Mind City Terror

A Kaiju short film by Curtis Jaeger

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FESTIVALS & AWARDS

Another Hole in the Head - San francisco, CA - 2015

PHILADELPHIA UNNAMED FILM FESTIVAL 2016

About the Film

Mind City Terror is a story within the complex emotions of everyday life and around the very real battles we fight in the private space of our dreams. Isaac is a young man in a difficult time of his life. The city of his mind is under attack by an 80-story Monster of Shame. To conquer it and regain control of himself, he summons a steel guardian formed of his own ego.

Director's Statement

I had a dream a long time ago. All my Power Ranger buddies were dead and I alone was left in my giant robot. All my problems were now monsters, stalking me in an endless maze of a city. Friends, enemies, family, all were there. At the most hopeless point, my Mother called to remind me she loved me.

Mental health, the pressures of living in a modern society, the economy of the human soul: all are topics that I find interesting and yet most films that tackled these subjects always seemed doomed to be slow or boring. Every person has problems. I wanted to make the problems of everyday life as epic as it is to all of us who live it.

Mind City Terror is a tribute to all the people in the thick of it. Don't give up. Somebody out there loves you. It's why we keep fighting.

CAST

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Ryder Darcy as Isaac

Ryder Darcy’s passion for acting began early. In high school he was a company member of the acclaimed ACT Young Conservatory appearing in several world premiere productions. His training includes summer programs at UCLA and California State Summer School of the Arts as well as a full range of performance classes and stage performances at SSU and SFSU. He has studied Stage Combat and Fight Choreography with professional stuntman Ed Douglas, Movement with B.J. Dodge and Yukihiro Goto and Dell' Arte Physical Comedy with Michael Fields. His awards include ACT Distinguished Young Artist, California Theater Arts Scholar Governor's Medallion and the Evert Person Scholarship for Theater Arts.

James F. Ross as The Therapist

James F. Ross is a Hoosier, transplanted to California by way of New York and Massachusetts. He sang and acted in high school and college, but then set those aside to go to work in business, which was of inestimable value in learning about human behavior. Several years ago he returned to acting by taking formal training, and then getting parts in small films and commercials.

Following his work in Mind City Terror he continued with short films until he unexpectedly got a stage role. Since then his focus has been more on theater than film. He has played in productions of The Garden Party, The Glass Menagerie, and two plays in the 2015 San Francisco Pint-Sized Play Festival, Relativity, and Colored Pencil Werewolves. He is currently writing plays as fast as he can.

Nina Jordan as Violet

Erik Braa as The Dream Commander

Erik Braa is an award winning Actor and Voice Talent. His Video Game highlights include “Draven: The Glorious Executioner”, “Jax: The Grandmaster at Arms” and “Vel'Koz” from League of Legends, as well as, “Danny” in 400 Days and “Randy” in The Walking Dead Game. His vocal range and affable nature make him a force in any medium.

His On-Camera work includes playing “Freeburg” in an episode of the hit TV Show I (almost) Got Away With It and in Film he has been featured in The Violent Kind and Blank Slate, plus many short films, including winning a Best Actor award for his work in a short film called Roomies.

Erik can currently be seen in the films Unleashed and Lane 1974 and is the frontman in an alternative hard rock band called “Kryptic Memories.” Check out his website and Youtube channel.

Melissa Keith as Erica

Production

Mind City Terror was made over 3 years on a budget of $30,000.

To create a film in the vein of classics such as Godzilla or Ultraman, we had to forgo the current trend of creating our world in a computer. We wanted a texture and life that felt both real and familiar, in a language of the film we all grew up watching. That meant putting stuntmen in monster suits and duking it out, old school. On a typical big budget film, costumes like these might cost upwards of $100,000 each to produce and would have several backups in case of any damage.

Clever production was absolutely necessary to make the film look and feel like it belonged with those cinematic titans and Mind City Terror presented a lot of unique and interesting challenges that might be hard to find in a film of any other genre. We managed to get both costumes made for $10,000. As a 3rd of our budget, we couldn't afford more. We would have to get it right the first time. No reshoots, no excuses.

We had 6 days of shooting with actors and stunts as well as an additional day of VFX element shooting. With the exception of our stunt performers, our entire crew was 100% volunteer, filling a variety of roles where needed. Everybody contributed to create this film and it shows in the final work.

With limited post-production resources, I personally created and completed the over 300 visual effects shots in this film. With each one taking a minimum of about six hours to do, finishing the film took me a year alone in post-production.

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