Bring back the old stuff. It was good!

Kyiv, Ukraine:  It’s cold here, well; try writing a script in below freezing temperatures with a pen and some paper.  You have an idea. You’ve been watching SCTV back in the day, and suddenly you say to yourself, I can do the same here, but with different characters, and with a different theme.  It’s hard to understand people sometimes because of the language differences in Ukraine, but you get used to it after a while.  Nowadays it’s hard to find good comedy; old fashion stuff like Hamilton’s own Eugene Levy with John Candy like in SCTV’s The Schmenge Brothers. Mike, who was born in Hamilton, has found a few actors for the script who went to acting school, and were in the TV shows like The Return of Mukhtar in Russia. Mukhtar is a copy clone based on the original TV based series, “The Littest Hobo”, which was shot throughout Ontario, Canada.

The idea is based around two characters in the fictional village named Kutay. The main Protagonist is Igor Kockroachski, a patriot to his village. The name Igor came from an Employee from an I.T Company here in Kyiv. “The name cockroach sounded nice, but that name was too obvious, so the C was replaced with a K, and SKI was added to the end to resemble something to have a more polish resemblance”, says Mike. He continues to say the characters have to be dumb. Not too dumb, but I found some people in other countries, like in Eastern Europe, have the wrong idea about America, and similar countries because of TV and Movies, so those ideas needed to be exploited and turned into something humorous. You hear people talk about Do It Yourself, or DIY for short, in ads. Mainly people from North America like to use these abbreviations.  But what if Igor or the other character Maxine heard it wrong? What if they think they heard DIU. It’s easy to make mistakes sometimes, but they probably don’t know what Drinking Under Influence means. In Kutay, that would be considered normal!  Now it’s just how you say it that will make it funny!

Getting ideas is great, and putting them in a script is even better, but now how about funding? Maybe we need some cabbage rolls and coffee. “It’s hard to get funding. Ukrainian people don’t usually give money away, and because this project is in Ukraine, it’s hard for people outside of Ukraine to trust you too.  They probably think to themselves, how do we know the person will run away with all of the money? With any crowdfunding, there has to be some level of trust. Remember, you don’t know the person”, said Mike.

Going around with a DSLR camera and a lighting guy who can’t keep up sure would look funny in a behind-the-scenes video. That would make a comedy film of its own.  To do something right, you have to spend some bucks. Not millions, but enough to make it look nice. It’s not a big set, it’s pretty basic. Just 1 camera guy, 1 lighting, 1 sound, and assistant director. Don’t forget the Production manager since one person can’t keep track of everything. Oh, and a driver to drive to you that location. If it was by bus, it would take too long.

If I had Eugene Levy’s e-mail address, I’d send him the project right away. I would wonder what he would think. Even though were both from Hamilton, I’d have to go through his agent, and that can be even hard to do!

About Mike:

Mike is a person who wants to create quality, with good ideas. He is a former Protocol Global Solutions I.T department staff. A background in studying film, Mike doesn’t call himself a director. To become a director, you have to have someone call you a director first. But you can always try to make something you always wanted to create. To help mike, please visit his Kickstarter page www.kickstarter.com.

You can always pledge by googling “One Village in Color”.

Contact:

Michael Zahara
74 Sunrise Drive
Hamilton, Ontario
L8k 4C3