CHICAGO FILM COMMUNITY HELPS MAKE-A-WISH COME TRUE
Published in Reel Chicago, July 2014
During two weeks in July, hundreds of Chicago film professionals and vendors donated their labor and resources to help turn the dream of a five year-old boy named Maddex into “MADZILLA,” a short monster movie scheduled to premiere in late August.
The project was launched by the Make-A-Wish Foundation, the organization that “grant(s) the wishes of children with life-threatening medical conditions.”
Featuring playful destruction of a scale model Grant Park, skyscraping footage shot over the Chicago river and slapstick mob hysteria near the Board of Trade, the end result is a “million dollar movie that we shot for under ten thousand dollars,” says producer Mo Wagdy.
It began when Make-A-Wish asked producer Joanna Rhodes for a list of directors who might be interested in helping a five year-old kid “star in his own Godzilla film,” recalls Jonathan Becker.
Becker, who had worked with Rhodes during her time at Leo Burnett, was among a handful of directors who Rhodes recommended. He was filming in LA when a representative from Make-A-Wish called to present the idea.
The rep explained that Maddex wanted to act in scenes featuring himself as an eight-hundred foot-tall lizard emerging from Lake Michigan, breathing fire, scaring civilians, destroying buildings, fighting two of his legendary foes and taking a bite out of a train, bus or car.
Also, there was pretty much no budget.
Becker responded, “that sounds like fun.”
Working with pediatric anasthesioligist Martin Flynn, who eventually wrote the script, Becker developed a treatment specifying that nearly half of the film be shot as “an adventumentary.”
“It’s like a mini-film camp,” Becker explains. “Behind the scenes. Take him to set builders, to the costume department, to learn how storyboards work, to learn how to fall.”
After Make-A-Wish green lighted the idea, Becker contacted the only producer he knew who could pull off a big budget film that had everything but the budget: Mo Wagdy, founder of the annual cinematic celebration called MoFest and unofficial godfather of the Chicago indie film community.
“The biggest challenge was to get 250 crew and extras to work for free and to get, I don’t know, a million dollars worth of equipment for free,” Wagdy recalls. “You’re constantly reaching out to volunteers and getting people up to speed with what’s going on.”
The companies that Wagdy eventually brought on rank among the elite suppliers in the Chicago film industry. Big Deahl Productions offered its stage for a week and a half. VER/Cineverse donated $5 million worth of equipment rental. Filmworkers handled the coloring. CRC finished the sound. Just to name a few.
Editing was handled by Quriosity Productions’ Curtis Schmidt, who describes himself as “a gigantic Godzilla fan.”
Since the project involved massive amounts of digital effects and raw Red footage, he chose to work in Final Cut Pro for its “very simple one-click process to get pre-visualization.”
The project gave him the sensation of “editing my own monster movie” that he called “a dream job.”
“Who doesn’t like a lot of explosions while watching a child dressed as Godzilla doing it?”
For a full list of the volunteers who helped Maddex’ wish come true, click here.