagline “one day, two brothers, three hundred miles, four million pounds” – is an independent heist movie that tells its story almost entirely in and around five different cars.
Mark explains that funding for the film is coming from three different budgetary sources: “One of them is this Kickstarter, one of them is some equity investors, who are outside of the Kickstarter because you can’t sell equity on Kickstarter, and they will be investors in the movie who will become shareholders in the movie. And then the third portion is my own money.”
There are still a few things to sort out before filming can commence. “The shoot won’t happen immediately,” notes Mark. “It will happen in several months’ time once the full funding is established and the best way to make the film for that money has been established, because obviously what I want to do is make the best possible film with the money we have.”
The script is ready to go and has been written, Mark says, deliberately to be a low-budget production. “In fact one of the perks on the Kickstarter is to receive a copy of the script,” he says.
“The other part of that reward is what I’ve said I’ll do is I’ll give them a copy of the script as it is now and then I’ll give them a scanned copy of the shooting script at the end of the shooting process, which will be, as I say, in several months, where they get to see all of the mark-ups and all of the changes, and hopefully it will be a really interesting insight into the filmmaking process.”
Five Cars will be slightly different to the type of motion picture or television series usually filmed in Cambridge. “I think what’s exciting about this is that we’re making a film in Cambridge that isn’t a period film,” says Mark, “because Cambridge is a wonderful location and you often get Grantchester or Poirot or things like that come to Cambridge; what’s seen less often is anything of a contemporary nature, and I think that would be a real change, just to see Cambridge in a different light, in a contemporary setting.”
Mark adds: “I’ve been really touched and humbled by the support that the campaign has received so far. There’s been so much support from so many friends, family, colleagues and other creatives who’ve supported the project and really want to see it come to fruition.
“I’m really touched by how much the core idea has grabbed people’s imaginations and got them behind it, and to have achieved the level of funding on the Kickstarter already that we have is just fantastic.”
Mark is an experienced film and television actor who has appeared in television series such as Casualty, Jonathan Creek and Comin’ Atcha!, and in films such as Tomb Raider and World War Z.
He is set to feature in the BBC’s This Sceptred Isle and Liaison for AppleTV+ later in the year.
To donate to the project via Kickstarter, visit bit.ly/3z9669G.
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