Two local men hope the community will be “Touched” enough to support their efforts to make an independent movie by contributing to their Kickstarter campaign. By Sept. 13, cinematographer and co-producer Bryce Fritzel and director and lead actor Claude Clark hope to raise at least $2,000 to make their film, titled “Touched.” Clark said, “It’s a romantic comedy about Peter. His dad gets a curse put on me, his son, which allows me, when I touch a woman, they become infatuated. As the movie goes on, I end up wanting to meet and talk and get to know this particular woman named Allie, and for some reason my curse doesn’t work on her. So it’s just a lot of craziness just trying to figure out why the curse won’t work on her, and also to get her to recognize me and fall in love naturally.” For a lot of guys, being able to get any girl you want wouldn’t be considered a curse, Fritzel said. But as the movie goes on, Peter realizes why it is. Clark said the original idea for the movie is his and he wrote it four years ago. He met Fritzel through a mutual friend, and then one day asked Fritzel about the script he wrote. “We’ve been working together every day pretty much ever since,” Clark said. “It’s been excellent. It’s going really good.” Fritzel said they’ve been working on it since November. They’ve revised the script, found actors for the roles and have done other pre-production work for the film. Recently, they launched a campaign on kickstarter.com to raise money for the movie. The campaign for $2,000 ends Sept. 13. “We started out with just our own money, buying some equipment. Then we realized that if we have the fans and the crowd for it, we could probably make the film a bit bigger and a little bit better,” Fritzel said. Most of the film will be shot in the Warsaw area, with a few scenes shot in some bigger cities like Chicago. “But for the most part, it will be a local film, funded by, shot by and acted in by local people. Just a tribute back to our hometown,” Fritzel said. Clark said they have most of the film cast, except they are looking for a middle-aged black woman to play Allie’s mother. Recently, they filmed a pre-production movie trailer for “Touched.” “The biggest reason we did it was just to get the interest going with a lot of people,” and to get people to understand they weren’t just making a home movie, Fritzel said. He said they wanted people to see their technical ability and have something tangible to look at so that they would be willing to donate to the project. Clark said they now have a couple of sponsors supporting the project and businesses that will allow them to shoot scenes at their location. As for credentials, Fritzel shot the music video for “Indiana Weekend,” a commercial for a state representative and was on the production team for the film “Nouvelle Vie,” which was shot in Winona Lake this summer. Clark said he lived in Warsaw most of his life, knows a lot of people and since 1999 has done a lot of “public, professional jobs,” as well as doing promotions and disc jockeying. “So I think for both of us, it’s really trying to get that one big leap out into the world where people can go from, ‘What can these people do?’ to ‘Hey, this is what they have done.’ So, really, for us, this is our first big opportunity,” Fritzel said. Even after just putting up a teaser from the trailer, Clark said they’ve had a positive reaction from others. Fritzel said anyone wanting to find more information about the film or the Kickstarter campaign can find information and links on the Facebook page under “Touched the Movie.” “Touched” on kickstarter: tinyurl.com/touchedkickstarter
