A filmmaker raised in Kansas City wants to come home from Los Angeles to direct her first feature film.
Morgan Dameron hopes crowdfunding and a new Kansas City incentive can help fuel her directing dreams.
Dameron’s Kickstarter campaign for her film “Different Flowers” has already raised more than $26,000, past the half-way mark to her $50,000 goal. She started it just over a week ago.
Kansas City’s film incentive passed earlier this year. Kansas City Film Commissioner Steph Scupham just announced that the application for the incentive will be live at www.FilmInKC.com on May 31. Dameron admitted seeing the incentive pass encouraged her to come home and make her film sooner.
“I knew now was the time. I had to take advantage of the enthusiasm.”
Dameron always wanted to make “Different Flowers” in Kansas City.
“The story really called for it. It was set there. It is drawing on my own personal experiences, and I wanted to go back to where I first fell in love with filmmaking.”
Dameron won awards for her filmmaking here in high school and even won a scholarship to study film at USC in LA. From there, she started working for J.J. Abrams, where she learned even more about the film industry on major movie sets. Now her name will forever be a part of the historic film franchise "Star Wars!"
“There’s a character named Poe Dameron,” she told us in December. She said she realized the connection one day while proofreading scripts. “They named the character after me!” she laughed.
Now Dameron is ready to come home and direct "Different Flowers."
“It’s a dramedy about two very different sisters,” she explained. “Not seeing as many women on screen in roles that I could identify with inspired me to write this script.”
Dameron hopes her application for Kansas City’s new film incentive is accepted.
“Filmmaking, at the end of the day, is a business so that is incredibly important and for me it means we can use a little bit more resources you know, taking advantage of local crew members,” she said.
Scupham said the incentive works like a rebate. Filmmakers must apply and meet a strict set of criteria, including meeting a spending minimum. Only after a certain amount of qualified spending in Kansas City do applicants get the incentive money. The incentive ranges from 3.5 percent to 7.5 percent.
“Now with our local incentive, we’re getting calls and interest from all over the country,” she said. “So it's really interesting how many people have Kansas City on their mind.”
Dameron hopes with successful fundraising and casting, she and her crew will be here to start making their movie in August.
Check out the Different Flowers Kickstarter campaign here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/998683924/different-flowers-a-feature-film
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Lindsay Shively can be reached at lindsay.shively@kshb.com.
