Bella Dilemma or What I did with my Summer Vacation

Ladies and Gentlemen, here she is--in her first -ever film appearance: Bella Dilemma starring in the "Bella Dilemma TV Show Trailer" with music by the Duffy Jackson Big Band from Nashville, TN! 




  Bella Dilemma TV Show Trailer from Geoff Grogan on Vimeo.


The time off from my strip, "Jetpack Jr." has not all been spent lounging by the pool. Nope, 10-12 hour days, 7 days a week for six months or so has been eating, drinking , sleeping this one minute trailer.  Talk about compressing time! But that's what happens when you get older; 15 years goes by like a Summer afternoon.
So why Bella Dilemma, and why a trailer rather than a proper film?
To answer the first; there's a story to tell with that character, and readers of my strip seem to react positively whenever she appears.  I don't know, it must be the Bee-hive. 
The second: I had a relatively brief amount of time in which to make a film, and a lot to learn, designing and animating the entire project myself. Doing a trailer allowed me to create a broad narrative while spanning a variety of scenarios, all in just over a minute. 
And I wanted to try my hand at creating a TV series. "Bella Dilemma" is the kind of series I'd like to see, and I thought there may be others who would find it entertaining as well.
So there's not only the trailer, but a Pitch Bible (with lots of pretty pictures!) and  a fully-worked out premise. In coming weeks, "Jetpack Jr." will feature an introduction to the series in an "imaginary" Jetpack story( just like those old 'imaginary" stories in "Superman's Pal"Jimmy Olsen". It didn't really happen--but it did.). 
Every pitch starts with a logline, a 1-2 sentence summation of the premise that might get viewers to give it a shot on Amazon or Netflix--and here's mine: 

A Hollywood Movie Queen and a diminutive stunt-man in a monster costume, lost in an alternate dimension where every movie is its own reality.    

And the premise:
You say you’ve never heard of Bella Dilemma; “World’s Greatest Movie Star”? It’s no surprise really.
Bella Dilemma WAS the “World’s Greatest Movie Star” until one evening, while she slept soundly in the comfort of her Beverly Hills home, a shadowy figure broke in and absconded with her Oscar, after which she woke to find herself on the sound-stage of a world gone mad, where no one had ever heard of “Bella Dilemma” and she was just another stand-in on a Hollywood movie-set. This alternate dimension is the “Cine-Verse”, where all the movies ever made are their own reality and the Oscar is a mysterious Genie-like figure rumored to have the power to make dreams come true. Together with her unlikely companion, Al Z., a diminutive stunt-man in a monster suit and a grizzled vet of many a back-lot, she travels from one movie scenario to another in search of the elusive Oscar, and the life she once had.  

That only scratches the surface--and a blog post isn't the place to go into more detail, but suffice to say there are plots written for a bunch of episodes already, a variety of other characters with backstories and the whole bit.  So tune in to "Jetpack Jr." in September to see how Bella Dilemma unfolds. 

And now that most of the work on the trailer is done, I should have time to post a bit more than I have. There's a lot of stuff left over that didn't make it into the trailer- and lots of drawings-that I'd like to share, and I've kept up with my reading too, so there are books to talk about too!

Meanwhile, I hope you've enjoyed the Bella Dilemma Trailer--and I hope it makes you want to see more! If so, please share it as often as you can  and maybe together we can make that happen!  
Cheers!

Geoff