If you've listened to any Savemoney artist (Chance the Rapper, Vic Mensa, Towkio, the list goes on), you’ve probably watched one of Austin Vesely’s music videos. The 25-year-old Logan Square resident has always loved filmmaking, and he began making a childhood hobby a professional career with clips he made in college for the once-buzzing band Kids These Days, which featured Vic Mensa, Nico Segal (Donnie Trumpet) and the talented musicians who would go on to form Marrow. Since then, he’s racked up well over a dozen credits, culminating in his “short film” for Donnie Trumpet and the Social Experiment’s “Sunday Candy,” which is still the best music video of the year.

Now Vesely’s making headlines not just for his music videos but for his upcoming first feature length film, a murder mystery entitled “Slice,” which is due out next year. Besides a vague IMDB plot description saying, "When a pizza delivery driver is murdered on the job, the city searches for someone to blame: ghosts? drug dealers? a disgraced werewolf?” and that Chance the Rapper is starring as Dax Lycander, details are scant. To get the inside scoop about the forthcoming project, RedEye called up the young director. The conversation, which was edited for clarity, is below.

So how did “Slice” come together?

“Slice" was originally a short film I wrote, which was probably about three years ago. At some point I became interested in developing the idea into a bigger world. There was a lot of stuff in the short script I thought could be expanded upon in an interesting way. I just developed a feature-length script over the last year and a half/two years.

Making narrative features has always been something I’ve wanted to do. Being friends and colleagues with Chance the Rapper was cool because he’s interested in movies too. He basically told me that when the time comes that I could make something, he’d be there for me. So I wrote a role for him in the piece. While he wasn’t involved in the writing up to this point, I told him what the general idea of the role I had for him was, and he was cool with that. When we get more into production we’re going to tailor the role more to his voice and his humor.

Let’s talk about the concept. Chance is starring as Dax Lycander, which kind of sounds like a “Star Wars” character. With all the stuff in the premise like the werewolves and pizza delivery boy, it all sounds sort of campy. What films inspired you to make this?

I was actually really inspired by this novella by George Saunders called “CivilWarLand In Bad Decline.” He has ghosts as a part of the universe. George Saunders is always really good about this: He puts you into a world and he doesn’t explain the rules to you, so you figure it out as you go. So he created this world [with] ghosts that just existed and were part of the fabric of the universe. That was really a big inspiration to me to make a movie [that] would also do that. I also did the exact same thing; I have ghosts in this movie and they’re basically part of the fabric of the government, of the town the film takes place in.

Is it set in an alternate universe then?

More or less. It appears to be one, but it could be just be some mediocre river town in the middle of America. But it just has these supernatural elements that people accept as reality.

So along with George Saunders, who was a big inspiration, there’s a lot of characters that intertwine. I wouldn’t dare say I’m trying to make “Magnolia,” but that kind of Paul Thomas Anderson-, large-cast thing inspired me too—to a goofier degree. This will be a plot-driven movie.

What’s Chance the Rapper’s role, exactly?

He is actually a werewolf who is a former Chinese food delivery driver. Basically, these murders start happening and they hearken back to an incident that happened with him years before, and they arouse the town’s suspicions.

Has filming started yet?

Filming has not started. We’re in the final stages of our budgeting. It’s kind of weird because I can’t talk about some of the things that are going on with that, but the easiest way to say it is that we’re in pre-production.

Will it be filmed in Chicago?

It’s an interesting thing because the goal and the dream has always been to film it in Chicago with all my Chicago crew, much of [the] “Sunday Candy” team. That was due to the low-budget nature of it because we wanted to utilize the Illinois Film tax incentives, which is like a 30 percent credit which would’ve helped a lot. But right now, Governor Bruce Rauner has frozen that credit so we’re kind of in limbo there, financially. But the goal is still to shoot in and around Chicago.

Are any other Chicago artists going to appear in the movie?

I definitely would like to get as many of my friends in it as possible. Just for fun, to stick them in a scene or whatever. I’ve talked to Macie Stewart from Marrow explicitly about doing some music for it and Lane [Beckstrom of Marrow] as well. I’m trying to use all my resources in a variety of ways, whether they appear on screen or something else like music.

The post for the movie is great--it reminds me of old kung fu movies. It has Chance riding a bike; is that bike going to play a part in the movie? Any big chase scenes?

There is actually a chase scene. That scooter or that moped in the poster is kind of like a totem for Chance's werewolf character. He speeds in and out like how the Joker comes in and out of “The Dark Knight.” That’s the inspiration for how we handled the Dax character.

When’s the trailer coming out?

I hope to have a trailer by the end of the year, just something to show people. We’re of the mind that putting out viral content in the lead-up to everything will be a good way to have people be awake to the whole project. We have a couple viral website campaigns in mind, and as footage comes in we’ll probably do some fun stuff with it.

Would the goal be a widespread theatrical release and the festival circuit?

I’m not sure if we’re going to do festivals or not. It just depends on the timing. We’re probably going to miss most of the deadlines for next year’s festivals, and that’d be earlier in the year. We don’t want to wait too long. Ideally we get some sort of distribution deal prior to having [to] go that route.

Is there a marketing strategy similar to how Chance the Rapper has been releasing music [for free]?

It’s grassroots in the way that we’ve brought the project into fruition at all. The fundraising we’ve been doing has been person-to-person, talking to private investors and stuff like that. But the movie won’t just appear on the Internet or something.

jterry@redeyechicago.com, @joshhterry

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