BLOOD STAR MOVIE 2024 Trailer – THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY

To be a visionary you have to have unprecedented passion and drive too, to pull off any creative achievement like making a feature film takes such colossal amounts of vision and drive and guts, and that’s whether you have support from the industry or not.

In our case we didn’t. And I think that’s why our story around this production can resonate so well with an audience.

But first of all before we tell you about the story behind the feature film production of Blood Star Movie 2024, here is a link to the BLOOD STAR MOVIE 2024 TRAILER

Director Lawrence Jacomelli has only ever wanted to be a Film Director. But taken up, in the wave of day-to-day life to earn money and keep the cogs moving, it was TV commercials that consumed him for 15 years. During that time there had been moments where he had worked with writers, and tried to get traction on a script, we even moved to LA for two years to make better connections. But, we still couldn’t find the right script or the money to make it…

Then Covid hit and the world stopped. It was a moment of pause where all the plates suddenly stopped spinning and that opened the door for me to focus on something that really mattered.

So, then the question became, “Where do we start?”. Well, we knew it had to be low budget, we had written many scripts in the past but never been able to find the finance. So, our starting point was to write a story that, in the worst-case scenario where we would once again be without backing, we could put our own money in and make a movie.

Of course, we started as usual with single location scenarios; a hotel room, a tower block, a car…

But the problem is wherever you start, you just don’t know where the idea is going to go. And although we started with a hotel room in London, we ended up with a road movie in the desert of New Mexico…

We wanted to make a Genre movie and specifically a “Cat and Mouse Thriller”. But we also wanted to make a film that wasn’t just commercial but had a social theme and zeitgeist element to the narrative. At the time of writing there was a news story breaking in the UK, the Sarah Everard case, where a police officer arrested a young woman on the grounds of breaching covid social regulations, and then abducted, raped and murdered her. This was also just a few months after the George Floyd case where a man was murdered in broad daylight by a police officer who arrested him, while being co-operative, about an alleged counterfeit 20 dollar note. After a struggle ensued George Floyd was pinned to the ground and his neck was leant on for over 9 minutes, before he died. Both occasions showed abuse of power, toxic masculinity, misogyny and racism. Both occasions reflected a scenario where the Lawful person should have been the protector, as the US law slogan states “serve and protect”, but instead showed the opposite. It conjured a deep feeling of betrayal, and then incredible vulnerability for so many people, and that became our motivation for our story.

We decided to make our antagonist the local Sheriff, after all, what better place to hide than in plain sight? Interestingly Fargo Season 5 which may have been filmed around the same time that we shot Blood Star has exactly the same character profile with the villainous, misogynistic and murdering Sheriff played by John Hamm. When Fargo season 5 came out and we could see they had tackled the same taboo subject of a corrupt lawman, we knew that we had been on the right track with our movie.

Whilst we wanted to make a film that had a message, it also had to be commercial, it had to have production value and Lawrence wanted it to be American, and although we are British and living in London, we also decided to not let that stop us. In-fact we managed to do the whole pre-production of the movie remotely from London via ‘Staff me up’. Weeks of video calls and back and forth found us a core crew of passionate film makers in Los Angeles who also wanted to share our vision.

Blood Star was shot in 10 days with a 20-person crew and of course we had no plan for selling it…we didnt even have a poster or the faintest idea about what. Even though it was made for next to nothing and can fall under the ‘Horror’ genre, we don’t believe it’s a horror film as such. It’s a thriller. It’s a Cat and Mouse Road Movie set in the desert, with tension at its core and a story designed to both challenge and entertain the audience.

 

During production the problems came at us thick and fast, like anyone making an independent movie for the first time. I think the making of Blood Star is a fascinating and inspirational story for first time film makers because of how Lawrence adapted to these challenges.

When we first arrived in LA, three weeks before the shoot last April, Los Angeles had had unprecedented rainfall for months previous. Our stark, desert location in Palmdale had turned into a lush green prairie…filled with yellow flowers as far as the eye could see…….first problem. From there we had to deal with our main picture car blowing up two days before the shoot, sand storms, flooding on set as the snow on the mountains started to melt and the dreaded permitting red tape! What was significant at these moments was Lawrence’s ability to adapt and this was apparent to ALL the crew. These are the times when most first time Directors may fail; Unable to change their vision, unable to adapt, unable to see their story work in a different way without this scene or that scene. Lawrence had worked for three months on his storyboard, shooting every frame with actors and creating a vision that was bullet proof yet adaptable, even when everything was thrown at it to break that vision. He knew the storyboard like the back of his hand, which is why we were able to shoot a movie in such a short time frame and with only two or three takes for each shot.

                     Lawrence Jacomelli Director: Blood Star Movie 2024 Trailer

One last thing to point out is that most people who worked on this movie are first timers. I myself am a first-time female writer, and first-time movie producer. Lawrence is a debut writer, producer and director. John Schwab and Britni Camacho both have their debut lead roles in this movie.

Needless to say, that when we started the process of making Blood Star we didn’t think about the exit strategy. But just a few weeks after completion of the offline edit we were lucky enough to find a fantastic Sales and Distribution partner in Raven Banner Entertainment.

Now we are looking forwards to the next story…

Writer/Executive Producer – Victoria Hinks Taylor

FOLLOW THIS LINK TO SEE BLOOD STAR MOVIE 2024 TRAILER