A trio of Brisbane filmmakers have turned to crowd funding to help promote their yet-to-be made comedy - and give locals a chance to be a part of it.
Producer Bec Dakin, director Zenon Kohler and writer Karl Mather work in the advertising industry by day, but formed Wickham Park Productions to bring their first feature film to life.
The Tasmanian Babes Fiasco, John Birmingham's 1997 sharehouse comedy (a sequel-of-sorts to 1994's He Died With a Felafel in His Hand), will start filming in Brisbane in May 2015.
Ms Dakin said she had fallen in love with the book in 2004 while still at film school.
"A lecturer said 'Don't be silly, he'll never option that to you, you're just a student'," she said.
"I arranged a meeting with John and amazingly he said yes."
Six years passed before she found her kindred spirits in Mr Kohler and Mr Mather, and their fledgling production company succeeded in getting seed funding from Screen Queensland to develop the script.
Now they're halfway through a Pozible crowdfunding campaign - not to raise funds to shoot the movie itself - but to help spread the word about its existence.
"When it gets time for it be distributed, we want to know that there's a whole heap of people out there who already know about it and have told their friends," she said.
"The film has every opportunity to succeed then … it's a different way of finding an audience."
So far around 100 people had pledged nearly $24,000, about one-sixth of the campaign goal.
Rewards up for grabs include on-set experiences, cast meet and greets and even the chance to spend half a day with John Birmingham playing his beloved X-Box.
However, Ms Dakin said the cheapest reward at just $5 allowed supporters to join the "Tassie Babes" community via a website log-in, where they could access and give feedback on exclusive content such as behind the scenes footage, audition tapes and pre-production notes.
"It's also where we're going to be putting our casting notifications for extras before we put them out through casting directors," Ms Dakin said.
"It's really important to me that this is a Brisbane story and it gets filmed here ... using locals is crucially important."
Several key roles had already been cast, including Brisbane comic Damien Power as Elroy, New Zealand actor Kristian Lavercombe as Leonard, and Spicks 'n' Specks host Josh Earl as Phil.
"It's got such great characters - they're over the top but they're not that far off people you know," she said.
Ms Dakin said they were still looking for the right person to play Birmingham himself.
"That's our next challenge," she said.