Originally, today’s blog was going to focus partly on a new IndieGoGo fundraising campaign for the upcoming indie comedy “Gone Doggy Gone,” which is being co-written, co-directed, and stars Lawrence native Kasi Brown. But there’s enough good stuff here to fill up the whole thing.

Kasi Brown graduated from Lawrence High School 20 years ago and got her BA in Theater and Film at KU in 1996. She’s lived in Los Angeles since 1999 and has appeared in commercials and on TV shows such as “ER” and Monk.” Brown has written a ton of scripts and her dream is to produce and direct a feature film. Now’s the chance to help her out.

“We wrote a comedy horror feature first, but realized the special effects would cost too much for us to make it ourselves,” she says.

So Brown and her producing/writing partner Brandon Walter skipped that script and are aiming to make their first feature film a comedy about a couple who treats their dog like a baby … and then it gets kidnapped. Movies are expensive, so Kasi and Brandon have launched a crowdfunding campaign with IndieGoGo and have 30 days to raise $75,000. Why not Kickstarter?

“Indiegogo allows you to choose between flexible and fixed funding. Kickstarter only has fixed funding, which means if you don’t make the goal you set for yourself, you don’t get to keep any of the money that was donated to you,” Kasi says. “With flexible funding on Indiegogo, if you make your goal Indiegogo only takes 4% of the donated money, while if you don’t make your goal they take 9% but you get to keep the money you raised.”

http://www.lawrence.com/users/photos/2012/sep/06/240758/

Why a movie about a kidnapped dog?

“So many people treat their dogs like babies, especially in Los Angeles,” Brown says. “They put them in carriages, dress them — I even saw a dog stuffed into a baby Bjorn. People use dogs to deal with or cover up their issues. Some people use them as starter babies to practice being parents. Some dog owners are empty nesters who fill the void of their missing kids with dog babies. Some couples only speak to each other through their dogs. They’ll say, ‘Laila wants kisses’ when they are in need of kisses.”

Click here to go to the “Gone Doggy Gone” IndieGoGo page and help a Lawrence native make her first full-length feature.

So that was going to be it in today’s Scene Stealers blog about Kasi Brown and her movie. But what happened is I was doing research on her past projects and discovered all kinds of great stuff that Kasi and other local filmmakers have been a part of that I didn’t even know about before.

A couple years ago, Brown headed back to Kansas to co-write and act in a web comedy series called “Next!” The four-part mockumentary-style show was put together by Kansas City-area casting director Heather Laird and drew heavily on her own professional experiences as a casting director. Brown plays an Associate Casting Director (also named Kasi Brown), and the series was so good it won Best Comedy Series at the 2010 NAPTE LA TV Festival.

Episode One (below, and uncensored, by the way) was also co-written by Will and Ric Averill, two staples of the local theater and film community here in Lawrence:

Mother Approved is the sketch comedy show that Brown and Walter have been doing lately, and much of the cast from “Gone Doggy Gone” is culled from that group of performers.

In 2010, Mother Approved won the MobiFest Award for best short-form video series at ITVFest for its “Phobia” segments, which are up to 10 total now. Each one is set up for you to try and guess what the real-life phobia is before the sketch ends: