Help Produce A New Geocaching Movie

Actor and novice producer Jeff Galfer needs cash to fund his cache-inspired short film Buried Treasure. In a guest post for It’s Not About The Numbers, the American pleads his case and reveals how this hobby has changed his life.

Back then, I was on a job shooting a commercial for Bud Light beer when a fellow actor started talking about geocaching while on a break. I overheard the conversation and eventually asked what in the world was he talking about. He briefly explained the process of geocaching to me and my mind was blown.

Actor and film producer Jeff Galfer

I had never heard of such a thing. All around me there were hidden caches and people were playing this game and I didn’t even know it was going on. I was truly fascinated. That day, I went home and wrote my short film. After eight months of revisions, I finally had a workable screenplay and here we are today raising money to shoot the movie.

So why was I so fascinated? I don’t know. I think it had something to do with the fact that the act of hiding or finding a cache contained no ego or greed behind it. You simply hide something of yours for someone else to witness and that’s it. I loved that it was so thoughtful and yet so simple.

I started to fantasise about why someone would leave a cache and why they would leave a particular cache. I began wondering about the people who find the caches, why they go looking for them and what they get out of each find; how it affects them. Of course, I know some people play simply for the sport of it but I was more curious about the emotional aspects of the hobby. Could witnessing someone else’s cache change someone’s life for the better?

Two years ago I lost my father. He was the greatest man I ever knew; my mother was and still is madly in love with him – even after 40 years together. And while she was so tragically heartbroken by his death, she chose to appreciate the fact that she got 40 years with him and allowed this gratitude to slowly heal her wounds. I found her chosen perspective to be filled with strength and I was truly in awe of her ability to proceed the way she did.

Since his death I’ve paid a lot of attention to loss. Recently I read a story about a guy who met the love of his life (they were soulmates, each said) but six months after they got married, she began a battle with breast cancer that lasted years and ended in her death. She was very young.

I could see how my mother was able to move on from my father’s death but I couldn’t understand how a guy so young could live the next 40 years without the love of his life. How could he choose gratitude if he never got to experience a lifetime with her, as my mother did with my father.

And so that’s how Buried Treasure came about. I took a story that completely fascinated me and infused it into a hobby that fascinated me just as much.

In my story, a man has been dealing with the loss of his wife. We don’t know exactly what has happened to her or why she is no longer with him but we know she is gone. And just as he is about to give up on himself and the life he is leading, he comes across a cache, not knowing what it is. His chance encounter with this hide leads him on a path that ultimately changes him and those around him.

I wanted to write a movie showing how the story behind a cache could change someone and ultimately alter many people’s lives. Since a cache is merely witnessed, I wondered how deep of an effect a cache could have on that witness. And if the witness accidently finds the cache, how much of that experience can be attributed to chance and how much to fate?

So these questions eventually helped to form my screenplay, and once it was written, I became very passionate and committed about following it through to completion.

THE CAST

From left: Anna Douglas, Crista Flanagan, Gregg Henry, Scott Klace, Eloise Mumford and Jeff Galfer

I really wanted to shoot the movie in such a way that we not only tell a moving story but we tell and shoot it in the best looking, best acted and most respectfully representative way we could tell a story about geocaching to people who might not know what geocaching is.

I put together a stellar cast and crew, along with the help of my director Leslie Hope and producer Jesse Collver. Now we have Emmy and Academy Award-winning crew members, a cast that is extremely talented (if not also well known) and a full production just waiting to create movie magic.

What we don’t have yet is the entire US$24,750 funding to make this possible. We are 12 days away from our June 12th deadline on Kickstarter and we still have 65 per cent of our funding left to reach our goal.

I’m pleased that the geocaching community has reached out their hand to us. In the interest of full disclosure: Am I a fulltime geocacher? No. Am I fascinated by the sport and want to represent it in the best possible light? Absolutely. Are there people involved with the film who do geocache and understand it well? Of course.

This is a great story that deserves telling. I do hope you will be able to help us out. Please know that everything and anything helps. And I am quite certain the story that will be told will not only move audiences but shine light on a hobby that deserves a little bit of attention and public love.”

*For more information about Buried Treasure or to keep up with its progress, check out the movie’s website, Facebook page, Kickstarter fundraiser and Twitter feed.