Shervin Youssefian (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1352346/) is a young 27-year old Armenian filmmaker who took filmmaking to a whole new level. After graduating from the University of Northridge, he immediately founded Miran Films; a Los Angeles based Production Company. After a few years of producing commercials for TV, he concentrated on completing several feature-length screenplays that he would hopefully sell to the market and enter the Hollywood industry.
He submitted the material to film festivals and producers but he soon realized that it was all in vain and cost too much money. Film festivals will generally take your money and give you a pat on the back and see you on your way. Producers will generally look at an unknown writer's material if they are currently out of work, and if they are currently out of work, it could only mean one thing: they are not creative enough to create their own opportunities.
After receiving a countless number of rejections from literary agents, Youssefian decided that he would take matters into his own hands. He sat down and completed his fifth screenplay entitled Machiavelli Hangman in only a few days. Once the first draft of the 95 page script was ready, he called around and began forming a production team that would begin the amazing Machiavelli Hangman (http://www.hangmanmovie.com) journey.
The project was a big secret because of the controversial political content of the script and its completely innovative narrative structure. As more professionals read the script and joined the team, Youssefian formed another organization called Armenian Filmmaker. This was an idea that launched a big movement within the Armenian community of Los Angeles because it encouraged the 200,000 or so Armenians to contribute a single dollar toward the 200,000 dollar budget of the film. After only 2 months, the website had received up to 60,000 dollars in contributions. Many investors of different background were so impressed that they stepped up to finance the project.
This success was a combination of a few different things. "It was the gesture of doing something great and asking the community to help along with having a really great script. These guys were genuine and full of talent, so it was very easy to give them encouragement in whatever shape and form," says Arman Stepani, one of the contributors to the project.
Machiavelli Hangman is currently in production and is set to be released later this year. This would mark the first film in world cinema to have been completely funded by a local community.
"If you think about it, this equates to having distribution before production. The audience is paying for this film to be made before it even goes into theatres!" adds Stepani.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jennifer Wang is a senior reporter for the Hollywood
industry. This is her scoop on Machiavelli Hangman:
http://www.hangmanmovie.com
