Why "Lost In Sunshine?"

Hi guys!! Well, the impossible has happened again! Lorie just submitted our proposal for a new media grant today, while moving into her new home in MN. Applause is definitely in order. *Pugs and I are clapping now, Lorie*

If you've been hanging around with us at all since 2008, you've probably heard us mention our feature-to-be, Lost In Sunshine, a couple times. ;) Although partially funded, we still lack the big $$$$ we need to turn our screenplay into a movie. But that's OK (for now), it's always been more than a movie - a show.

After lots of careful consideration, we decided that in order to engage our audience (character blogs, FB, newsletters and tweets were not sticky enough) and make our feature, we need to first create audio-visual content for people to click onto and share. That's where our new web series, Fucked Up People, comes in. 

The web series focuses on the two main characters of LIS, Bob and Lyn, and their troubled worlds - before their lives collide in Sunshine.

The grant we're applying for has to be in two (media) parts, so we've decided to take the approach of both streaming media per our web series, and turning our feature into a novel (for all those who love to read!). Basically, you get to know the characters and their dysfunctional worlds before you meet them in our feature or novel. 

Lorie writes, "The episodes will introduce the characters of Lyn and Bob who are two sides of a coin. Lyn views the glass as half empty; Bob, as half full. Both are beset by troubles of their own making. Lyn is profane, unfiltered, and unhappily married and employed. Bob is warm, chatty, and a married father and gambling addict. The series will present “fucked up people” that Lyn and Bob deal with in their respective lives, while also laying out the longer thread of how each of them are messed up, themselves."

Why “Lost in Sunshine?”

In the multiplatform IP world, I’ve seen great projects that tell stories about conspiracies, superheroes, viruses, mysteries and scavenger hunts, robots, social issues and calls-to-action, twenty-something singles, and GLBT teen romance. As Creative Producer of “Lost in Sunshine” (LIS), I want to present something I haven’t seen, yet: a fictional comedy-drama storyworld showing true-to-life foibles of grownups blind to their own complicity in their problems. In other words, “regular fucked up people.”

Our tagline for LIS is, “Is this where you thought you’d be?” Have your choices brought you happiness or pain? Do you feel a victim of your life, or the driver? How many times have you made the same bad choice(s) over and over again, before you realized you weren’t magically going to experience a changed outcome? Did you make a new choice then?

Description of IP

The genesis of the LIS storyworld is a feature screenplay, written by Jentri Chancey. It presents a story about a woman convinced that her mother’s death was a suicide, and that she’s fated for the same path. It shows characters running away from themselves in self-destructive ways: adultery, addiction, theft, overwork, closeted homosexuality, and denial.

In 2009, Lorie Marsh came on board the project and proposed it be executed as a transmedia property – ‘it’s not just a movie, it’s a show.’ Lorie and Jentri’s highest hope is that their fans might come away from the LIS storyworld inspired to look within and see the power they have to make choices in their lives.

-from grant submission, written by Lorie Marsh: