Once a month we'll be bringing you a look at some of the best local Kickstarter campaigns in order to let you know what's getting ready to be unleashed through the help of small investors.

DugFinn Shabranigdo and her friends want to follow in the footsteps of Kevin Tancharoen with Mortal Kombat: Legacy and Joey Ansah with his upcoming Street Fighter Web series by launching a series based on the Left 4 Dead video games. L4D Run shows a surprisingly sophisticated approach to gritty, guerilla, zombie filmmaking, and while that genre really needs no more entries, good video game adaptations on YouTube continue to be gamers' only hope for cinematic excellence.

Shabranigdo has the same crisp, dystopian vision that brought 28 Days Later to life, and for a young, local production, the sets and acting come across pretty tight. Plus, they only want $580! The only downside is that you don't get much for your investment. Even the top donation level only offers signed pictures, posters and iron-on patches. On the other hand, the short will be free for all, so that's all in the spirit.

Goal: $580 by September 19.

Another film lacking in zombies but adding a touch more social relevance is Brilliant Pictures' proposed short subject The Other Side. It's the story of a young woman who enters the dark and seedy side of city life in order to help her widowed mother out of financial dire straits. Her guide in this project is a pimp named Pierre, who introduces her to the blurred lines between right and wrong.

Donors at the top $3,000 level get an executive producer credit, which actually seems like a nice way to pad an IMDb entry if you've got the dough, but the rest of us plebeians will probably want to go the $30 route. It's the lowest you're going to get and end up with an actual copy of the film.

Goal: $5,000 by October 13