LOS ANGELES, CA, UNITED STATES, August 19, 2014 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Creative people dig deeply into their own lives for material to write about. For Cameron Sawyer, who has just finished the script for his first feature film, Tim Timmerman, Hope of America, his memories of being what he describes as “possibly the worst” student body president in the history of his high school inspired this comedy, set in the 90s, about a high school student body president who gets impeached. Now Sawyer has turned to Kickstarter to mount a crowdfunding campaign to raise $100,000 by September 4, so that he can begin filming in November. The film has placed in the top ten Kickstarter film and video projects and has been named a staff pick.

From the time he was young enough to test his childhood superhero skills against an Incredible Hulk punching bag, Cameron Sawyer knew that what he wanted to do, more than anything in the world, was to make the characters on the screen come alive for other people the way they did for him. But he was hesitant to commit himself to a film career. Everyone wants to be in movies, but everyone also wants a paycheck, and when it came down to weighing his dreams against his fears, those dreams fell back to earth and he chose the safe and practical road: he majored in business at college, then went to work as a venture capitalist. What could be more practical?

But Sawyer found that the dream was still there. It might have been submerged underneath layers of startups, B2Bs, and angel investors, but it still had a pulse. So he did what he had to do. Quit the job and applied to film school. There, he met other film students who, like Sawyer, lived and breathed moviemaking. Sawyer learned the techniques of making films, and he picked up a few insights along the way. Like when he cast an unknown actress named Hailee Steinfeld to star in his graduate thesis film, She’s a Fox, based on his fifth grade romance. Steinfeld later proved that her acting chops weren’t a fluke when she was nominated for an Academy Award for her role as Maddie Ross in the Coen Brothers remake of the classic Western, True Grit. She’s a Fox was screened at more than 60 international festivals, earning Sawyer praise and awards. Sawyer’s films show the same kind of comic intuition that the beloved movies of director John Hughes displayed, making the vulnerability of youth much more entertaining on screen than it could possibly be in real life.

In order to fund his film, which he describes as Rushmore meets Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Sawyer went on a personal selling spree. His scooter, furniture, even his Ice Cube gold record all went for sale so that he could raise the money needed for the film. He’s hoping that crowdfunding will bring in the money he needs so that he can begin the filming and have his movie in post-production by March, 2015. He has already gone scouting for locations for the film, as well as storyboarded the more complicated scenes, and after the funding comes through, he can begin the casting process.

The crowdfunding rewards reflect Sawyer’s ability to turn what he knows into a resource. In this case, that’s his sister, Suzanne Sawyer, a professional skier, who along with Sawyer, will offer a private ski day at Snowbird. The Sawyers will show backers who donate $2,000 or more all around Snowbird’s hidden terrain, and Suzanne will give some skiing tips. Other prizes at varying levels include pdf copies of the script, digital downloads of the film, DVDs, t-shirts, mention in the credits, Skype sessions with Sawyer, a chance to hang out on the set for a day, tickets to a red carpet screening of the film, a background role in the film, film merchandise, and job shadowing on the set.

About Tim Timmerman, Hope of America
Writer/Director Cameron Sawyer finds his inspiration for his films in his own youth. His first feature film, Tim Timmerman, Hope of America, is a Kickstarter crowdfunding project (and staff pick) that’s based on Sawyer’s own less-than-successful experiences as a high school student body president. His graduate thesis for the Chapman University Film School in Southern California was the award-winning short film She’s a Fox, taken from his memories of his fifth grade romance.

Cameron Sawyer
Tim Timmerman, Hope of America
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