BRUNSWICK

After a special screening of his own film “Sticky Wicket” on Saturday, Barry Norman’s “Save Eveningstar” campaign officially is under way.

A modest but dedicated crowd attended the kick-off screening. Many had another reason for being there, however: They were featured characters in the film, which mostly was improvised and shot during five days in July 2012.

A special website has been established to collect donations aimed at defraying the cost of converting the theater from traditional film to a digital projection system.

The website — www.seedandspark.com/studio/eveningstar-cinema — went active Friday at 5 p.m., and will be up for 45 days.

“The first two weeks of fundraising are critical,” Norman said Saturday, during a postscreening question-andanswer session with independent filmmaker Rick Schmidt.

If potential donors don’t see immediate progress, they tend not to contribute, he said.

The goal is $57,000, which would cover the $50,000 cost of the conversion as well as the 5 percent commission charged by the website host.

As of this morning, a little more than $1,100 had been pledged, including $100 by one of Norman’s high school friends immediately after the site went online.

The cost of conversion, while vital to the cinema’s existence, is bankrupting Norman. He’s now relying on crowd-funding to help save the neighborhood moviehouse.

“Sticky Wicket” is the tale of a local movie theater owner — portrayed by Norman himself — who is trying to save his business from extinction by the arrival of a national cineplex.

Starring local talent and shot entirely on location in Brunswick and Cundy’s Harbor, the fictional film is interspersed with brief, true-life vignettes related by its characters.

In the film’s final plot twist, one of the characters is revealed to be the villain. Cast against type, that character falls victim to the very machinations he or she — no spoilers allowed here — already has set in motion.

Schmidt, the filmmaker, came up with the title — a term used in the British sport of cricket, but also in the Americanized lawn game of croquet — after finding a book on croquet in a local antique store. While an appropriate double entendre for the film’s subject matter, “It’s not a term you hear every day in America,” Schmidt said, but joked that “when we show this film in London, it’s going to kick butt.”

¦ AS OF THIS morning, a little more than $1,100 had been pledged, including $100 by one of Norman’s high school friends immediately after the site went online.

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