Director's Thoughts

  My name is Christopher Sheffield, and I'm the Writer, Director, and creator of the Action packed emotional thrill ride 'Split Lip'. 
  The Making of ‘Split lip’ has been beyond an incredible  experience for my crew and me. There’s truly nothing like surrounding yourself with immensely talented artists who all align themselves with the same singular goal; to tell a powerful story. 
  From the hours and hours of sweat and hard work we all put in on set, to the multitude of late nights spent hugging a coffee pot and working on every detail of the film in post production, every pixel and decibel of this hard hitting project has been an absolute labor of love. 
  When I first began the journey of writing and pre producing the film, I knew in my heart that to truly see an indie project to completion you had to know that, should everyone else walk away, you would still be passionately capable of doing it yourself. But then something amazing happened. Suddenly my friends and colleagues, many of whom I greatly respected for their individual talents and pursuits, one by one began requesting to be a part of this film. Of course, for me, it was an absolute honor, and so all of a sudden I had a cast and crew who were steadfast and ready to embark on an adventure. But there was one hurdle we had to overcome first. 
  When it came to the discussion of funding, I decided that the only way to really convince an audience I could make this film was to get it off the ground myself. Luckily the first scene of the film is an explosive fight sequence, so I decided that would be an excellent place to break my teeth on the concept a bit and show an audience just how capable we were of pulling this whole thing off. With a minimal crew (some who I had met that day for the first time that would go on to work on the principal photography) we choreographed, rehearsed, and filmed the first action packed five minutes of the film. 
  Now that we had a successful proof-of-concept, and the film already technically off the ground, I started my first ever Indiegogo account. The response to the footage and images comprised from that shoot were enough to carry us into the first quarter of our funding. A careful artist would hold off until they secured the full budget, but we were ready for an adventure, and so, with only a quarter of the shooting budget, we set out to Arizona with a vigorous production schedule that covered over 80% of the written film.
  The gamble was a resounding success. Not only did we capture some amazing footage and have a hell of a filmaking experience doing so, we were able to utilize the footage and images we captured to create several smaller pitch videos. After those videos were introduced to our second and final indiegogo campaign, we were able to secure a sizable enough chunk of budget to continue production into the second phase of shooting.
  With the film finally at a picture-lock and ready to be handed off to the hungry eyes and ears of our soon to be wide audiences, I can’t help but look back with overwhelming pride at ‘Splip Lip’ as it exits today, an emotionally powerful and savage display of violent nature, wrapped up in a gorgeous indie film, and played against a vibrating killer soundtrack. On behalf of myself and all the hard working artists who’ve shared a piece of their soul in this project, and Just like the first line of the film says, “Sit Down” and enjoy the labor of our love, ‘Split Lip’.