Kickstart Your Weekend With 'The Father'

Local filmmaker Stephen Belyeu is a man who knows his limits.

For years, he avoided making a sci-fi film – despite that long being his favorite genre – because he knew that he'd never be able to afford to do it right on an indie filmmaker's budget.

But with an enterprising crew and a thoughtful appreciation of FX technologies from the not-too-distant past, Belyeu thinks he can make it work.

His forthcoming feature film, The Father is about the intersecting paths of two families and their estranged members. The sci-fi edge? One of those families is a father-son extraterrestrial duo. He's running a Kickstarter campaign to start making his 16 mm scheme a reality.

In another prescient move, Belyeu is limiting the scope of this crowdfunding round to $9,000 – enough to get the special effects makeup for the main characters done and to shoot two scenes with SXSW Film Award-winning actor Tishuan Scott (The Retrieval) playing the title role. The hope is that with those test screenings in hand, the team can approach bigger investors about getting the film off the ground.

Check out the pitch video below to learn more about the project and its goals, as well as to see progress shots of the FX artists at work. Then head over to the campaign page for a complete rundown of backer rewards. But hurry – some of those are limited too.

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Kickstart Your Weekend is a series intended to showcase Texas film and tech projects that are crowdfunding their way to a goal, be it distribution, a prototype, or production costs. If you have a project that we should know about, email us at [email protected].