'Cactus Boy' - Practical Effects Film About A Prickly Imaginary Friend Launches Kickstarter Campaign
‘Cactus Boy’, a short practical effects film telling the story of a man who breaks up with his imaginary friend, has launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the production.
‘Cactus Boy’ tells the story of Winston Prickle, a grown man working in a plant nursery in Arizona, who still talks to his childhood imaginary friend, the Cactus Man. When Winston falls in love with a co-worker and begins to make a human connection for the first time in his life, he decides the time has come to put away childish things. So he breaks up with his imaginary friend.
Writer/Director Chris Brake explained “it’s really a story about being at that crossroads in life that we all come to, where childhood and adulthood meet, and the transition everybody makes when they decide to grow up.”
Brake intends for ‘Cactus Boy’ to be a practical effects film, noting “after the amazing response to my last film ‘Scraps’, which used a mix of puppetry and live action to tell the story of a boy made of trash, I knew for sure that I wanted to tell the story of ‘Cactus Boy’ in a similar way. We’re running a Kickstarter campaign to help with the costs associated with making this as a practical effects film, where everything is done in-camera, and there’s no additions of CGI, VFX, or fixing it in post”.
Working on the life-size Cactus Man costume are two fabrication and prosthetics artists, Alice Batten-Jacobs and Anna Henderson. Both have most recently been working with the Jim Henson Creature Workshop as part of the team making puppets for Netflix’s prequel series ‘The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance’. Director Brake commented “we’re so lucky to have Alice and Anna on board. Although it’s still early days on the project, the work they’re doing is just incredible, and I can’t wait to get our Cactus Man in front of the camera”.
The Kickstarter campaign runs until July 4th 2018, with a goal of raising £7000.
About Chris Brake
Director Chris Brake is a final year student at the London Film School. His first short film ‘Nest’ was a semi-finalist at the Berlin Student Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Juror’s Award. His last film ‘Scraps’ launched to acclaim exclusively on Vero in April 2018 before going on to play at the ‘Fastnet Film Festival’ and ‘The Shortest Nights’ festival in London.
